Which is not too surprising. For MTG, WotC is responsible for the entire process. From the idea, to the texts, designs, and sending these designs to one of the printing facilities. For Pokémon, they simply translated existing texts and reused artworks. Only the design and Holofoil they’ve modified, but almost all of the Pokémon cards from the WotC era were first designed and printing as Japanese cards in Japan. There was no need for playtesting, since this was already done in Japan at TPC.
Also not too surprising tbh, simply because of quantity and availability. As I mentioned at the bottom of my Protostoise timeline article, there are only ten known sample prints for Pokémon in total, and with some of them we don’t even know if they still exist after the events they were shown were over. With MTG there are a lot more of these kinds of cards out there.
Anyway, I’m personally still a huge fan of any kind of prototype cards for any TCG. Although they aren’t officially released, it still shows a part of the history and production process, which was supposed to stay hidden behind closed doors if security would have been stricter. Value-wise however, they’re always will be way below the more desirable official releases, like the Alpha Black Lotus or Pokémon Trophy cards will always be miles above any possible unofficial test print, no matter how cool.
I’ve also seen it more with my own collection goals over the years. Even though I absolutely love Pokémon Sample prints, right now I focus more on all officially released Pikachu cards, since I deem my collection ‘complete’ if I’m ever able to get my hands on all (1400+) of them. I do still really want all the unofficial Pikachu cards as well though, like the fourteen Japanese Sample Pikachu cards I’m missing, or the Ishihara & Pikachu GX card that was given to the CEO of TPC for his 61st birthday, or a grey stamp Red Cheeks Base Set Pikachu. But all of those are more nice-to-haves at this point.
Greetz,
Quuador