Japanese only, I’m looking for the rarest &/or most expensive Zapdos Pokémon card & same for Starmie. I’ve looked on eBay but some of the rarest cards aren’t on there, let alone up for sale anywhere else (generally speaking).
So I’m curious, from you guys, which Zapdos & Starmie card is the rarest &/or most expensive? Whether it’s base, art academy, contests, doesn’t matter. I’d like to see pictures of whatever they are.
Thanks!
I’ve looked on eBay but some of the rarest cards aren’t on there, let alone up for sale anywhere else (generally speaking)
Yeah that’s why they’re rare lol. Welcome to the forum
It does not meet your criteria for Japanese, but is the rarest I can think of:
www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313821303041?hash=item4911351101:g:py8AAOSwywZh1i2w
Zapdos: no rarity version from base
Starmie: in the spirit of holo shifts from @qwachansey , dont you have a small Japanese shift starmie from neo revelations?
Edit: the starmie above this post lol
edit again: my zapdos is of course completely wrong, the one below this post is better.
Phone card / no rarity would be my guess. Gotta do your own research though.
Zapdos features in the artwork for two of the 2010 Design Contest winning cards, 2nd Grade and 4th Grade:
Those have a distribution of 100 or 200.
I’m just reiterating what others have said above such as TMB Phone card, No rarity, Design Contest etc. Here’s a picture of all my Zapdos cards.
Although not exceptionally expensive/rare the Melee Scramble set also contains a Zapdos and Starmie.
This doesn’t even exist lol
Yup. I think that phone card Zapdos is the one. I think it’ll take quite a bit of time to find one ungraded & in good condition, shit.
As far as Starmie, haven’t done full blown research yet but I did notice this Starmie, seems a lot more rarer (as far as people selling them anyway) than any of the other Starmie’s being sold. What do you guys think or know about this card?
I did mention this card in my post above which you may have missed. It is from this set of 16 cards. Melee! Pokémon Scramble × Pokémon Card Game.
Ah got it! I also thought a Starmie Topsun might be the one but I don’t think there’s a no number error version to that one. I appreciate the help!
I don’t think you understand lol. The TMB phone cards were given out at the 1999 TMB tournament for people who participated in side battles and filled out their stamp book. For every complete book they were given one of the three birds at random. If I recall correctly there were only 180? participants in the tournament so even if we double that to account for siblings or what have you you’re looking at maybe 500 if I had to take a guess. Even though the demand for the phone cards isn’t nearly as high as it is for the trophies or other participation cards like exeggutor or lucky stadium they’re still exceedingly rare
I understand that they’re rare lol. But I also know high end collectors, people who have MewTwo No. 1 & 2 Trainer, etc etc. For cards as rare as these, it’s about reaching out to individuals who do this as their primary work & deal with high end & rare cards. Even if you can’t afford them, you do enough digging around & you’ll find someone with almost any card out there. Now finding cards like these ungraded may be close to impossible, but, I’ve always got close. I want the Arceus 6th grade winner card, found 3 people with it ungraded. The raincoat Pikachu contest card, found 4 people with it ungraded. I found one with a Masters Scroll ungraded, etc.
Based on how frequently they’ve been appearing for sale in the past couple of years there’s a bit of a question mark now surrounding who was able to get these phone cards and how many cards were awarded. Whilst they are certainly rare, I don’t know if it can confidently be said that they were limited to participants or that only one was awarded at a time. These often appear for sale as a set of 3, for instance, and a seller last year claimed they got their set of 3 from the SSB tournament rather than the TMB tournament - which would make sense given their similar nature.
I believe @dreamtech was looking into these at some point and may be able to provide more insight.
On top of that - and not to take away from these in any way - it was quite common for some contests in Japan to award telephone cards to only a handful of people. I’m sure there is at least one very obscure officially-released telephone card out there which features a Zapdos in its artwork which will be rarer than this one - though what gives this one more of a link to the TCG is its design of course.
