History & Timeline of the Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon Organized Play - Part 2a (PokeGym Anniversary Edition -Mystery Guest Special)
Continuing the the tradition started with Part 1a, which touched upon a little known but important part of Pokemon history, we present for your edification the story of "Prerelease Raichu", the "Holy Grail" of Pokemon.
The legend of this card started with a report on the 1999 Tropical Mega Battle by Edo, one of the PokeGym's suppliers of translations of Japanese cards. Since Edo lived in Hawaii at the time, he was able to spectate at the event. The WotC staff were familiar with him, so they allowed him to attend the event. Among the highlights for Edo was getting to play a game of cards with Imakuni? (see below)
Toward the end of the first day of the event, he reported on an odd error card that a WotC rep had in his possession.
And so started a mystery that would plague serious collectors of the game for years. Six and a half years, to be exact. Collectors clamored for a confirmation of the existence of these cards, but no copies of the card were ever put up for sale, nor pictures shown in any venue. WotC representatives consistently denied the card's existence. One such WotC representative was Mike Boozer, affectionately known to the players as Dark Master Trainer Mike.Edo said:
Adding to the mystery, Mike would willingly show the card to some players late in the evening, after the main events had shut down and been packed up. But, he'd do this while verbally denying the existence of the card. Often simultaneously! Oh, he truly was "Dark".
Because of all this, the card was known by many to really exist, but with the lack of official confirmation and no copies to point to, an air of mystery and desirability grew over the card. Many top collectors had it on their "want list", but they all knew it was futile. That no copies of the card had ever hit the market, either for sale or trade.
But now, in honor of the PokeGym's 7th Anniversary, Dark Master Trainer Mike has broken his silence and has agreed to reveal the existence of this card to the world! The PokeGym proudly presents the only known image of this exceedingly rare error card.... Prerelease Raichu!!
Original image - lightened image
So, how did this card come about? It seems that when they were printing up test copies of the Prerelease Clefables for the original season of the Pokemon League. The sheets of cards that they used had a Base Set Raichu printed on it in next to the Jungle Clefable. Here, you can see how cards appear on a similar sheet of cards prior to being cut into individual cards:
Now, imagine that this sheet had Clefable after Clefable after Clefable and then at some point it switched over to a series of 8 Raichu. I say eight because that is the number given by Mr. Boozer (Certainly, it could have been 11 copies as Mr. Finch reported to Edo all those years ago. However, 8 or 11, the number is exceeding small). When they ran the sheet through the foil stamped, these few Raichu were also stamped. Once the proof copies were delivered to WotC, the managers noted the problem and corrected it for the rest of the print run. However, what to do with these 8 or so copies? They each got one and have kept them to themselves for all of these years.
(Sounds a bit like Lord of the Rings at this point, doesn't it?)
While no copies have made it onto the market, we are glad to finally at least offer definitive proof to collectors that the cards do, in fact, exist. Any price estimate would be just that, an estimate, since none have been sold.
However, conservatively, this is the most valuable and desirable English language Pokemon card and so any estimate of it's value starts at a conservative $5000.00 and goes upward from there.
Last edited:
