almost never see talk about the victory cups, especially in comparison to victory medals etc. managed to pick up these 3 for £150; why are these cards so overlooked?
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Nice find, trophy cards being niche and all I suppose.
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They’re modern cards
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true
Without looking it up, can you tell me when and why these cards were awarded?
true… i mean says on the cards but not as prominent as others ig
Trophy cards are cool and all, but I care very much about what Pokemon are displayed in the artwork. I do not like any of the Pokemon that are in these cards here.
It’s the same reason why I don’t really care for the TMB or Mysterious Pearl and etc.
The old Pika Trophies are where it’s at.
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makes sense, tepig my fave pokemon so ig that’s why I’m more attached than others
No plaque, no buy 
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I feel like many people are beginning to speculate on these cards as of late… the notion “it’s a trophy card so it must be expensive” isn’t always enough to justify a card’s value. One of my buddies was a player at this time of the TCG and he was awarded these cards. As it says on the cards, these were awarded at Battle Road competitions, and pretty liberally too. There’s plenty out there.
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There is a lot of truth to that! I get more inquiries about trophy cards now than ever. I think people realized after the 2020 mania they have some of the best downside protection. But not all are created equally. Also the term “trophy” has become so broad, you could be talking about something with a 1000 copies or a handful of copies awarded.
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I’ve been cautiously buying some victory cups over the last couple of months, specifically near mint/mint graded copies when prices have been too good to turn down, eg £50 here, £70 there. In this buyer’s market, auction format listings are taking up 90% of my buys. Bidding competition has gone down and in some cases it’s resulting in ridiculously good bargains. Look at some of the recent PSA 9 and 10 victory medal auction end prices for example.
BUT. Don’t just look at the pop report for English Victory Cups to gauge availability - keep an eye on frequency and volume of eBay listings. There are currently plenty available, and crucially still a lot of ungraded copies. There’s not a huge amount of information around their release (likely due to the fact that they were given out at smaller and multiple tournaments) and bulbapedia is quite scant on detail for the English copies (also don’t conflate their rarity with their Japanese counterparts which are much rarer). Therefore one of the biggest metrics we have for gauging their scarcity is eBay availability, which of course is unfortunately subjective. Keep a regular eye on listings though and you’ll quickly get a ‘feel’ for these items.
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These are my choice. One of the first New back trophy cards. Original Sugimori art. All 3 have Pikachu.
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Not sure these can be considered prize cards exactly since they are only listed as “Participation Prizes” on the Bulbapedia Entry but these are favs of mine for sure.
Given out at the World Championships Japan Representative Conference held in 2008. Fantastic Himeno art and these versions are the only ones that are holographic. Only printed in non-holo in Pop Series 9 in the west.
Really affordable still and can be had in sealed packs pretty readily.
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Back in the day it felt like we were slingin’ Victory Cups at people placing in tournaments. We had an annual marathon of Battle Road’s (one sanctioned every day during a school break week) and gave out 3 of each per event, or otherwise had Saturday and Sunday Battle Road’s for a month straight twice a year, and other areas all over the country/world/not Japan were doing the same thing depending on their player base size.
So perceptively there are a whole lotta Victory Cups out there, but I couldn’t guess at the distribution. At the time, people didn’t like them as much as the Medals, so they usually ended up in a deckbox or the back of a binder. I still find them sometimes in the piles of old player’s cards.
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Each league was allowed to run 1 Battle Road during a cycle and there were 2 battle roads cycles each year. That’s it.
I have to guess about how many leagues worldwide would be allowed to run these tournament, but I would say 500.
That way 1500 of each card could have been out there of each cycle.
So hundreds of them yes, Thousands NO.
Completely agree, amazing cards.
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I just picked up some of these thinking the same thing.
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Here is one that is underrated: the Suzukisan card. It was only awarded during the 20th anniversary in Japan, 2016. According to the release information, there are only 150 copies of this card. I’m not sure if that is a nod to the original 150 Pokemon. The art is also from the 1998 Let's Trade Please (CD) - Bulbapedia, the community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia
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