The Most Obscure Cards & Backstory?

[Quuador]

To quote myself from a related thread: What are some cards with ~drama~ surrounding their official releases?

@Quuador

Unlimited edition Japanese World Championship Pack cards:

@Quuador

Unlimited edition World Champions Pack cards:

… Irrelevant backstory: TL;DR: I collect Pikachu & Seviper.
For the information below I mostly focus on the non-holo Rares in this unlimited edition set:

So why was this card so hard to find? Well, let me break it down for you. Let me start with the 1st edition version of the set, which although not too hard to find were pretty short-printed as well:

• The 1st edition version of this set was only available for purchase online
• On top of that: it was only available for a two week period (June 15th to July 1st, 2007)
• On top of that: it could only be bought by Japanese players
• On top of that: it was TCG-wise a pretty bad set, so not a lot of players bought it
• On top of that: it was released near the end of the TCG season, so they could only use the few usable cards for little over half a year, before they were out of rotation again
• On top of that: the Seviper is a Rare, and unlike a lot of other sets, the non-Holo Rares had the same pull rates as Holofoil Rares, ex Ultra Rares, and even the Jolteon/Vaporeon/Flareon gold stars
• On top of that: Seviper isn’t a very popular Pokémon to collect, so less likely to be put up for sale than the Pikachu

This information above is for the 1st edition version, though. For unlimited edition it’s even worse, which is why it’s not surprising it took so long to find this dang card:

• 90%+ of all World Champions Pack cards out there in auctions/bulk/lots are 1st edition, which is saying something considering the 1st edition versions were only available for a two week period, and could only be bought online by Japanese players.
• On top of that: the unlimited edition World Championship Pack packs/boxes could only be bought at the 2008 Spring Battle Road event. This event was supposed to be held at five different locations for a week long period.
• On top of that: due to bomb treats, three out of five locations were completely cancelled.
• On top of that: those remaining two venues only went through their initial two days instead of entire week, before they were cancelled as well.
• On top of that: numbers 4 to 7 of the previous list apply here as well.

I’d be surprised if more than a handful of unlimited edition World Champions Pack packs/boxes were sold in that two-day period of the two 2008 SBR events, making it one of the rarest Japanese sets that exist, most likely only overshadowed by the unlimited edition E1 Base Expansion Set (of which I’m still missing the Pikachu (EDIT Feb. 2022: not anymore ), and which were only given as random decks at some early day events from what I’ve heard (EDIT: Feb. 2022: they were also consolation prizes for certain lotteries) - although unlike the WCP, the unlimited edition E1 isn’t available as full set; only a handful of cards from the E1 set were printed and distributed through those decks and events).

The five venues of which only two were continued due to bomb threats and were shortened, are the same as the ones of the Cynthia’s Feeling’s Battle Road 2008 promo that was already mentioned by @stagecoach in the main post.

@Quuador

Stamped French (and Italian) SM190 Detective Pikachu promos:

@Quuador

On May 8th, 2019, the Detective Pikachu movie was released in cinemas in France. People received a non-stamped Holofoil SM190 Detective Pikachu promo when visiting.
A stamped version was released inside special versions of the French Detective Pikachu movie DVDs and Blu-Rays, only sold at E.Leclerc stores in France. Both the DVDs and Blu-Rays were released with an error however, since instead of the intended French copies, it could contain English, German, French, and Italian copies at random. Since these special editions were only sold at a single type of store, and because of this error, this stamped French SM190 Detective Pikachu promo took me quite a while find, and is probably one of the rarest French Pikachu cards, despite it being a pretty recent release. Eventually I was able to buy my copy from an Italian seller, so I’m pretty sure the Italian versions of these special DVDs and Blu-Rays contained the same four languages of this stamped promo at random. The English and German versions of these DVDs and Blu-Rays contained the intended languages, so those are pretty common to find.

As I mentioned in the quote above, I eventually managed to find my French copy from an Italian seller. Funny and ironically enough, I bought my Italian stamped copy from a French seller.

Greetz,
Quuador