Time for more drama! In the next story, let’s check out how fan speculation can screw up distribution counts even when all the distribution events went well according to plan.
114/S-P F Espeon VMAX Alternate Art - Traditional Chinese
In our previous guide to Eeveelution VMAX promos, we mentioned that the Eeveelution VMAX promos were given out as tournament prizes in Southeast Asian regions:
In Taiwan, the first 3 Eeveelution VMAX promos were given out in tournaments held by Pokémon TCG Gyms (authorized local game shops) across Taiwan, and around 325 copies of each Eeveelution were given out. Two months after the tournaments, Battle for Espeon VMAX was announced as a side event of Regional League in Taipei.
If you look closely at the tournament rules, you would notice that the event is a series of 18 tournaments held back-to-back within 2 days, and from the scale of the tournaments at most 15 copies can be given out in each tournament. This means that the side event itself can give out 270 copies, which is not far from the 325 copies given out for other Eeveelutions, therefore implying that the side event might be the only event in Taiwan giving out Espeon VMAX.
However, the difference of event formats - multiple tournaments held in local shops VS one-off event in a Regional tournament - caused some speculations among players and collectors, most of whom starting to assume that the Espeon VMAX side event is just a premiere of a tournament series, and won’t be the only chance to get a copy. This false assumption combined with the fact that Taiwan was still threatened by COVID at the time of the tournament had many participants decided to give up their chance and stay safe, since they can just try to get one later. Eventually only 85 copies were given out in the event, which is less than one third of the total copies allocated.
And yes, turned out that the event was the only distribution event in Taiwan planned for the card, and no more events were held to give out the remaining or more copies. When players and collectors finally realized this, they started to pay more in hopes of finding one, and the market price went up to as much as 2.4x the price when the cards were just given out. Although 86 more copies were given out when the event started in Hong Kong, a total number of 171 still made Espeon VMAX by far the rarest among all Eeveelution VMAXes in Traditional Chinese.
On the other hand…
073/S-P T Espeon VMAX Alternate Art - Thai
Listed in official card database and revealed to public but never released (yes, they did it again). Officials just won’t stop teasing collectors.