interesting. I recall seeing a ebay listing for a pipplup in like 2012 for $200 or $300 I forget. I had to learn about it through forums or something I forget how the heck I knew about it. But I thought “oh my, that is expensive!”. I had no idea how rare they were back then.
So curious if you can verify or deny your version of turtwig. These are cards I gave up on, so I’m shocked to see someone have all three! You are living my dream if they are truly real, which I do hope they are. But how can we be sure? I dunno man. I dunno.
I know I’m not Matt, but I believe it comes down to the angle and lighting of the photo.
Here’s the Worthpoint edit. I’d be really curious to know which eBay listing(s) these images came from as— HumanForScale only sold the Munchlax and Piplup. The same cards appear in the photos used by Pokumon. This particular photo seems to have surfaced around 2021:
Interestingly though the Turtwig photo comes from an auction in 2019. The photo below, which can be found from a blog in 2025, doesn’t use the Piplup or Munchlax from the auction in its edit (for whatever reason).
BUT— in that same three card lot from 2019, Piplup also appears rainbow and shiny. Which leads me to believe it’s just the way the Turtwig and Piplup were photographed for the eBay listing.
There are also these unofficial LPPCollecting-stamped Pikachus that @Quuador has already expounded on in this Reddit thread and probably in this forum too.
Minor note; but of those three you mentioned, Pre-release and STAFF promos are official TPCi releases, whereas the Collector’s Charizard was an unofficially stamped card.
Other unofficially stamped cards include the LPPCollecting stamped cards mentioned by @bbobrob above (there are three more nowadays btw.. I can’t keep up with them lol..), and there are more unofficially stamped cards, like the Y2K ones (Base Set Pikachu and Base Set Energy cards); Christmas Boyscout ones (Base Set Pikachu and Jungle Jigglypuff); French Vernot 2018 (French SM109; SM112; and SM114 Ash’s Pikachu promos); etc. etc.
Honestly it’s the perfect example of something sitting right on the line of real vs not. It was produced under the correct process and handed out at an official sanctioned event, the one thing that ultimately splits the difference is that it was produced in a bottom-up way (ie. initiated by someone outside the company) and TPCI actively rejected the card afterwards.
So it depends on what makes a card “real”: process/distribution or company acknowledgement. As a hypothetical, imagine if TPCI came out and claimed all Dragon Majesty Charizards are not official- should we accept that they are all unofficial cards despite them being printed in the correct factory and the fact you can just pull one from a pack? Not a perfect analogy but it gets the point across.
this is information I was not thus privvy to. I had assumed that since it was given at a meeting of distributors, that it would have to have come from TPC(i)? themselves. But I wasn’t aware that there was any official decline for making/distributing these cards. If so, who made them? I now have more questions, than answers.
@Piplupgirl you have shattered an amazing realization to me. So I totally applaud you for bringing this up. Do you have the whole 2019 aution listing image? I want to know if the munchlax was ALSO rainbowy or gold. Because there is a high chance that the gold ones would have been made at a later date, since the 2021 images are gold, and the rainbowy ones are from 2019.
Ultimately, where does the knowledge from these cards existing originate from? I’d never bothered to scrutinize it before to this degree.
I was referring to COLLECTOR Charizard. But my understanding of the distributor promos is that they are kind of similar in that they were not just something organically stamped and given out but rather that a small group of people with some kind of connection or relation to TPCI did kind of a handshake deal to produce these for themselves.
That is my current understanding at least. This is second-hand information. I think the lack of any official documentation or information about why these exist is also pretty telling. Whether or not they are “real” is probably a matter of opinion. I think where I personally fall on the matter is that sometimes it doesn’t matter if something is actually “real”, what’s more important is that they take on this aura of mystery/lore and a story and ultimately that’s what people should value. Same for COLLECTOR Charizard. Same for other strange stamped cards. Will probably be true to some degree with respect the the Akabane prototypes. etc
I do have photos of the 2019 listings, and can confirm that Snorlax was gold in appearance.
I am currently writing a more thorough report on the origin of these cards. However, in short:
Murmurings of its existence date back to December 2007.
The cards surfaced on a private market by two sellers in 2011 claiming only 6 of each existed.
The same cards later surfaced on eBay
A photograph of any of the cards outside an eBay listing did not exist until 2012.
These cards were confirmed official by Dave Schwimmer who said that they were given to TPCi distribution partners, but he would not comment on the amount printed.
and thanks for the info you have. It does seem to just be a big shrug and “idunnolul” situation. Fun nonetheless. Half the fun is uncovering the truth. Prerelease raichu is also like that. So many fakes that I couldn’t honestly trust it. But the story about it is so much fun.
For these cards, I had wanted it ever since2012, and now I feel like its a bit of a dead end.
and thank you piplupgirl for your short synopsis. Extremely helpful! I can only guess why you know about these cards.
Now, I know nothing about these particular cards, but I have handled countless stamped worlds promos and staff promos from around the same time period. There are different periods of time when TPCi was using different types of foil. All can look similar in pictures, but the different foils reflect light differently. For example, worlds promos in 2008 used a bronzy-gold foil that reflects rainbow in certain light (similar to above). 2009 worlds promos use a very shiny gold that doesn’t reflect rainbow at all. Staff stamps used very shiny foil up starting sometime in mid-DP era and switched again sometime around HGSS. As far as I have observed, they switched between less lustrous foils from then on and never used anything as shiny as what was used in 2009 again.
Again, I don’t know about these cards specifically, but it was not at all uncommon for distinctly different types of foil to be used for cards with similar stamps during this time period.
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some questionable glove behaviour.