Recently we have seen a few of these emergy on the internet and for sale with them being shared on the forum so I thought I would make a post about it hopefully people will find it interesting and can be used as a record on these items.
This is a Wizards of the Coast Commemorative acrylic piece with a holographic Black Star Mew Promo Pokémon card encapsulated. This piece was given to select UK retailers as a celebration of the successful year of sales that they have achieved in the year 2000. According to Stephen Wilks the ex managing director of WOTC UK only 20 were ever made making this a rare and historic piece. On the acrylic case you can see it is signed off by him.
I have contact with Stephen through my work and have seen the above piece in person, he recently brought to me another version of this. According to Stephen the below copy was a prototype made for WOTC before the final version was decided on and made to give to retailers.
There is a notable difference compared to other versions we have seen, the card placement and text placement is switched positions. On other versions I have seen the card is on the left and text is on the right (as in the first picture).
One other thing I noted was that the apperance of the card encapsulated is different to a typical black star promo holo Mew - the texture on the holo is not the same. Additionally, there is stress marks around the edges and you can see a very thin white border around the back of the card. I was wondering if this could be caused during the encapsulation of the card in the acrylic, if for example it was exposed to heat? Or if it could be some form of prototype card. Stephen does not remember much about the card itself so cannot confirm anything on this. See pictures below:
Here you can see a direct comparision compared to a normal black star holo Mew promo:
If anyone has any thoughts or knowledge on this I would be interested to hear!
One other thing of note is that some have specific retailers listed in the text and some do not.
In this prototype version according to Stephen a false company name was used, Nottingville as a company does not exist.
This version below posted on reddit lists CWS Retail otherwise known as the The Co-operative Group (or often known as Co-Op for short).
There is also a Podcast with Stephen where we discuss a bit about this piece as well as his experiences working at WOTC and in the Pokemon world in general for anyone interested:
Additional Edit
Another copy was brought to me this week by the former UK sales director Jeremy Pateman, he worked alongside Steve Wilks who put him in touch with me. This copy is like the first, has the card placement on the left and text placement on the right. The note is not made out to a specific name or company. The Mew card is very sunfaded but does not exhibit the damage/strange holo texture some of the others do. Images below for reference.
