That was posted by @enlightenedbulbasaur
Many of the cards on this list have a known distribution and the list was recently expanded to include cards with 1001+ copies.
I am looking to find any and all cards that have a known distribution number regardless of what the number may be.
As of right now the only card I am aware of that has a known distribution that was NOT included in this Master List is Abareru-kun 320/SM-P with 5000 copies.
Can you guys think of any other cards that have a known distribution number?
Most Japanese magazine inserts have known figures because magazine circulation figures are detailed in company reports published by the Japan Magazine Association (JMPA): www.j-magazine.or.jp/user/printed. I like to use the CoroCoro Comic Shining Mew as a great example of why a card’s desirability will always outweigh distribution numbers when it comes to value, as that card is from a magazine which had roughly 1,260,000 copies sent out*. Unfortunately their database only goes back to 2008, but there are websites which reference them in a roundabout way like Wikipedia (e.g. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoroCoro_Comic#Circulation).
The various Pokémon websites are also a good resource for such figures, although sometimes they can be a bit cryptic. For instance, we know that Drifblim FB (017/DPt-P) has a distribution of roughly 1,446 because 241 separate locations held the tournaments for two different age divisions and the card was awarded to the top 3 of each: 241 venues multiplied 2 leagues multiplied by 3 winners = 1,446 copies (as detailed on the Japanese Pokémon website).
Unfortunately a lot of this information is no longer available on the live Pokémon website, so we have to go to archiving websites like the Internet Archive (http://web.archive.org) to go back in time. Sadly a lot of information has been lost to time.
In short, anything that’s from some tournament (no matter how small) or magazine will almost definitely have figures published somewhere online. A load of other promo cards will also have figures printed specifically in magazines which announced their availability (like this example for the Masaki promos: i.imgur.com/FpQ3INY.png). We can also assume a lot of promo card figures based on other factors (i.e. event attendance - it’s probably published somewhere how many tickets were sold to the 2018 Munch event which would tell us exactly how many of the Pikachu cards were distributed, for instance).
If it’s a mainstream set card you can almost definitely rule out circulation figures being available, but we can likely assume this to be in the tens of thousands for each card in the set at least.
* That isn’t to say that there were necessarily 1,260,000 Shining Mew inserts, but this is the only solid figure we have and it’s likely to be pretty accurate.
I knew about the WB cards since they are on the master list already, but the poketour pikachu is supposed to be 3000 for each venue visited no? So it would depend on how many venues wouldn’t it?
It is in the release information section. “This card was included in ‘Tour packs’ distributed at locations visited by the PokéTour in Australia in 1999, which were advertised to be limited to 3000 at EACH venue.”
