Almost as rare as a shiny!

A few months back we talked about the Japanese Post Office releasing some promotional Pokémon stamps and trading cards.

The announcement took the Internet by storm, and in response to the overwhelming demand, the post office instead decided to sell them off through a lottery instead.

We sent in a postcard to the lottery, never thinking we’d hear back in a million years. But then, last week, this arrived in the mail:

▼ We actually won!
This letter told us to pick up our box at a nearby post office.

Of course we didn’t win the box for free — we still had to pay 4,000 yen ($35.20) for the privilege of owning it. But still, it was exciting! We’d only seen images of the stamps and cards online; what would they look like in person?

Unable to wait to find out, we went to the post office the first day that we could to pick them up.

▼ We braved the rain to get to Kani Post Office,
a medium-sized location in a medium-sized city.

▼ We gave them the letter, showed some ID, and then bam!
We were the proud owners of a Pokémon stamp and card box.

▼ Here’s the box itself. The text in the upper left says “Pokémon Stamp Box, Pokémon Card Game, Beauty Looking Back, Geese Flying Across Full Moon Set.”

▼ Nothing really held the box closed, so once we took the plastic off at home, it popped right open.

▼ And there’s the inside!

On top are the actual stamps. There are three 84-yen stamps based on Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise from the original Pokémon trading card game base set, plus five 84-yen stamps based on the Pokémon trading card game Sword & Shield series.

On the left side is a 120-yen stamp based on the famous Japanese stamp Beauty Looking Back (with an added Pikachu). The artwork was originally made by Hishikawa Moronobu and first issued as a stamp in 1948.

On the right side is another 120-yen stamp based on the stamp Geese Flying Across Full Moon (with added Cramorants). The artwork was originally made by Utagawa Hiroshige and first issued as a stamp in 1949.

▼ A closer view of all the stamps.

▼ And here’s the artwork they’re based on. These stamps below were released this year as promos, which is likely why they were chosen as the tie-in.

Japan Post

▼ The box also contains a Family Pokémon Card Game box, basically a starter set for people just getting into the game, and two actual promo cards.

▼ But the goods don’t stop coming! There were also three Pokémon postcards shaped like Charizard, Eevee and Pikachu.

▼ You can see from the back of the Eevee one that they’re legit postcards. Thankfully we’re already equipped with some matching Pokémon stamps to ship them out! (Kidding)

▼ And here is the reason why the boxes were so in demand: the two promo cards, Cramorant and Pikachu.

▼ Cramorant’s attack is Triple Jab and it reads “Flip 3 coins. This attack does 60 damage for each head.”

▼ Pikachu’s attack is Trading Places and it reads: “Switch this Pokémon with one of your Benched Pokémon.”

So neither of the cards are going to be breaking tournaments in half or anything, but that’s definitely for the best. Cool collector’s cards should be just that, fun things to collect, not things that people feel that they need to have to play the game. And these definitely fit the bill of being cool!

With the success of this year’s promotion, we can imagine it’s only a matter of time until there’s another collaboration between Japan Post and Pokémon again. It’s a perfect fit, since the post office is no stranger to putting cute animals on their products.

Related: Japan Post
Images: ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!