Collecting Japanese Exclusives List?

heartsick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
A few months ago, I got back into PTCG collecting since over ten years ago, and I've been spending hours and hours a day just catching up, seeing different prints of my favorite Pokemon, checking the values of older cards I would love to add to my collection, when I stumbled upon this:


PoliwrathVendingS1.jpg


That art is fantastic.


So I started digging, and realized there were actually a whole lot of Japanese-only Pokemon cards.

Off the top of my head, I can think of:
*Pokemon Vending Machine series (pictured above)
*Johto VS Gym Leaders
*and more recently released, Ultra Shiny GX (which has a lot of reprints, but some JP exclusives)

So I dug more, and I realized that there was no comprehensive overview of Japanese exclusive cards. I'm hoping this isn't a repeat thread, but I'm dying to get my hands on these cards. I absolutely love the art on that Poliwrath. (And yes, I know some of the vending cards ended up getting reprinted... which makes this hunt even harder.) If this list exists, I''d like to see it, and if not, I'd love to collaborate on putting one together with you guys =)
 

Frost

Ice/Fairy Stan Account
Member
Vending and VS are the only two in terms of actual sets.

Even Ultra Shiny isn't a foregone conclusion still, especially if they do another Shining Legends/Dragon Majesty special set later this year. (I would guess if we get the remaining Ultra Shiny cards, it would be through this method.)

A big portion of the cards we never receive are via pre-made decks/boxes and especially promos. Japanese promo sets are a lot bigger than ours; we've only started getting tons of English promos since XY, but in Japan it's been like that since day one. Many Japanese-exclusive promos are alt artwork versions of cards we do get in English, many are not. Since Gen 6, there have been a lot of offbeat Pikachu promos, for example, where it's wearing cloaks of other Pokemon.
 
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ScrawnyMeowth1

The Maker of Pokemon Lists
Member
I can probably make one in a few days, if you want. Quick question: Do you want all Japanese-exclusive arts? Or just Japanese-exclusive cards (i.e. cards with attacks that weren't seen in English)? I say this because a lot of Japanese-exclusive cards are just reprints of other cards, just with different art.
 

heartsick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
I'm looking for every art that was only released in Japan and never got printed in english. If it's that easy, then go ahead, but to me it seemed like a task. To me it seems easy to find every card printed in odd Japanese sets, but some of them ended up getting an english printing, making it a bit harder to make a complete list.

I hope we do get the shinies from Ultra Shiny GX, though. And that would fit the pattern of how they typically release thing for them to be released in a later mini set, I didn't consider that. Thanks for the replies, guys.
 

Frost

Ice/Fairy Stan Account
Member
Hit up Bulbapedia's lists of Japanese material and you'll find pretty much all the unreleased artwork you seek.

Off the top of my head, here's some decks/mini-sets that had unique artwork:
-Video Intro Set
-Intro Pack NEO
-Neo Premium Files 1 and 2 (there was a 3 but we got all the cards in Neo Revelation)
-2002 McDonald's miniset
-Every Pokemon movie from Movie 5 through Movie 12 got some sort of release in Japan (usually half decks or files, but I think the Arceus movie had a mini-set) that we didn't in the US
-PokePark Premium File (Green)
-Bastiodon the Defender and Rampardos the Attacker were DP-era decks that had some unique artwork
-Everybody's Exciting Battles from BW
-Ash vs. Team Rocket from the SM era is pretty unlikely to get translated, the English TCG generally avoids anime-specific material like this

For the Japanese promo sets you'd have to go through each list to determine what got left in Japan and what didn't unfortunately. Gen 1 and 2 promos were generally unnumbered and released through Corocoro. Gen 3 Promo sets were a mess and were released through a bunch of different subsets like J Promos (only 2), P Promos, T Promos, ADV-P, PCG-P and PLAY promos. Gen 4's were split into DP-P, DPt-P during the Platinum block and LP-P during the HGSS block. BW-P, XY-P and SM-P spanned all of Gen 5/6/7.

To save you some time, these are the promos from the major Japanese promo sets that I at least consider to have Japanese-exclusive artwork for my own collection database's purposes:
P Promos
T Promos
ADV-P Promos
PCG-P Promos
PLAY Promos
DP-P Promos
DPt-P Promos
L-P Promos
BW-P Promos
XY-P Promos
SM-P Promos (obviously some of these still have the potential for English release)
 
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ScrawnyMeowth1

The Maker of Pokemon Lists
Member
I'm looking for every art that was only released in Japan and never got printed in english. If it's that easy, then go ahead, but to me it seemed like a task. To me it seems easy to find every card printed in odd Japanese sets, but some of them ended up getting an english printing, making it a bit harder to make a complete list.

I hope we do get the shinies from Ultra Shiny GX, though. And that would fit the pattern of how they typically release thing for them to be released in a later mini set, I didn't consider that. Thanks for the replies, guys.
Yeah, I've looked at all the cards, and this may be more like a spring break project. I'll still be happy to do it, though. EDIT: My spring break starts one week from this Monday.

Here's one really cool card I found:
CharizardEXXYPromo276.jpg
 

heartsick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
That list of links you listed was really helpful Frost, thanks. I was mostly focusing on vintage when I made this post so I had no idea there were so many more recent JP exclusive promos.

I did say I wanted to make it a collaborative effort, Meowth :p You don't have to do all the work yourself. Maybe we could throw things into a Google Doc and check each other's work and keep adding to it together, and when it's done I edit my original post to have the list so any collector in the future can find it easily. Maybe we go by Japanese sets, remove the ones that were translated 1:1 with the english sets (like base set, I believe?) and go card by card in each set to see if they ever had an english print.
 

heartsick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Alright, sounds good.

Something I like a lot about how Bulbapedia formatted their TCG pages is how there's an empty space on the "english" side, meaning that it was a Japanese-only print. A few parts get confusing, because as you said before some cards have the same moves and ultimately function the same as the english counterpart, but the art is different. So I'll start working my way through using Bulbapedia using your format.

EDIT: I didn't realize those links you provided were your own work, kudos dude, that looked like a ton of work.
 
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ScrawnyMeowth1

The Maker of Pokemon Lists
Member
Yeah, something came up for school and I can't collaborate with you guys on this. :( However, it looks like you can handle it pretty well! Good luck!
 

heartsick

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Frost seems like they've got this one under control, haha. They've already mostly done up to gen 4... and at this point I'm a bit afraid to edit the doc myself because they clearly know what they're doing :D
 

EricDrinksWater

Aspiring Trainer
Member
Wow. Great list.

Is this list only populated by cards that did not receive an english release - or would there be a particular filter one would need to toggle?

Thanks so much in advance
 
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