Was the Base Set or the Bandai Carddass Vending Series Part 1 released first?
I know the base set was released on October 20th, 1996.
But I can’t find a release date for Carddass P1. I believe it was released sometime between September and December 1996, but other than that I can’t find anything.
FWIW, I know that the “1995” Topsun cards were actually released in 1997 - they only get labeled 1995 by PSA because of the copyright date on them.
I did find an old thread that might help, but I’m not finding clear answers either.
Actually, this isn’t totally true. There is a difference between production date and release date.
Back in 1998 I was a partner in a large Japanese Poke buy…one that hit the USA market in 1999.
We did a lot of research on what to buy which meant talking to Media Factory, Bandai, and Topsun. It was never disputed by MF or Bandai that the first Pokemon card/sticker produced was by Topsun. It was assumed by us that that was the green and blue backs. Their production date was 1995 “for future release”…though there were many floating around prior to mass release.
Maybe Glenn can shed a little light in this cause he’s old like me;)
Now keep in mind this was 1998 so memory’s were fresh cause Pokemon was only 2-2 1/2 years old.
Wait… what?!
So you’re telling me that Topsun produced the blue/green back cards in 1995 - even though the Game Boy game wasn’t released until February 1996 - but then did not mass release these cards until March 1997?
That’s nuts! But I suppose it would explain the 1995 copyright date. I wonder though, would this also apply to the holographic Topsun cards? Those cards do not actually have a 1995 copyright date written on them, and their distribution occurred after the initial release of the blue/green backs; Topsun started distributing the holos into 1 in 40 packs beginning in June 1997, three months after they began distributing the blue/green backs in those packs (one pack included two cards and two pieces of gum, and packs were distributed in boxes of 20). I’m guessing we’ll probably never know for sure if the holographic cards were produced concurrently with the blue/green backs or if they were produced later on, despite being distributed together.
(source: pokeboon.com/collection/what-is-the-pokemon-topsun-card/))
And I wonder how many of the Topsun cards (if any) were “floating around” prior to the release of the other Pokemon cards in late 1996?
So, even if Topsun cards were in fact produced first (would love to have more definitive evidence for this but for now I’ll accept it as true) - which is very interesting in its own right - that makes things even more confusing in terms of trying to figure out which cards were actually released first.
Were the Topsun (“floating around”), Bandai, or Media Factory cards released first? The answer seems elusive. 
At least we can say this much - the official release date of the “1995” Topsun cards was in March 1997, the confirmed release date of the Media Factory cards (base set TCG) was October 20th, 1996, and the Bandai cards were released sometime in the year 1996.
Actually, it seems to have gotten more complicated as the years went by.
Edit: now that I think about it, the game boy game was produced prior to 1996 also.
Right, but the game boy games being produced in 1995 is something that would make perfect sense, given that they had a mass release in February 1996.
But it seems kind of strange that the Topsun cards would have been produced several months prior to the release of the first game boy games, yet were not released until about a year and a half later. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. But it certainly seems strange. What could explain something like that?
true but maybe the manga magazine came out before that so they created the cards because of the magazine and not the game and when the game came out turns out they needed to print more cards as they were so popular 
That would still contradict what I’ve read about the Topsun cards first being released (at least officially) in March 1997.
Another possible angle for the 1995 copyright thing with the Topsun cards is that they were simply using the copyright date of the year the Pokemon franchise was officially founded (which in fact was in 1995).
Heck, even the English Pokemon cards have a copyright of 1995 written on them (along with other years).
yeah maybe
when i just checked the bottom of my English card copyright is 1995 96 98 1999 on base set so maybe thats some of the dates they patented things to do with pokemon as theres no 97? so 1995 patented and printed some topsun cards 1996 patented the game and 1998 tcg was patented maybe something like that?
@hyruleguardian the link you provided from Pokeboon.com says everything you’re asking. The non number cards were released before 1997, the holo cards were released during the mass release, minus a few flavor options.
@cullers the article does talk about the non-numbered Topsun cards and how they were distributed prior to May 1997, but the article does not talk about any Topsun cards that were released prior to the year 1997.
^ You’re right, damn semantics.
This is interesting. Let’s forget production for a moment. Can someone order the sets by release dates?
and do order by production if someone nos that and then release date and maybe be able to see what set actually came first
what in heck is this - buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/v471344725
andf this - buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/g187961688
@pokemonsyndicate I have no idea. 
To add something to this thread though - the Media Factory (i.e. base set) cards have a copyright date of 1996 on them, and only 1996.
However, just like the Topsun cards, the Bandai (i.e. Carddass vending series part 1&2) cards have a copyright date of 1995 on them, and only 1995.
Beyond that, the only thing we can say for sure is that the Bandai cards were officially released in 1996, and the Topsun cards were officially released in 1997.
Right now, the only piece of evidence I see for the Topsun cards being first is based on a conversation Gary had 18 years ago… and frankly even at the time it doesn’t seem like Gary discovered anything particularly conclusive.
So until proven otherwise, I am going to say that the Bandai cards pre-date the Topsun cards.
Now, beyond that… Unfortunately it seems that no one is able to answer the question of whether or not the Bandai cards were released before or after the day of October 20th in the year 1996.
Isn’t there an old thread about this somewhere?
It’s fun to read this though.
Bandai seems to be the first distributor of alot of Japanese franchises in the older days.
Maybe @noodles will know the oldest pokemon cards or merchandise printed?
It was pretty conclusive at the time. You see, based on sports cards values we were looking for Pokemon “rookie” cards. It had something to do with licensing and production dates where we determined the green/blue back cards were first and like I said earlier, even media Factory concurred. Unfortunately there were just too few copies available to use them so we settled on a MF release which we could get 5000 of.