The 30th anniversary? A significant decrease of interest in Japanese? Or do you think this is something gone forever?
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It is weird how it just stopped being a thing. The exclusive promos were some of my favorite modern items to collect
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Definitely not gone forever, it’s not like we didn’t have one in 5+ years. The interest in Japanese cards definitely doesn’t impact whether TPC does exclusive promos or not as Japanese cards are not meant to be sold outside of Japan anyway. Any stuff for the 30th anniversary they’ll probably release internationally though. The next Japanese exclusive promos, and I’m certain we’ll get new ones, will probably be some kind of collab like the Yu Nagaba or Japan Post promos again would be my assumption. Maybe if they decide to open a new Pokémon Center in Japan, we’ll also get a new promo that way, but I think some new collab is more likely.
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Yeah I just started collecting over a year ago and the market and lack of exclusive promos has been pretty soul sucking. Just being patient and hoping for some new ones in the next few years.
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Hopefully there is something in the near future. I’d love for a crossover again, maybe Wallace and Gromit in 2027 with their upcoming special project collab.
I speculate it’s a reaction to scalping behavior. Why create more exclusive products, when booster boxes are out of control?
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That’s why I was questioning if the market needs to cool down for it to happen. It just creates bad publicity with people fighting over them.
- If the tcg in Japan is losing popularity i.e. sales going down
- Grand openings for new Pokémon Centers in Japan (not reopening, refurbishing)
- Pokémon collaboration with Japanese-only cultural events
Times have changed, exclusive promos help drive interest in certain languages and Japan is already so popular without them. They might have figured a combination of the following to focus exclusive promos elsewhere:
- Online reseller targets exclusive JP promos for high resale value → TPC stops releasing them in Japanese
- Increasing demand for JP product is international → TPC tries to cultivate that demand but for international languages
- Japan gets more JP product
- International demand shifts toward non-JP languages for exclusive product
- Mainland China and TW/HK have higher growth potential than Japan → a lot of exclusive promos have moved there
It’s becoming more likely that if something is available in JP, it will be available in other languages also. The reverse hasn’t applied for years (25th anniversary promos, UPC Charizard VMAX, SAR Victini ex, etc)
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Sounds like it’s gonna be a while then!
I can only imagine the insanity if they released new poncho full arts around the 30th anniversary. We’d need a Wikipedia link detailing the casualties.
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Hopefully they release them again when the hobby is cleansed. Id wait until at least 2095 to be sure
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but ill be dead by then 
I think if Pokémon somehow became significantly less popular than it is today, say 2010-2016 popularity levels, we would see them return. Japan would likely prioritize their own country first in that situation.
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I think they are actually still releasing Japanese exclusive promos. For example Meowth 192 SV-P that was in November 2024 (at least as it stands at the moment but who knows if a Chinese print will happen).
It’s just that nowadays we can never be sure that a print won’t happen in other languages until a certain period of time passed.
I agree with what others said that not releasing a lot of Japanese exclusive promos might be a reaction to the scalping issues plus the fact that Japanese Pokémon cards are so popular now that they might think that they don’t depend on releasing exclusive promos anymore to raise popularity (at least not as many as they used to).
But it would suprise me if we wouldn’t get any Japanese exclusive promos for the 30th anniversary.
Meowth and Paldean Wooper are in the Korean version of Generations Deck special battle set
The only JP exclusive promo this year other than the ones just announced today, is the BOSS coffee Team Rocket’s Giovanni promo
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Oh I missed that Korean release of meowth.
But the point still stands that nowadays we can never be sure that a print won’t happen in other languages until a certain period of time passed.
Versions of other parts of Asia generally announce theirs very close to the first official reveal of certain cards. The timeline and context is occasionally telling
e.g. Prismatic Evolutions ETB Eevee promo was available in Korean, Traditional Chinese, Thai and Indonesian alongside their version of Terastal Festival ex. Japan did not announce theirs and with SV era closing we can be sure it’s not getting one
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