The rarest cards in the TCG are BW promos?

[XpertFromFrance]

Hello everyone, I never write articles about cards but this is special.
To begin, I’d like to introduce myself, xpertfromfrance. I specialize in the rarest promo cards that exist in any language.

Today I’m going to talk to you about the rare black and white promo cards.

I have been collecting since 2013, I took a break from 2016 until 2020 covid confinement, I saw on tiktok a small French collector who presented the BW15 pidove in French, and he said that it was the one of rarest cards in French.
For me and even for everyone this card was common, so I started to be interested in this card, every day on the internet to find it or even find information.
Finally in 2022 I found it, with the best condition known at the present time.
After that I had to find out how this card is so rare, and where it comes from?
Again after months of research I was able to find the empty box of the pack where the card was supposed to come out, I had confirmation from several people who had opened this pack but confirmed that the card was not inside.

After this mystery I was doing research on cardmarket, I went to the minccino BW13 page, and I came across the card in Italian for 2 euros, I had never seen it so I bought it from a seller in the Netherlands, I received it in poor condition, I started to do research on it because I had never seen it, and there… Same as the pidove BW15!

Then a year later I found an Italian seller who was selling it for 1800 euros, I contacted him directly to find out more.
He explained to me that it was a contest card, I didn’t believe him until he sent me proof.

I started to question my life after that, so we have contest tournaments with prize card in Europe ?
After that I snipe Cardmarket every day for months on all the black and white promos with only 1 language available and impossible to find on the internet
I found another BW13 italian minccino for 150 euros
And a lot of two Italian Zorua BW12 of the same rarity as the minccino and pidove ?
And yet another extremely rare card with no release information like the others ???
The portuguese Pansage BW11.
wtf , so many unfindable BW card and never seen them in a language that I could find it’s crazy

(By the way, I saw a cardmarket scan of a German Ducklett BW17 but it was already sold when I wanted to buy it)

so..

I have a theory, I was able to find the BW11, BW12, BW13, BW15 (and almost the BW17) all extremely rare and unobtainable cards, with no explanation for their release? and in different languages?
The only proof I have is the certification of the BW13 card which is of the same rarity as the other cards.

The only explanation, given that these are the first promo cards for black and white, is that for the release of black and white there may have been art contest tournaments (like what is written on the minccino certification) in different countries and each country has different cards.

Years of research trying to explain to you the most complicated promo set to obtain in full.
We will never be able to know the existence of all the cards in all the languages of the BW set.

In french we say

Bisous et à bientot.

[rainbow]

It’s an interesting theory. Hopefully someone here has more information on the subject.

[Ratequaza]

A bit unfortunate that the letter does not contain a date when it was sent. Otherwise you’d be able to look through the issues of the Pokémon magazine mentioned in it from that time to get more information. I tried to look up the postage stamp, but that’s from 2008, so that unfortunately does not help much.

Edit: Issue 32 of the magazine advertises to show the drawings people sent in on the cover, I might acquire that issue to find out more.

[franmotard]

Amazing thank you for sharing

[melchior]

The letter is stamped with a date seal from the postal service, though. From what I can make out it seems to read “17 11 11 - 17” By our European notation that would land us at November 17th 2011. Which happens to fall perfectly within the 5th Generation of Black & White!

Edit: I had to increased the contrast to make it more legible

[Ratequaza]

Yeah, also falls in line with the magazine in question being the November / December issue. Makes sense that the entries get shared around the same time the rewards got sent out.

[SolemnStar]

yay! Another mystery for the forum!

I love this. Absolutely love this. Doubt I’ll ever come across any of these early BW promos in Non-English european languages, but if I do, they are yours.

I always find it odd how many times that standard black star promos are some of the most wildly difficult cards to obtain at times in English and Japanese, let alone other languages. And to have such a propensity to make them even more obscure is pretty crazy! Good investigative work and thanks for sharing. I know a lot of knowledge probably isn’t shared for fear of others edging in on your hyper niche, so I appreciate it.

[thurco]

A thread like this is just begging for a 10 paragraph answer from Quuador. Really interesting, niche info. Thanks!

[Quuador]

Tbh, most of the info I know about these cards actually comes from @XpertFromFrance (from Discord and IG posts), so not much I could add. I actually learned some new things myself tbh, regarding that Italian letter and them possibly being a BW11-BW17 set across languages.

Greetz,
Quuador

[Ratequaza]

Update: The way it is worded in the magazine, it seems these cards were not awarded for a specific contest, but rather sent out randomly to people who submitted fan art or wrote letters.

This is something that every issue of the magazine should include which also applies to for instance the German one. So these may not be tied to a specific contest, but have rather been sent out to say select people who submitted fan art from September to October 2011.

[Ratequaza]

Another little semi-update (TLDR: The distribution of the non-Italian cards still remains a mystery). I got a bit curious since you mentioned the German BW17 promo and tried to find more information on that.

First, I contacted the publisher of the German Pokémon magazine since the Italian one was the best trace we have so far. Before I did that, I checked all 2011 and 2012 issues and there was nothing like that mentioned in them, I got a response from the publisher that the people responsible for the promotions at the time do not work at Panini anymore, but that all editors working at Panini at the time were 100% sure that something like that would’ve been announced in the magazine and their archive also contained no information on the matter. Panini also suggested to contact the German distributor of the TCG for further information on the matter.

So I did just that, Amigo also responded fast, but let me know that the BW Black Star promos were localized and distributed (apart from promos for tin or collection boxes) directly by TPCi and not by them and that TPCi often didn’t even inform them about those distributions, so that was another dead end.

My last resort then was to contact TPCi support directly and to my surprise they actually responded. They however only sent me a list of the English products these promos were in and told me to look up the complete list of BW Black Star promos on a certain wiki they could not link directly. The employee that answered however also noted that it was before their time and thus they weren’t sure about the distribution in other languages and that there might have been “inconsistencies”. So while I was pleasantly surprised to have gotten an answer at all, it unfortunately wasn’t very helpful either.

So in the end it looks like unless someone finds the former TPCi employee who was responsible at that time, the mystery of the distribution of these cards won’t be solved.