Was any more information ever dug up about these?
I saw these listed on eBay a couple of years ago but didn’t invest as I assumed they were fake, however after seeing this thread yesterday, I decided to do a bit of research. The seller mentioned above still has 3 of them up for sale (for $129.99 now). Based on the other listings the seller has I’m now confident that these are legitimate cards (well, as legitimate as glossy cards with holes in them can get), so I’ve made them an offer - it would be nice to get my hands on the Pichu.
The seller has this listing, which shows that the primary purpose of the hole was to attach the card to a mounted e-Reader:
It’s obvious that they mimic the E3 2002 demo cards, but the fact that they have the regular English back and not the new Japanese back makes me think they’re not from the same event, but were instead used to demo the e-Reader at event kiosks and possibly in video game shops around the time of the Game Boy Advance e-Reader launch. Unfortunately, I was unable to dig up any internet activity for these cards prior to January 2015 when this thread was created.
The card itself has an interesting history, as the 2002 E3 convention (22-24 May) made these cards available in English 4 months before the Expedition Base Set was released (15 September). As we know, these E3 cards had the new Japanese back, but the final release had the English back. Based on the fact that these glossy cards also have the English back, I can only assume that these were produced much nearer to the launch of the Expedition Base Set than to the E3 convention itself.
Edit: Searching on Google Images for “Nintendo e-reader kiosk” revealed an image on this webiste, which has the manhole card attached to the device in the same way (it can be seen just above the d-pad):
