Let’s not forget there were many people who argued that the winners were OBLIGED to sell their winning cards because they owed it to the community, and it was unfair for them to either keep them all or only sell a few of them.
The mental gymnastics and toxicity around the AA card release was unrivaled at the time.
Yeah it was a low point. The crazy thing is the cards weren’t even that expensive at the time. Art academy cards are just full of crazy. The comment after mine, case and point! 
My grail card is the Mame Akimaru Art Academy card. During my search for this card, I ran into a couple people who shared some helpful info about the card and its original artist.
Pokemon Art Academy is an illustration contest where players could create original illustrations, and the winners were awarded 100 copies of their own illustration on a card. There are discussions that some Art Academy cards have more than 100 copies, but I won’t get into that here. You can read about it here if you wish.
Mame Akimaru is the illustrator for the Space Pikachu card shown above. She is a bit superstitious. She had supposedly given a few of her cards away on the basis that you were a collector and weren’t going to sell it. One of the cards she had traded, was eventually sold. After it had sold, she got ill and she believed it was due to the selling of the card. So now, she is no longer selling or giving any away from what I’ve heard.
There are a few copies that’ve been shared on social media platforms. I’m not sure how many are out there, but it’s definitely much less than 100
The story for anyone wondering what this is: https://www.pokebeach.com/2019/05/this-charizard-aint-real-ya-sillies-dont-spend-900-on-it
Edit: Apparently there is more to this story than is published here. I hope to hear it!
This is the TPCi lawyer-approved story and not the full story that includes at least one employee being fired
I wanna know the rest of the story! 
Ah, 2 of those 7 are in my hands right now, one in my completed S-P collection and the other which I submitted as a spare and haven’t decided what to do with yet. Maybe I should try to trade it for an SM-P copy so that I can own both.
Speaking of Pal Pad, there’s actually another drama related to it in Korean:
https://pokemonkorea.co.kr/pkl2020_s2_card
The link above leads to the tournament details of 2019-20 Korean League Season 2, which was supposed to be held in February 2020 as the first SWSH regional tournament of organized play in South Korea. The tournament offers the following prizes:
Meowth VMAX and/or Rayquaza for trading in points earned from side events (Meowth V was already given out in separate events)
Pal Pad for advancing to top 16 and Victory Proof for reaching top 4
However we all know what happened in 2020, and season 2 was postponed indefinitely and eventually never occurred. The prize cards announced ended up in different fates:
Anyone who knows the full story of this card is unlikely to post it publicly, out of respect for the wishes and confidence of the people involved.
What I will say is that those who claim that this card is either “100% fake” or “100% real” are wrong. There are a lot of gray areas within Pokemon card production, many cards that are considered to be “real” have questionable backstories if you dig into it.
Thank you for this insight, I will respect the boundaries in place among those who know.
Although, my DMs are always open… 
You always have the most insightful responses! I’m a big fan of mirror holo JP promos and think these are trophy-esque type cards that don’t get enough love. I know Covid isn’t exactly the same as a bomb threat like Cynthia’s Feelings, but I think we’ll look back at it as an event that really limited the distribution of the S-P pad making it desirable
I still think it’s a really interesting factor, too. Not to be overlooked!
Great thread idea! 
As for some releases that didn’t went as originally planned:
Stamped French (and Italian) SM190 Detective Pikachu promos:
As I mentioned in the quote above, I eventually managed to find my French copy from an Italian seller. Funny and ironically enough, I bought my Italian stamped copy from a French seller. 
Unlimited edition Japanese World Championship Pack cards:
The five venues of which only two were continued due to bomb threats and were shortened, are the same as the ones of the Cynthia’s Feeling’s Battle Road 2008 promo that was already mentioned by @stagecoach in the main post.
Most of the other releases with some kind of drama that come to my mind have already been mentioned above (1st edition Feraligatr blister; COLLECTOR stamped Charizard; etc.).
Greetz,
Quuador
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.
Staff prerelease promo Charizard.
Was supposed to be distributed among all tournament organizers who hosted the prereleases.
However the European office of the Pokemon Company kept all Charizard staff card themselves and not a single organizer got one.
So we got the other 3 but no Charizard.
I still call it theft because they were supposed to be the reward for running such tournaments.
They should not be kept asided by employees (even if those were TPCI)
After a while they suddenly were given out at a Regionals (or simular) tournament to some staff.
While the people running the prerelease never got one.
The USA TO’s did got them, the EU TO’s didn’t.
My questions about this leaded (again) to a punishment of TPCI.
That’s their answer if they do something wrong, they shoot the messenger.
Nothing new.
This thread is actually a fantastic idea, and I hope others keep contributing in the way others have so far. These stories provide much needed insight and context for the stories around cards.
Pre-release raichu is a real card and its back story was twisted into a misinformation machine
That “misinformation” is partly due to every wotc employee having a different story. Regardless, it doesn’t really fit the thread because whichever narrative you believe, it was never officially released.
@rainbowgym That was a crazy time! To make anyone outside of the US feel slightly better, many stores here didn’t receive charizard. The decision was pretty random. I don’t know why they didn’t just give every store worldwide one of each pokemon. Tbf in their defense, no one really cared about prerelease cards until evolutions.
Surprised no one has brought up the legendary beasts gold stars yet.
@smpratte They way they were distributed could result in not getting a Charizard. in each energycardbox a prerelease staff was manual inserted. When you did run a large prerelease your options to receive a Charizard was bigger (unless they didn’t insert them like what happened in Europe)
So there is an option USA stores didn’t get it because they “only” did run prereleases for 20 or 30 players. But those like me who did run them for over 100 players should at least had 1 of each. For each 10 players you received an energybox with 1 of the 4 staff inserted.
I think I had 7 gyarados, 4 mewtwo and 4 machamp staff if I remember correct. Same happened with all larger organizers I was in contact with.
People did collect them, not as populair as now but for sure we did.
