Thanks for the video Scott. I was just thinking though all though it was a “big loss” compared to previous sales, it is probably still a huge profit for what they originally paid? Unless it was someone trying to flip it and lost lol. Kind of what @buckna mentioned earlier, I am still amazed to see the price increases.
I have been reading on the Final Fantasy Collector’s discussions and I see a lot of complaints about increased pricing (as Pokemon has), but isn’t it a good thing vice being stagnant?
The first licensed item released was the Bandai Club toy and Topsun themselves state they received their license in 1997.
The third most important factor that answers the question: “Maybe the cards were printed in 1995 and released in 1997?”. Topsun is written on the back of the cards, knowing how strict Pokemon is with IP there is no chance they allowed Topsun to print their name on Pokemon IP before they obtained their license in 1997.
Those three sources for me are pretty exhaustive in showing that the Topsun were printed and released well after 1995. Here are a few more sources that help dispel the 1995 date:
1. Diary entry from 1999
Ishihara met with Corocoro comics in November 1995 where he met Masakazu Kubo, after the meeting Corocoro comics (Shogakukan) became the sole license provider for Pokemon. (source)(source).Topsun are also not previewed in any 1995 or 1996 Corocoro issue. In fact there is no mention of Pokemon at all until Jan 1996:
3.Pokemon Red/Green was released in Feb 1996, Topsun wasn’t created/released before the games I don’t think I even need sources for this one.
Which is around the time when the copyright information changed on the Pokemon Kid’s cards too. Just to show you a quick example I hastily threw together. One day i’ll get around to writing another full article.
@rainbowgx , Nice graphics! Here is something cool as well, the first kids figure boxes (Oct 1996) are actually different than the ones released in Dec 1996:
I hear the faint sound of a cash register and suddenly I’m not so sure anymore.
Yeah, it’s pretty cool.
It seems to be mentioned in the Pokemon Kids Perfect Collection: Bandai Official Fan Book.
I don’t have my book on hand at the moment, but you can see the copyright is highlighted on page 12. It’s a fun little series that I always keep my eye out for binders of. I wish more would surface though.
To my knowledge Pokémon rarity isn’t really a thing in the set either, meaning you’re just as likely to pull a Charizard as you are a Weedle. The only special cards in the set are the holofoil ones.
The only reason for this confusion is because PSA uses copyright dates on their labels - this quite often misaligns with when the card was actually released.
I want to mention that while the precise release date of topsun is so far not verified, it IS known that they are not the first pokemon cards. That is because Topsun was released in 1997 at earliest, while carddass part 1 was released on September 21, 1996. To my knowledge (after a long time researching this, but feel free to ask questions), carddass part 1 is the first known release of any pokemon cards by about a month. Of course, to prove that there was nothing earlier, you’d have to know that you’ve investigated EVERY possible pokemon card release from around that time, and there may be releases which aren’t yet known in the english speaking world. But we DO know that all releases which appear in corocoro comics - the main source of information on japanese products for kids around that time - are later than carddass part 1. I found this out myself by documenting every release and release date which appear in any issue around that time. So there are very good chances that carddass part 1 was the first set released.
Note that carddass part 1 is not the 1997 carddass with nice artwork: that is carddass part 3-4. Carddass part 1-2 looks like this:
It is a common mistake to think that the green cards were first and then the red. In fact you can see which cards are in part 1 vs part 2 by looking at the checklist cards for the set, which have pokedexes on the front. Part 1 has both red and green cards in it.
@shizzlemetimbers I was waiting for you to response in this thread, since you’ve been saying this for more than a year and had multiple sources to prove it (which you’ve also posted above EDIT: on the previous page).
It was never printed as a physical card (afaik). Those were prototypes showed in the CoroCoro Comic of September 1996. Here is a picture of one of those pages that I saved because of the Pikachu.
I’m not sure why I even noticed it, but @smpratte , that Charizard you’ve showed at the start of the video from your small desk next to you isn’t a No Number error version.
Also, one thing to add that I didn’t see mention yet: wasn’t the card POP-1 when the first one sold, and POP-2 when the second one sold? I could have it totally wrong and it was already POP-2 from the start, but based on the 5xxx cert on the recently sold one I think it was still POP-1 during the first sale and that other one was very recently graded by PSA?
Of course it’s no where near as contributing to its ending price as the 1995 in the PSA label and people incorrectly thinking it was the ‘rookie’ release of Charizard, but POP-1 vs POP-2 might still have some effect on the lower price as well tbh.
Every serious collector I know thought the nearly $500k sale for this 1997 TopSun Charizard (to Goldin’s credit they even advertised it as 1997 but the buyer didn’t seem to care!) was *by far* the worst purchase in Pokemon history, as far as the ratio of a card’s inherent qualities compared to the dollars spent go.
It was very obvious at the time that whoever bought the card
1 - was relatively new to the hobby and not a knowledgeable collector
2 - thought they were buying the “rookie” Charizard even though they were buying no such thing (it wasn’t even the first non-TCG Charizard to use that artwork!) - they got duped by PSA’s mis-labelling of the card and a bunch of people who promoted it as the rookie Charizard with no real evidence (who themselves were fooled by PSA’s error and all the other things that come with this, such as the TopSun cards being listed first in PWCC’s auction blocks which is supposed to be based on chronological order)
3 - probably didn’t realize just how common this card was (took too much comfort in the idea of it being pop 1, but you can be sure that more will be added over the years, for a long time people didn’t bother grading these cards at all)
4 - thought they would be able to flip the card for a profit
I think this is a card that will continue to fall in value as the truth of its origin finally starts to sink in for people (despite some of us who have been saying they were mis-labeled by PSA for years). The fact that this card still sold for almost $200k is unbelievable. I said it at $500k and I’ll say the same thing at $200k - it’s not going to hold up at that price.
@hyruleguardian, I remember Goldin actually changed the description during the auction maybe some of their people saw the discussion here on E4. PWCC however still put “1st ever printing for Charizard” in theirs
Completely. People need to stop putting so much emphasis on population when it comes to valuing cards, more often than not it means very little. When the first PSA 10 appeared it was only the 30th copy of the card to have been graded and 15 of the 30 were PSA 7 or lower (i.e. very unlikely to be PSA 10 candidates in the first place). 1/30 isn’t anything remotely special considering the card was likely printed in the tens of thousands.
The overall population of the card is now 40 with 2 PSA 10 grades and I would be very surprised if there aren’t at least 2 or 3 more PSA 10 candidates in PSA’s backlog right now.
That’s one of the reasons why I don’t think people should place too much emphasis on pop-reports. Let graded cards breath for a few years to see where the population lay. However, in consideration to that thought, I also imagine that some cards get graded BECAUSE of the low-pop chase to see if they can get that “perfect 10” on their own.
Eh. Graded collections are weird, but people are free to do with their money as they will. I just hope people have some sense of foresight and those who are willing to shelve out thousands of dollars for a newly graded item are in a good place where there’s no danger of financial fallout.
I hear the faint sound of a cash register and suddenly I’m not so sure anymore.
