The card itself needs no introduction. Even those outside the hobby know of its rarity and value.
However, most people only know just that. Almost all the top Google results for the Pokemon Illustrator card are only about how much it sold for and how rare it is. I thought it would be cool to dive into the history around the 3 illustration contests that rewarded this card, since everyone already knows it’s super valuable.
The 2nd & 3rd Contests’ entry announcements in CoroCoro feature ‘example’ arts from 2 famous TCG illustrators! See if you can guess who
The Grand Prize winner of the 3rd Illustration contest did not include any contact info with their entry! This is why the 3rd contest winner never had their card printed in the 3rd Vending Machine Expansion Sheet. Imagine being the person who forgot their contact info
Dark Mew got that belly tattoo
And a request out to anyone who has old CoroCoro magazines lying around:
I couldn’t find the contest announcement page in the scans online of the November 1997 issue of CoroCoro for the 1st contest. If you do have a copy and can find that page I’d love to translate it and add it to the article!
Let me know if you spot any errors. Happy reading! This was one of my longer articles but was definitely a great dive into one of Pokemon’s oldest and probably most famous promos.
Special thanks to:
@augustdifirenze for the hi-res scan of the 2nd art contest page so that I could translate the card entries
That was a really interesting article, thanks for sharing it! I had no idea the Psycho Blast Mewtwo was both fan-illustrated and the entire card was fanmade!
They need to make the Dark Mew, with the attack "Psycho Doom Psycho Punch ". Best TCG attack name ever.
After chatting with @chok I updated the article with more info on the possible winner’s copies of the designed cards. I’ve also reached out to one of the original winners via IG so fingers crossed that she replies!
Couple things:
Who drew that mewtwo? I feel like Ive seen it before.
I think people are confusing dark mew for the 3rd winning illustration.
Pkonno has sold a lot more than just 2 illustrators, even in just 2020.
Arent japanese sheets printed as 64? Then further split into 16 and cut?
How many illustrators has Pkonno sold? I couldn’t find a definite number for those so I used the 2 sales I had confirmation of.
Japanese sheets are printed in 64 and separated in four 16-card sheets, but each of those sub sheets would still probably be filled up bc you have to cut along a grid anyways:
The black / color bars are used for automated cutting, so you could feasibly only print in multiples of 16 cards when needed if you didn’t want to “burn” ink on the blank sections
Thanks to @chok for giving me the Mr. Mime winner’s IG, I was able to get in touch with her and she confirmed that all her copies weren’t matte. I’ve censored it here in case she doesn’t want the extra attention from collectors.
