Dank Japanese Pokemon Cards Part 1
Japanese Pokemon Cards
It’s been 20 years since fans first memorized the Pokémon slogan “Gotta catch ’em all!”, and amazingly, each year new cards are still being printed, players are still meeting for tournaments, and collectors are still struggling to fill their binders in an attempt to, well… “catch ’em all”.
Each card that makes its way into the Pokémon universe has its beginning at Pokémon Card Laboratories in Japan where it is later sent to different companies around the world for reprinting in foreign languages. And while many non-Japanese players and collectors are interested only in owning cards that they can read, there is a growing community of international collectors who want the Japanese originals—but how do you get your hands on them without getting ripped off? Let’s find out!
What makes Japanese Pokemon cards special?
It has to do with the fact that since they are the “source” card for all translated versions, non-Japanese collectors have a particular obsession with obtaining cards that have not yet or will never be released in their own country. This can be seen with promotional cards released only in Japan, which often go for high prices overseas like the 15th Anniversary Full Art Pikachu, the newer Battle Festa Pikachu, and the older CoroCoro Shining Mew.
How are Japanese cards priced?
Even though cards from Japan can’t be used in tournaments outside of the country, foreign collectors should know that they’re still used for tournament play inside of Japan. That’s why playable cards have much higher resale values. The problem for non-Japanese collectors bidding on auctions is that since they aren’t part of the competitive Japanese Pokémon card player community, it can be difficult to know when you’re looking at a deal or not.
However, there is an easy way to tell how much a Japanese standard format card should be worth. (Standard format means the cards that can be used in current tournaments.) There are an endless number of Western websites that sell English language Pokémon cards and the prices on those sites can give you a general idea of how much the Japanese cards are worth if you go by this simple pricing rule:
English Pokémon EX Card Price x 50–66% = Japanese Pokémon EX Card Price
and
English Trainer Card Price x 150–200% = Japanese Trainer Card Price
(This is especially true for Full Art cards and Gold cards)
The reason for the difference in prices is because the Japanese Pokémon community has relatively fewer collectors and more players, which leads to a higher demand for Trainer cards and playable Pokémon staple cards (cards that are used in nearly every deck) for deckbuilding, whereas the pull rates for EX cards are much better than in English booster backs.
How to tell card condition for Japanese cards
Japan, unlike Western countries, doesn’t have a widely known ranking system for card condition, such as the PSA. That means Japanese card sellers won’t probably provide information in a standardized way. As mentioned earlier, there are more players than collectors in Japan, so card condition is not as important as in other countries. With that being said, a card still loses value when damaged, so it’s better to be careful if the price seems too good to be true. In most cases, though, the seller will give a short description of the card’s condition, which can quickly be found out by pasting the text into an online translator.