A little earlier this year I made a thread about Ancient Mew and how cool it was as a longstanding one-of-a-kind card design. For as bonkers of a deviation as it was at the time, it’s pretty cool that this concept was only done once. I was thinking about it this morning and was wondering what other cards might exist who saw a special treatment only done once.
Space Fissure’s Lenticular Deoxys
One of the better demonstrations you can easily find is this reddit post. This card was distributed in 2004 in am movie tine-in deck in Japan. To my knowledge, it is the only lenticular card that features more than one layer of artwork.
Trade Please! Promo
This card is the only one I know if where the gimmick is that the reverse face of the card is holographic, a really cool touch. This was originally distributed through a CD in 1998 and is the center of the “Trade Please!” mail-in promotion, which got us those classic Charizard, Blastoise, and Venusaur cards with the cartridge art we all love.
Gold Border Meowth
I always liked this one a lot. You didn’t see many English promos back in the day take on unique design affectations like this, so this one will always stand out to me. The card is identical to the normal Jungle card but features a gold border. This was distributed through Fruit Roll Up snacks in the US in 1999.
Some might consider the “secret rare” 1st Edition Ivy Pikachu a gimmick. It unexpectedly showed up in 1st Edition Jungle Booster Boxes without a ton of direct advertisement or communication, or a Jungle set symbol. This differentiates it from typical secret rares that have the same set symbol as the pack they are found in.
I could be wrong on this, but the whole card has the reverse holo pattern. It’s hard to find a good picture but I haven’t seen any other cards like this.
I thought this was a joke about Garchomp and how similar its shiny colors are to its base colors and was going to comment on the joke and then suddenly my brain was able to process that shiny Lucario for the first time. I have never even noticed it before.
I think it’s called mirror Holofoil. Indeed the entire card has a sheen and reflects light at a particular angle, however it’s not a unique gimmick since it’s a fairly common Holo style in many of the xy-p promos.
