So I awoke this morning when I sadly lost an auction yesterday with my leading 7 day bid being of 500 dollars losing to last second 3 thousand dollar snipe to the nuggets with a clean mind frame.
Today was a new day. It was no longer yesterday. I decided to re-imagine my nightmare into a dream. And thus, The Second Coming of Pikachu Promo Story begins.
I choose to claim ignorance and not know every single promo as well, there’s probably a few scarce enough to scare my nuggets off. You like that? I used the phrase twice, cause I have 2. Now let’s make it 4, BAM HERE WE ARE:
This my friend is your new grail Surfing Pikachu. You may have one, you may have several and yet… Here it is. But fear not! I did leave a few left online for you to buy. As the pop reports are similar to that of the 1997 Corocoro Surfing Pikachu(Which is not this one). Guess the difference?
This one came out 6 days before the Corocoro variant.
It also was made by Media Factory.
As the story goes for this card, a month previous to the release people had to ride trains for 30 days and collect 30 real life stamps on their train card to receive this card along with a Lilly-pad Mew. There’s only around 50 or so floating around at the moment online but think of it this way. 100,000 tickets were given out for the trains. Pop report on PSA is showing about 350ish. Meaning not all that many people rode the train 30 days straight just to get this promo during that time. But if you did? You gained this card. This card, (The Fuji)[Non Glossy]came out before the 1997 Glossy Corocoro variant on Aug 9th, 1997. Corocoro Glossy variant release you ask? That’s right, the 15th. Now go enjoy your Nuggets!
Firstly, thanks for posting about the card and congratulations on getting your own copies. Not many people may know but it is really great to know the difference between the 2 copies of the JR rally and the CoroCoro surfing Pikachu.
Also, not to be nitpicky, but as per my understanding, the event had to be completed in 2 days and not 30 days. Meaning once you start the stamping process, to get the 2 cards ( including the ‘lily pad’ mew), you have to visit 30 stamping points within 2 days. You are correct that 100,000 participants were selected in advance for the events, with the tickets being sold out due to popularity. The event maybe implemented across the whole summer but to get the cards, you had to do the exercise in 2 days.
Do you have more info on if it was really 30 days? Maybe my understanding on the promo distribution is incorrect.
Congrats on your find! I absolutely love this card and have a copy myself.
A piece of information I enjoy about the card is the reason for the train in the artwork being the color green. For anyone curious, in Tokyo the various train lines are color coded and the Yamanote line, the one that kids could collect the stamps to acquire this card, is the green line!
With further research I have discovered this to be the second copy or first reprint of the 1997 Corocoro Surfing Pikachu(Glossy). Here is all the info I could find thus far:
-From all I have to gather, jul 29-aug 8th was tickets. Sold out 100,000
-aug 9th-17th was your chance to get 30 stamps within 2 random consecutive days
-send in 30 stamps to get the pika and mew
this is what i have gathered so far but i must keep digging, hang on dinner and football game but i’ll be back. Something seems a little off about those 2 conflicting dates and magazines.
