I bought the card pictured below at my dealer’s table at the 1999 “NY” Magic Pro Tour in Secaucus, NJ because I am into Magic misprints and because Pokemon was becoming really popular. For a time back then I had a two-way mercantile trade going where I sold Magic in Japan and Japanese Pokemon in the US. No one I knew at that time had any idea about where the card came from, and for years I thought it was a one-off. In 2010 or so I found another specimen listed on eBay as a ‘double backed card.’ I corresponded with the seller, who had picked it up in a collection years before and also had no idea how many of these exist or how they were distributed. No Pokemon misprint indices I have seen picture or reference this card, though it seems likely it’s some kind of filler card. The picture is of the FRONT of the card. Does anyone know what this thing is?
I’m positive I’ve seen one of these within the last year and someone was talking about them. Hopefully someone else on the forum can give you a more definitive answer, but the first thing that came to mind is that this might be an error that was found in some early theme decks.
@garyis2000 Was it you, by chance, that had been talking about this one?
I’m also curious as to whether you and I possibly did business together back in the 1990s. I live in Japan, and regularly sold cases of Japanese Pokemon cards to a couple of dealers based in the New York/New Jersey era who were also heavily into MTG cards.
@japanime I was lower-level than the fellows you dealt with, I think - I had no wholesale connection, it was all retail. I’d go to a city, scout out a store route, and buy the max I could in each place each day till I left while trying to find/sell to Magic players and/or stores. Wish I had known you then! It would have kept my thing alive when the inevitable formal customs entry was required. The stuff wasn’t dutiable, but one trip I had enough in my luggage that I needed a formal entry and since all my receipts were in Japanese and I didn’t know in advance what information I would need, I had a devil of a time filling out the paperwork portions that wanted street addresses. I left a ton of stuff in Customs bond long enough that when I finally got it out, it was 25 pounds lighter thanks no doubt to airport worker thieves with children and all the prices had gone way down. Oh, and good luck getting an airline to make good on a “$1,000,000 customs bond,” it turns out.
But I digress…
Thanks to all who are helping me solve the mystery. Both “error card” and “test print” seem plausible. It’s definitely quite rare, but it’s really hard to have any way of knowing how rare. It’s impossible to determine, for example, whether the card recently mentioned on this forum was the same one the ebay seller had a few years ago. I didn’t record the guy’s handle, so I can’t see if he still has it. Guess I can go to the well and call a guy I know who was in Production at WotC back in the day. I’ve called him about a specific super-strange Magic thing twice since 98 but it somehow never occurred to me to ask him about Pokemon, probably because this was my only oddity and I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about Pokemon stuff and assumed someone else short of the source could answer the question.
…
After writing the paragraph above I started searching for references to Pokemon test prints and found a 2011 thread on the pokegym site that discussed them. The discussion mentioned three of them, one each in possession of a person and a store posting to the thread. Not sure the store (Professor Oak) isn’t the store I spoke to years ago, though. The individual (who opened the card from sealed product) also reported the possibly useful information that he remember opening the package and having this card “stick to the card revealed on the peel - open side.” I can’t envision this - I’ve only opened Japanese boosters, so I’m not familiar with this packaging, but it sounds like it must have been a starter or theme deck.
Any chance you can include a link to the PokeGym discussion here?
It makes it easier for people in the future who reference this page to find the information they are looking for.
Thanks for sharing your story, @magicmisprints! It’s too bad you apparently never made it to my store. We used to sell the Birthday Pikachu card — including calendar — for $25 at the time everyone else was selling it for $500!
I’m curious if your bad experience with customs was in Japan or in the United States. Because I seriously doubt that Japanese customs officers would keep any of your abandoned merchandise for themselves (or their children). I’d also be somewhat (though not completely) surprised if even the US customs officers behaved in such a matter.
This is a very interesting thread. I saw this card on ebay maybe less than year back. I think someone snagged it for 100usd. I passed on it because I thought it was a fake.
very informative thread. this place isn’t half bad lol
