I am interested to know, exactly how rare are the Topsun cards? The holo prism cards in particular. Initially I thought that they were very rare until I read a thread on here where King Pokemon said he has tons of them in storage and the price of them on eBay is all “smoke and mirrors”, Truly are these not very rare cards worth a ton due to rarity? How about Carddass? No rarity base set? My poke world has shaken!
I would not worry to much about what Gary has in storage, he has a lot of cards in storage of all varieties. Just read some of his posts on this forum, anytime a thread about some more niche cards he will talk about all of his cards he has in storage.
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- Topsun: Generic gum cards printed en-masse. It’s generally accepted that no number is rarer than numbered blue back which is rarer than numbered green back, though I’ve personally seen significantly more numbered blue back cards than green back.
- Carddass: Generic non-Pokémon TCG cards printed en-masse; China (or so it’s believed) used to print fake holofoil patterns over these and distribute them to stores in the US before Pokémon officially launched in English.
- No rarity Base Set: cards originating from a small print run of Pokémon prior to December 1996. Base Set continued to be printed and distributed in Japan until at least 2001, so it could be said that there are only 3 months’ worth of no rarity Base Set cards compared to over four years of those with rarity.
No rarity Base Set has always been difficult (but not impossible) to find whereas until last year Carddass and Topsun cards of all flavours were always available and were usually included as freebies because people had so many of them.
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Right but is it worth the price point if it us printed in mass? Topsun holo prism cards in particular. Are they like super ultra rare cards that are rarer than most?
I wouldn’t really call them rare, rather less common than the non-holofoil versions. Off the top of my head each pack of gum contained 2 cards and a box contained 20 packs; in each box was 1 holofoil card. Each of the packs had a retail price of 60 JPY, so 1 box of 40 regular cards, 40 sticks of gum and 1 holofoil was the equivalent of two 300 JPY Pokémon booster packs.
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Mmmmh topsun cards are extremely delicate from what I remember so that might impact the pop for graded and mint cards. Also, taking 2021 into context, more and more people have become aware of them and the cards have that old school artwork that is always nice.
I don’t know how muche ‘‘in mass’’ they were printed, but maybe the demand today has grown to a point where the ‘‘in mass’’ of 20+ years ago is no longer '‘in mass’ now.
Also, what’s the general opinion on the rarity of the Nissui cards?
From what I understand, Topsun and Carddass are more sought after because of their condition factor (ie. low PSA 10 pop’s) which is more a question of scarcity than rarity. Judging by the other responses, it seems like there may be more out there but their condition may be the deciding factor of their price point rather than the specific rarity.
I think the term generic is a bit harsh. They are alternative trading cards to the game.
Especially Carddass cards which as you know are produced by Bandai whose trademarked branding is distinct. Their trading cards were also released before the TCG. Bandai (under the Carddass branding) also released iconic sets for DBZ, Evangelion, Card Captor etc.
They are non-tcg pokemon cards, by the way and not non-pokemon tcg cards.
As for possible distribution of their counterfeits it was only in the same way that occurrs for the TCG - through dollar stores and alike. No licensed efforts. And there are of course many counterfeits and bootlegs of niche pokemon cards as people aren’t aware enough of what is legitimate or not.
Speaking to OP though. Most cards still have copies floating around out there and it does become a question of gradable supply as already mentioned.
Take for example the Carddass “Misty Wedding Dress” card (or Fan Service Misty card).
In the discussion in the first link I mentioned how “It seems to be becoming more sought after” and at the time there weren’t any copies on ebay. Fast forward to today and there are 6 raw copies and 1 counterfeit.
Now the condition of the cards themselves, such as this one, may not be mint but they have become available as resellers managed to source them.
The total PSA pop for the card was 15 (oct 14) and is now 22 (#23 Misty & Pikachu). If you made an assessment as to the scarcity of this card based on the surface supply at the time, you could have greatly underestimated how many exist. On the flip side to that, just because there is an influx of supply today of this card, does not mean it will always be available or in the desired condition.
And this is the main weakness when it comes to assessing niche cards. Because of their previous lack of awareness or popularity, it raises the question that if they were more popular, would that awareness bring more supply to the surface than anticipated?
My recommendation would be to just buy whatever makes you happy and at a price point that makes you comfortable. If scarcity is of great importance and you can afford it, then perhaps stick to items with documented print volume numbers, instead of unverified print quantities.
Just as an aside. Topsun cards aren’t generic either, but they are promo cards and should be in the same basket as the Meiji cards.
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I would focus more on the fact that people still believe that Topsun is from 1995 their inflated value comes from that aspect not from how rare they are perceived.
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They’re hard to find in nice condition and I doubt the price will ever retrace much. They’re probably still more rare than english set cards since they were distributed in Japan which is a small island nation. Not sure what kinda info you’re really looking for here. The current Population reports speak to the cards rarity. Charizards have always been popular and graded heavily. These cards are decades old. There aren’t suddenly going to be tons and tons more appearing out of thin air. The pop count will just slowly trickly as it always has.
Carddass part 1/2 and 3/4 were “mass produced” in the same sense that all set cards are mass produced. Like all set cards, the ones in good condition are more rare and expensive. Note however that they were mass produced relative to the population of Japan (possibly in neighboring countries, I don’t know), whereas other sets like japanese base showed up all over the world.
I spent a lot of time reading through corocoro magazines, which were kids’ magazines in those years that distributed the information on what was released and when. The carddass part 1/2 seem to have been less popular and less printed than carddass part 3/4, according to popularity rankings they have in corocoro. This fits with eBay which also has more collections of 3/4 available. According to those popularity rankings, parts 3/4 were comparably popular to the base set in japan, so surely they were printed a lot each month. However I think the print didn’t last as long as base set. This is overall impressions from what I’ve seen and not science.
Carddass parts 1/2 were the first pokemon cards according to all evidence posted thus far on the forum & what I have personally seen in corocoro magazines, but they were only released a few weeks before base set and the first corocoro promos so it was kind of all in the same time period. Their design is pretty low effort, the background of the cards is just random words and they use stock art. My favorite in the set aesthetically is the town map cards, which are the No.000 and 156 cards with charizard, venusaur and blastoise on them. The art on the front matches the art on the original boxes for pokemon red/green. They came from vending machines just like the other Carddass part 1 and are just as rare as the holos (at least the blastoise and venusaur are just as rare as the holo ones. the town map charizards seem to have been printed 50% more than the holo ones). Unfortunately the town map cards are very fragile and the edges are like butter lol. I managed to get whitening on one just by taking it out of a penny sleeve =\
Carddass parts 1/2/3/4 all came from white boxes which contain 200 cards, and at least 1 of every card in the set. So the rarity of all cards is comparable. I think that is already reflected in their prices to some extent: pikachu carddass part 1 (non-holo) goes for $75 ungraded while the holo charizard only goes for about 3 times more. There is exactly one opening video of such a box on youtube as far as I know, on Tsunagu’s channel. Those boxes are very difficult to find and I have only seen one box available at all in the last half year, on the japanese market. It was Part 4 and went for > $4000.
As for topsun I don’t know as much about them as my main focus was on the earliest-release cards, and by the time I did my research I think the evidence that they were released no earlier than 1997 was pretty conclusive. No rarity base is probably not *that* rare in bad condition, but I believe it is likely to stay very rare in perfect condition because pokemon wasn’t a success in its early months. The carddass 3/4 promos are very rare, the jumbo carddass are rare, and the promotional jumbo pikachu is also very rare.
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By generic I mean they’re both from companies who had produced similar cards for other franchises before and after they partnered with Pokémon - it’s not like either company had to put a lot of effort in to produce these, they were simply fed the designs and printed and packaged them using their existing manufacturing methods.
I should add that I like both the Topsun and the Carddass sets and was collecting both back in 2017-2018 when they were readily available, very much affordable and often included as freebies in packages. My comments above aren’t out of dislike for either of the sets, rather to illustrate that I don’t believe they are anywhere near as rare as people today would believe. I have the complete Carddass series 1 through 4 and due to the very rapid recent price rises I have 46 Topsun holofoils at PSA waiting to be graded.
The only thing which gives an illusion of rarity right now is that they were being very quickly bought out and there were times when searching for “ポケモンカード トップサン” on Yahoo! Japan Auctions would yield only a single page of results - however what we’re now seeing is that supply is outpacing the demand, or at least people aren’t willing to pay as much as they were even a month or two ago.
I’m standing by what I said before. At the end of the day these are generic cards (with often fantastic artwork, don’t get me wrong) but printed in very large quantities. Rare is not a word I would use to describe them.
Not to nit-pick, but both ways are perfectly valid, you’ve just read too much into the “non-Pokémon” part of mine and ignored the “Pokémon TCG” part - by “non-Pokémon TCG” I meant they are not part of the widely recognised Pokémon TCG.
Do you think they were printed in larger quantities than base set even though it was a very old japanese print run? Or what do you mean exactly when you say “printed in very large quantities”? I don’t think anyone ever said they were promotionals, though Topsun kinda was distributed in a similar way as far as I know.
No not at all - to my knowledge base set in Japan continued to be printed after March 2001 and a couple of months of printing gum cards and carddass doesn’t really compare. OP was asking if these are rare cards, and to that my answer is very much a no for the Topsun and Bandai cards and would still be a sort of no for the no rarity Base Set as well.
All 3 sets contain cards which can be found almost always - the barrier to obtaining them right now isn’t their rarity but the competition with the amount of other people who are also trying to obtain them.
I agree. The Topsun myth was based on hearsay and is still making the rounds. But people want to gloss over the subject because of the potential hit to their/our hip pockets. I’m all for the truth.
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Can you guys explain to me how you believe the date of 1995 vs 1996 or 1997 would somehow make these cards any more or less valuable perception wise? I personally see this as a nonfactor.
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@chrisbalestra , it’s a pretty big factor IMO, PSA designates them as 1995 which is incorrect much like how they have Fossil and Jungle as 1996. The no number Charizard psa 9 sold for 100k and the PSA 10 500k…
People are not bidding that high without thinking they are from 1995. If PSA had the correct year they 100% would sell for a fraction of those prices.
Basically it is impossible for Topsun to have made any Pokemon products in 1995 since they received their license from Shogakukan (corocoro) in 1997. Shogakukan themselves received rights to license Pokemon items in December 1995. The first licensed Pokemon product is called Pokemon Club it is a toy and released in May 1996
Translated:
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People are bidding on the price based on the population reports and how rare a card is in a specific condition. What difference do you think a couple years make when they’re still multiple decades old
The whole appeal of Topsun was that people thought they were the first Pokemon ‘card’ released and this was supported by PSA with the 1995 label. There is nothing special about Topsun when you remove their 1995 designation at least to the point where they outsell no rarity
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I can’t speak for all collectors but that was never the appeal to me and I have all the topsun, carddass, bandai, nissui etc charizards/sets.
I don’t think as many people care if they were printed in 1997 vs 1995 as you seem to think.
Why do you suppose a 1st ed base Shining Charizard goes for $30,000+ when it had a significantly later print date than say, a 1st ed dark charizard that only goes for $6,000-$9,000?
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