koala
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Updated by Pokémon for the calendar year March 2023 - March 2024:
Compared to last year:
- March 2022 - March 2023 saw a production of 9.7 billion cards, totalling to 52.9 billion
- This year eclipsed that record at 11.9 billion cards
- Simplified Chinese held a longer period of releases than the previous year, having started in October 2022 (and is still catching up in SWSH this year)
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11.9 billion is a lot of cards. Even with bulk and energy cards, there is still a ton of chase cards to go around.
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Those printers have no chill, insane numbers.
Another friendly reminder to stay away from modern sealed as an investment.
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bk2021
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@pokecollectoramy lol
It has to be JP and CHI right? JP singles are nowhere near SWSH prices which would make it seem like it. Chinese is a huge market too and they would have to have a minimum print run there.
Not sure why ENG would print some more when SV sales have been slow.
koala
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No matter how slow, English as the global tcg language is always the most printed
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Nice to see that they finally corrected the number of printed languages (in the last years the number was one too low respectively)
Remembering:
Some TCG sales history data from the past fiscal years:
2022/2022 - 43.2 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2022)
2020/2021 - 34.1 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2021)
2019/2020 - 30.4 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2020)
2019 - 28.8 billion cards - (as of the end of September 2019)
2018/2019 - 27.2 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2019)
2017/2018 - 25.7 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2018)
2016/2017 - 23.6 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2017)
2015/2016 seems not to be present
2014/2015 - 21.5 billion cards - (as of the end of March 2015)
So around a decade later there has been an additional 43b cards produced (since March 2015, anyway). 
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Interesting data.
I know a Belgian factory is producing French cards again, although booster boxes only (other products are still printed in the USA). I don’t know if other languages are produced there as well but it’s likely.
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Lets assume the 11.9B were all sets with alt arts in them. Let’s assume 50% of the print is English. Let’s say an alt art is 1 in every 3 booster boxes. That’s 1 alt in every (36 packs3 Booster boxes 10 cards per pack)= 1080 Cards.
6B/ 1080= 5.55M English alt arts.
60 swsh alt art ~100K copies of each alt art.
15K Umbreon VMax PSA pop report, I think that sounds about right. Any thoughts?
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I have heard estimates of 10%-20% of all Umbreon VMAX AA are in plastic prison, so those numbers you provided are probably in the ballpark.
100k is a very large quantity of a single card.
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Some recent promos (Van Gogh Pikachu & Poké Post), a German Silver Tempest print run and some recent German Scarlet & Violet sets were also printed there.
I think comparing it to the rarity of a Fossil unlimited Holo might be pretty close. More rare than a base set holo but about the same rarity as a fossil unlimited holo
Nice, the ‘Number of languages to date’ with 15 is finally correct. In previous years it was always too low. I reported it once one or two years ago, so perhaps they listened, haha. 
Greetz,
Quuador
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What the difference between 9 and 15? Is it that Pokemon currently prints 9 languages, but discontinued 6 others that they previously printed?
Exactly. Dutch, Polish, and Russian are no longer printed but were at one point.
There are 12 languages currently being printed
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Wait so it’s 9 or 12?
Now I understand the feeding frenzy on those Russian/Polish cards a month ago.
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It’s 12 currently being printed.
Japanese, Korean, Thai, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Indonesian.
English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish
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Box sets like Jirachi v with the rare swsh299 were made/produced in Belgium/netherlands.
Also few new sets like paradox rift have new booster box cases with printed in Belgium/netherlands on them.
bk2021
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The number of countries has also gone up from 89 to 93 and 2 years ago it was 77.
The majority of them do not get their own languages unlike Chinese, but I do wonder what markets Pokemon is suddenly going into.
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