What's your best guess for quantity of eeveelution Play promos?

[zheruiliang]

Hi there! Wish you all had a good day! I’m super interested in digging the release number of old pokemon promo cards. What would be your best guess for the release number of the following cards:

1. Play! P
   |022/PLAY|Vaporeon Star|Water|Earn 10,000 EXP Points|
   |023/PLAY|Jolteon Star|Lightning|Earn 20,000 EXP Points|
   |024/PLAY|Flareon Star|Fire|Earn 30,000 EXP Points|
   |025/PLAY|Espeon Star|Psychic|Earn 40,000 EXP Points|
   |026/PLAY|Umbreon Star|Darkness|Earn 70,000 EXP Points|
2. L-P
   |053/L-P|Espeon|Psychic|Pokémon Daisuki Club Special Rank prize|
   |054/L-P|Umbreon|Darkness|Pokémon Daisuki Club Special Rank prize|

[caughtatpoint]

Pure guesswork, and I’d allow a big margin each way, but for the gold stars:
Vaporeon: ~6000
Jolteon: ~3000
Flareon: ~1500
Espeon: ~600
Umbreon: ~300

Primes: 850

Although to be honest some of those numbers just feel off; I’d be surprised if there’s that big a drop off from Jolteon to Flareon, and then Flareon to Espeon.

I will say that I think there are more out there than people think (I’ve heard people say <100 copies for Umbreon, which I think is way too low).

Primes I’m really not sure at all.

[casual]

Curious why you think there are more out there than generally assumed? Does it make sense for cards this rare that only ~10% would be graded?

[caughtatpoint]

I tried to compare availability to other cards that we have a better of numbers for, such as Lottery promos, Tropical Wind, Unikarp etc., while keeping in mind the point requirements ^[1]. Vaporeon especially feels pretty available, even more than the WCP version.

As for 10% being graded, I agree that feels low, but I kept picturing Japanese binders with multiple copies (I realise that’s still a small number, but bias is at PLAY here).

Also it might be projection but I think generally people underestimate how many raw copies will exist. Consider that there are extremely few low grades. FWIW 99 Wind and Unikarp have roughly similar percentages (10-20%) graded from best distribution guesses.

---

1. Clearly that is flawed: it’s likely there was a sharp drop-off point somewhere (I’d speculate towards the top, but we can’t say), that means the next card would be disproportionately rarer than the points total would suggest. For example, did most people who got the Vaporeon also get Jolteon? Or Did most people fall off then? ↩︎

[casual]

That makes sense. I think the counterpoint Ill offer is that for the higher point value cards, Espeon/ Umbreon Gold Star, or Daisuki Eevees or the Master Scroll, obtaining one was no accident. You wouldnt stumble into ownership of those cards, youd have to have a clear understanding of the effort required to even be close to obtaining one.

They were also released at a time when their value was in the hundreds of dollars, so I would imagine thats why the conditions of them tend to be better too. People had been using sleeves and such for a long time.

[caughtatpoint]

@casual

youd have to have a clear understanding of the effort required to even be close to obtaining one.

This is a good point. The average age of recipient was probably higher than TMB/karp as well.

My initial reaction to my estimates was that they felt high, but I try and err on the side of more rather than less. Ultimately when there are so few copies even a small number can change availability by a big percentage.

[expedition]

Just from collecting PLAY promos and searching for Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon on a near daily basis I definitely feel like there is a stronger drop off from Jolteon to Flareon (compared to Vaporeon > Jolteon).

Vaporeon and Jolteon feel reasonably available on the Japanese marketplaces, but Flareon copies show themselves about as often as Espeons, maybe a tad more.

For everyones convience here the total PSA population of the goldstars:

Points required:
Vaporeon 10,000
Jolteon 20,000
Flareon 30,000
Espeon 40,000
Umbreon 70,000

Total graded (by PSA) population ‘corrected’ for points:
Vaporeon 241
Jolteon 356
Flareon 291
Espeon 236
Umbreon 252

Jolteon definitely seems overrepresented, this could be due to the 20,000 point mark also being the threshold for ex member status, which gave some additional benefits. I think based on the point system casual but diligent players could attain Jolteon without much trouble, in a reasonable timeframe (1 year of weekly attendence of events). This is about where I expect the dropoff to increase rapidly.

We also have to keep in mind that as said above, the higher tier cards were awarded to players who were more likely to look after them, and the higher prices means there is more incentive to grade than the lower tiered cards, and/or more likely to get them into circulation.

So my best guess (and it is a complete shot in the dark):
4000 Vaporeon (6,0% graded)
2500 Jolteon (7,1% graded)
1000 Flareon (9,7% graded)
450 Espeon (13,1% graded)
250 Umbreon (14,4% graded)

[Dyl]

Wouldn’t a much larger proportion of the Umbreon and Espeon play promos be graded given their market value? I find it hard to believe that anything less than 30% of the Umbreon population is graded. These higher-end play promos are simply worth too much for the average person to leave in a binder. There are sure to be exceptions, and many copies are likely lost/hidden from the social media daylight in Japan.

Edit: Also helpful to note that the PSA/BGS/CGC Pop Reports will be inflated/inaccurate due to resubmissions.

[zorloth]

The real question is: how much were these worth back when they came out? Because if these have always been highly valuable, then I’d be inclined to agree. But otherwise, there are probably many copies out there in the possession of people who don’t realize that they’re valuable.

[eeveeteam]

I had a friend who bought an Espeon for $400 in 2012 or so.

[manumalin]

Biased opinion owning those cards. I tend to think that the population of Umbreon/Espeon is not that large. The PSA pop 10 for Umbreon for example has not increased in a while (I think the last was a 4 cert) you would think that if there was hundreds more in the wild at least 1 or 2 owner would have realized the value by now.

[Dyl]

I think the real question is about current location more than historical value.

It could be that 90% of the North American/European copies are graded but only 10% of the Japanese copies are graded. If the majority of the population is still in Japan, then it would be reasonable to suggest that a low proportion of the population is graded.

I just have a tough time believing that the Umbreon population is much higher than 100-150 given the number of points necessary to redeem it.

[caughtatpoint]

According to the website Pokemetrics, there have been 11 Umbreon and 16 Espeon graded within the last year. It’s worth mentioning that grading in Japan (where they were actually given out) was not popular until relatively recently. Even with that starting to change, I’d speculate there is a lingering effect where a good number of people still just want them in binders. I don’t think it should be hard to believe that a good majority of them are still raw (or sealed, which is also a preference of some) only 18 years after their initial release.

[zorloth]

Yeah, I think people generally overestimate the % of print run that has been graded. One example that illustrates this pretty well are the PokeCard contest cards. Each had a print run of 5250, yet only ~125 copies of each have been graded (2% of the print run).

I’d imagine that more than 2% of the Umbreon/Espeon print run has been graded, but the % could still easily be in the single or low-double digits. @expedition’s guesses of 13-14% sound pretty plausible.

[casual]

Wow, i wonder if we could find the dates those were graded. I’m pretty sure one of the larger collectors in the hobby tried psa twice and then moved them to bgs for bgs 9 and 9.5s. (They had a handful of each)

Exciting to see that new Espeon 10 though!

I’ll eventually put together info about the gold stars into a new thread when i have some time. Maybe in the next few months, will be a nice resource.

[casual]

Oh yeah and if someone wants to dig through pokegym, i remember seeing sales for Umbreon at 1k and espeon at 500 in posts from late 2008.
So just about a year after release.

Unless there was lots of supply for that first month on release in early/mid 2007, i dont think people ever just “picked one up”