I am a Snorlax collector and have been looking for a gradeable copy of this card for forever, I can’t seem to find even semi-minty copies after almost a whole year of checking japanese marketplaces and even being in Japan physically for the hunt. I know this card comes as a promo insert with a CoroCoro Ichiban! magazine March 2013 copy and have even tried obtaining sealed copies of this magazine to no avail 
Why is this card so hard to find in a decent condition?
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Welcome to the forums @GetKnoobed. Super lovely to have you here although in frustrated spirits given your question. I also want to say that you are not alone. I have been dumbfounded trying to find a copy of this promo card which does not look like it has seen things or been through the wash. Infact, one of the highs of my collecting this year is actually find a copy which is in decent shape (compared to others).
I also tried to do a bit of digging as to why the reason is since this is just a magazine insert for CoroCoro.
Following are my hypothesis, which may be wrong, but I am forming this based on what I tried to find
- This is the first CoroCoro Ichiban! magazine to feature a Pokemon promo card I believe. I did not find another earlier release with Pokemon insert. Is it possible that they were not aware of supplementing Pokemon cards for this magazine in a good way? I am also not sure if there were other cards from other franchises supplemented before or not.
- CoroCoro Ichiban! was a magazine meant for lower grades of elementary school. So really young children who do not know or care about card handling.
- CoroCoro Ichiban! is a bit different than standard CoroCoro Magazine. Smaller size like a book but the page finish was not glossy. This point is only relevant because I feel the magazine and inserts are easier to deteriorate in long storage.
- The Snorlax 207/BW-P was also released as a regular set card. Maybe people could not differentiate between the promo and regular copy and all cards were just handled poorly?
Again, these are just assumptions and not truth. We have other more knowledgeable Snorlax collectors on the forum who may have much better insight.
I wish you success in finding the card in a condition you can be happy with for your collection.
Cheers!
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Thank you for the response and the wishes! I have been a long time lurker and decided to see if any other Snorlax collector has ran into the same problem as me haha.
I didn’t know this was the first CoroCoro Ichiban! magazine to feature a Pokemon promo card though, that is a very interesting (if it is true).
I have a few beat up copies of this card and would agree that it is difficult to differentiate from the original set cards (which I also have in my collection) since its differentiating holo is usually quite faded and I have seen quite a few mis-listed copies on Japanese marketplace sites.
Also congratulations for coming across a copy in decent shape! My ultimate goal is to collect one of each Japanese Snorlax Pokemon TCG cards/ Snorlax cameos in a PSA 10 and this is one of those cards that would probably be my biggest hurdle (since there are no gem mint copies yet) hence this post 
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@rabby250 has complained about the suffering of trying to get recent Corocoro promos in good condition, so I can easily see this being a consistent issue ever since their very first promo.
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Snorlax was the first to feature the magazine’s logo. The very, very first promo to come inside Ichiban was 076/PCG-P Ho-Oh ex in Ichiban Volume 2.
(Yeah this is one of those tables Rabby made and slacked on updating. lol)
And I don’t really remember how Snorlax was packed, but let me give you an example of how bad CoroCoro packaging could be.
See that yellow plastic thing on the right?
It was packed with the card without any protection, and pressed hard against the card when bookstores piled up the magazines.
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Bring pack peeled cards!
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The Snorlax 207/BW-P was distributed in a paper sealed sleeve like many of the Japanese promos that came in the Pokemon Trainer magazines. There was also another promo card that came with this volume of CoroCoro Ichiban! but I can’t remember what the series was called and whether the two cards were packaged together in the same sleeve or if there was a paper divider between the two. (I will see if I can find the paper sleeve, I believe I kept it).
This is also a card I tried to track down in gem mint condition for my Japanese Plasma Gale Collection, though it would be a nice addition. Unfortunately, I also had no luck and even after opening a sealed copy of the card (that took some time to find) it came out damaged straight from the sleeve. It was mainly the corners and edges that stood out straight away, showing whitening already present. I thought the card looked like a PSA 8 at best and put it away in a box to be graded one day (one day). At the time I believe the top grade was also a psa 8 (however I can see there is a 9 copy now). I feel @mrbubbles first proposed reason for the damage due to the supplementation of the cards for this magazine might have contributed too (but i can’t remember the other car being damaged to the same extent) and/or perhaps the damage took place in transit between the printer and publisher, the last thought I have was that the holo finish might have been more fragile than other pints, but we have seen this finish before so I feel this might be less likely the cause. So, I feel most copies are probably damaged even straight from the sleeve and just got worse due to the other reasons mentioned by @mrbubbles .
If I find the card and paper sleeve i will post photos. All the Best with your search op.
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