I wanted to hear your guys’ thoughts on the foreign trophy market. A few good handfuls of these cards have appeared since the SV era and I have been watching the market ever since.
As I look into these cards, what I gather from my research, the top two regions are Korea and China, which seem to have a longer tournament history than their newer counterparts Indonesia and Thailand. If there’s more regions that I’m missing let me know!
Do you guys feel like these cards have as much prestige as the English or Japanese market? Or, in other words, do they feel like they’re seconds or something that can rival the best?
If you like set cards, but don’t like foreign cards, does this sentiment carry over to trophies?
Do you feel like the shared artwork amongst Japan and the other regions detracts from the Japanese exclusivity or does it not matter?
I think if the trophies have unique art and are not just an extra stamp from and English or Japanese Victor card than I would say it’s an emerging market. Until then… buy if you like but I don’t see a huge collector base for it
I think it strikes a nice balance to help someone who maybe a completionist and on a budget. I think these are fine to have if you don’t mind inconsistencies in languages in your collection and also see them getting popular in the future if more people want a more affordable trophy card in their collection.
I assume by “top” you’re referring to volume of demands? While Korea indeed has a long tournament history, China in fact has the shortest tournament history of all Asian-language regions with first tournament held in 2023. Regions managed under the Pokémon Asia program all started releasing trophies since the 2021-22 seasons, and before then had early, non-trophy-giving seasons all the way back to 2019-20.
(Although ironically China got Victory Decoration from Sun & Moon which was never given out in Pokémon Asia regions as all regions entered SWSH before the first trophy-offering season. China was still in Sun & Moon when the first tournament was held, and thus had 1 tournament to offer Victory Decoration.)
Here’s a table of all trophies given out in the Pokémon Asia program before the current season for your reference:
As for your questions the answers really depend on people’s collection traits. Asian-language trophies have some of the rarest cards in the world such as the Chinese Victory Decoration mentioned above or Korean Victory Proof (SWSH; only given in one tournament as all other events were cancelled by COVID) if you’re only interested in the numbers.
However if you prioritize language over numbers like a lot of collectors would, you will save your money for say Japanese copies instead although they are much more common. For affecting Japanese exclusivity, these cards already have venues marking the exclusivity of each of them, so having different languages most likely won’t have any effect (and who knows, it might even attract collectors with sufficient budget to try getting all of them!)
Will just speak for myself but the main reasons for me wanting to get a foreign trophy would be:
Affinity to the language - I am highly interested in the Korean and Chinese ones based on heritage/family which are very personal reasons. Conversely interest is just not as high for Thai/Indonesian ones and that’s just that.
Drawn to the design - Personally really like the Victory symbols/proofs/decoration designs but my general sensing is it can be bit of a marmite for collectors.
Price point - Leads me to say that being cheaper relative to Japanese counterparts also plays a factor - anything else would be lying, though this will not be orders of magnitude cheaper, even more so for really rare cards such as the Korean Masked Royal or Mewtwo Hyper rare.
Personally I’ll be prepared to pay 4 to 5 figures if I saw the right Korean/Chinese card (actually starting to work out a deal for one) and I know of other East Asian and South-east Asian collectors who would do the same .
