Trophy Card Q&A

General
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1

It’s about time that I asked these questions.

**From Bulbapedia**
Champions FestivalChampions Festival [Staff]Champions Festival [Top Thirty-Two]
Champions Festival [Top Sixteen]
Champions Festival [Quarter Finalist]
Champions Festival [Semi-Finalist]
Champions Festival [Finalist]
Champions Festival [Champion]
************

My confusion starts with something like a Finalist card.
1- Is a “Finalist” card just a another name for 2nd place?
2- Is it only given to the 2nd place player… kind of making it just as “rare” as a “Champion” card? (1st place doesn’t get a copy of that card and every other previous card…correct?)
3- Would a Top Thirty-Two card be awarded to only players who placed #17-32, making it have 16 available copies?
4- How many events are there where someone would get a trophy card? So, a Champion card, although awarded to only one person, would be awarded to several people at different events making there be more than 1 available?
5- When did the name “Champion” appear on trophy cards as opposed to something like “1st place”…or was that not ever the case?
6- If you had to guess, how many Staff cards are given out at a worlds event?7- If you had to guess, how many no rank “Champions Festival” cards are produced and given out to people at worlds?
8 - Does everyone who goes to Worlds get a Champions Festival pack of cards (Champions Festival + other language Champions Festival cards)? If not, how much does that pack cost at worlds? If it is free, how much does it cost for a spectator to get into worlds?

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2

Finalist cards, as the name logically suggests, is given to all finalists (yes the winner is also a finalist otherwise how could he / she have won the tournament?)

3

For the stamped Champions Festival pop numbers:

The Champions Festival cards are only given out once a year for participating in the World Championships.

edit:Numbers bellow may be off and distribution apparently varies greatly year to year, with little consistency.

The ranked position stamped cards are given to all players who reach the corresponding ranks. Each player will actually receive 2 copies of each stamped card per rank, so someone who reaches the quarter-finals will receives 2 copies of top thirty-two, 2 of top sixteen and 2 Quarter-Finalist cards. The Winner will receive 2 of each card all the way up to Champion.

There’s 3 divisions at worlds (Junior, Senior and Masters) and each division will give out an equal amount of the appropriate stamped cards.

So this means total pop for each card, per year should be:

Champion: 6
Finalist: 12
Semi-Finalist: 24
Quarter-Finalist: 48
Top Sixteen: 96
Top Thirty-two: 192

Staff cards are given out staff who help run the event, idk how many

The sets of multi language unstamped cards are given out to all competitors who compete in the tournament. These Champion Festival sets are given out plastic wrapped expect for the first set of Champions Festival cards in 2013, which were given out in commemorative binders. 2017 and onwards contain 8 languages with the addition of Korean, all previous sets contain 7.

The same system applied for the other worlds prize cards including:
2011-12 Tropical Beach
2010 Tropical Tidal Wave
2009-07 Tropical Wind
2005-06 Tropical Tidal Wave
2004 Tropical Wind (I believe, have only seen STAFF stamped copies myself)

2004 was the first worlds held by Nintendo, so that would be my guess on when the “champion” stuff started.

@smpratte :

This is the case AFAIK and most of this info is lifted from Bulb. I’d love to know more about these tho if anyone has more info or if any of the things above are wrong.

edits: Take this with a pinch of salt and read the comments bellow from people bellow who more experienced and big brain than myself.

Made some corrections based on comments bellow.

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“Champion” stamped didn’t start until 2012. “Finalist” was the final stamp for all previous tournaments 2004-2011.

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5

@dizzylochs afaik as related to the two of each thing, some years may have been exceptions. Or maybe two of each for the whole run was the exception. From my small sample size I think they got two of their top placement only and one each for everything lower. I think nobody got two champions but I could be wrong.

Having bought a few Pika trophies along with the champions festivals runs that came with them, I can say that for the 2014 I purchased it came with only one of each festival all the way up to champ. The 2019 #3 I bought came with 2 of his actual placement (2 semifinalist), then 1 each out to top 32. The 2017 #4 I bought was also this same distribution. (2 of top placement 1 of rest).

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Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe at some point in the last few years VGC players also received cards except top 32 doubling the population counts for top 16 through Champion.

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@smpratte Thats good to know, more than happy to be able to remove the 2011 Tropical Beach Champion card from my check-list.

@gottaketchumall Oh interesting, I always just assumed the bulbapedia info as true. Wonder what the actual numbers are in that case, by the sounds of it they could be super inconsistent.

8

The amount distributed to winners varies almost every year. Some years the actual finalists got 1 of each card, some years just the card they placed and not the full run, some years 2 of the card they placed.

There is no consistent pattern, it’s entirely up to the feelings of the pokegods at each tournament. Regardless they are very rare.

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Do you think we could run into a “Prerelease Raichu” case but with 2020 Trophy cards that were possibly printed but will never be distributed due to the event being canceled?

**Also, Thank you for all the responses. That was very insightful!**

11

In all seriousness though, it really depends on when the trophy cards are printed.

If they haven’t been printed yet then there’s no chance.
If they have been printed ahead of schedule then, Pkonno never says never!

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