I heard these are called VS Cards, but most searches just give me the actual VS TCG Japanese set. Any more info on these? It doesn’t look like the regular Movie cards. Thanks!
Someone will probably come directly behind me with better info but I found some better pictures. They’re from Top and apparently came from a gum promo. I haven’t looked too much to know exactly what year they’re from, but searching something like トップのガムキングドラ or トップのガムポケモン should probably get you a lot closer. Here’s also some related links I found
jmty.jp/hyogo/coop-buy/article-el8zg
www.mercari.com/jp/items/m71626254563/
I am learning more! The promo deal was called GBA, I’m assuming because it was released in the time period of GBA games. Searching トップのガムGBAポケモン lands a ton of results. They came in these cardboard sleeves with gum and I’m presuming two(?) cards. I’m still not sure on the year though lol. Assuming around the release of ruby and sapphire because of the starters on the packs
3 Likes
Confirmed with @nish - “Top” cards are also listed as “Top Sun” cards from time to time on Ebay. A lot of Japanese sellers still sell them so you can find a good amount on Japanese sites like Yahoo Japan as well as the others.
2 Likes
Here is a thread with more info about these: www.elitefourum.com/t/wip-japanese-top-seika-pokemon-gum-card-checklist-2002/21729/1
In short however, these are produced by Top, which is the new company name of the formally known Topsun. These cards in particular are known as Top Seika cards, although most sellers use different terms when selling them.
According to the link above by @pichufan, they’re produced between 2002 and 2007. Not sure what sets those Kingdra cards are from, but there have been released cards in November 2002; May 2004; March 2005; as well as cards both before and after those mentioned dates.
Greetz,
Quuador
2 Likes
As @quuador mentioned the red-bordered ones are known as Pokémon GBA Gum Cards (ポケモンＧＢＡカードガム) and were distributed in 4 waves between early-mid 2002 and March 2005. I have a document up on GitHub which goes into a bit of detail about these and includes pictures of most of them: github.com/PokeTCG/research/blob/master/GumCards_GBA.md. The cards are numbered by their regional Pokédex numbers, so your Kingdra here is one of the cards I didn’t know about at the time I wrote that but I knew it was a Kingdra from its number.
There were three other sets I know some information about, the white-bordered ones are Pokémon GBA 3D Cards (ポケモン GBA 3Dカードガム), the green-bordered ones are Pokémon AG Cards (ポケモン AG カードガム) and the blue-bordered ones are Pokémon DP Cards (ポケモン DP カードガム).
I know very little about the other sets though. I know that some artwork is duplicated. It wouldn’t surprise me if those were distributed at the same time but from other products (the red ones are 100% from those packs of gum @nish shared an image of, but the others could have been from any of the other confectionary products Top Sekia produced).
There are 210 cards in the set but the numbering only goes up to 202 but 8 of the cards have alternative artwork which shares the same number. I finally tracked down the alternative artwork #201 from the set back in August which I’d been looking for since 2018:
https://instagram.com/p/CEr2aRKFcT_
There are several other variants I’ve seen which include a mix of gen 1, 2 and 3 Pokémon, including those silver/brown bordered cards you’ve shared here and a different silver-bordered card variant pictured below:
I have no information about those whatsoever.
4 Likes
@pichufan, @azulryu, @nish, @quuador,
Thank you for the help guys. They don’t seem to pop up on Ebay very often from what I see, glad they’re not that high on my ‘want list’. Impressive, however, that a gum was accompanied by unique artworks rather than simply movie screens or other reused artwork.
I need to get my hands on one and grade it 
.
Also impressive story with the box @pichufan, I would have chickened out and not have bought it if I were in your position.
2 Likes
I’d advise not buying cards like these from eBay. There are a load of sellers who list these as “VERY RARE” individual cards with buy-it-now prices of $19.99 each which is a complete rip off - and they’re honestly not that rare at all.
You’re much better going to Yahoo! Japan Auctions or Mercari and searching for something like “ポケモン カードガム” (Pokémon Gum Card) - there are loads of listings for 20+ cards for 400 JPY, etc. and often individual cards are between 50 and 100 JPY.
2 Likes
Does Yahoo Japan ship to Europe? I have never used it, but will try. I do occasionally travel to Korea so might at least get it shipped there. And as for Mercari, it is not supported in the UK 
.
not directly, but a middle man service like buyee or zenmarket will be able to.
1 Like
They generally don’t, but there are many Japanese proxy shipping services who buy the items for you for a small fee and then ship from their warehouses to you. I mainly use Buyee, but there are many out there which all do different things slightly better/worse. They can also combine multiple orders into one when they ship to you. You can search Yahoo Auctions & Mercari pretty effectively by copy+pasting the Japanese set and card names from Bulbapedia, as well as using this thread and google translate. The cards you’ve picked up so far look great btw.
Thanks to both of you! Will check the options 
. Does Buyee also work with JP sellers on Mercari?
Edit: I just realised mercari.com/jp ships to anywhere.
Yup, Buyee are partnered with them and is the easiest way to buy things from Mercari.jp