Welcome to Rare Candy's "Spotlight On" series, where we feature the history and stories behind some of the rarest and coolest cards and collectibles.
Looking to add a championship trophy to your collection? Keep an eye on Rare Candy's auctions where new exciting cards and collectibles are made available every week!
If you’re looking to test your skills as a Pokémon trainer against other real-life human opponents, then the Trading Card Game (TCG) isn’t your only option. Fans of the main video game installments (most recently Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for the Nintendo Switch), Pokémon GO players, and more can all square off with one another via the franchise’s various PvP titles.
With all these different ways to prove you’re the very best — like no one ever was — the world of Pokémon tournaments has dramatically evolved since the early days of the franchise. Now events take place all over the globe, and depending on what kind of match you enter, you can win rare cards, limited edition merchandise, cash prizes, and yes, even actual physical trophies.
When Did It All Start?
Like everything Pokémon, the earliest official competitions were organized in Japan. The first-ever TCG tournament took place in 1997 and divided its players up into divisions based on their grade, with only kids 16 and under allowed to compete. Despite how young the players were, the results of early tournaments were still so meticulously recorded that you can still look up the names, ages, and card lineups of the winners to this day.
A few years later, Wizards of the Coast, which picked up the English language distribution rights in 1998, began testing out its own version of organized TCG tournaments in the United States. Eventually this led to the earliest known international competition in 1999, the Pokémon Tropical Mega Battle in Honolulu, Hawai’i, which eventually gave way to the Pokémon Trading Card Game World Championships in 2002.
Meanwhile, video game tournaments were a little harder to get off the ground. Initially, Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow players could only battle or trade Pokémon with each other using a Game Link Cable that physically connected their Game Boys together. (It was also the only way you could evolve certain Pokémon, which is why it eventually got memorialized as an in-game item in newer titles). Local events often had these cables or other special machines handy to give out Mews, but ultimately the technology made organizing and tracking virtual battles difficult.
That briefly changed in 2000 when Nintendo hosted the first and only Pokémon World Championship in Sydney, Australia, as a special one-off competition to coincide with that year’s Summer Olympic Games. Contestants gained entry by winning regional events in their home countries, and ported their data to the recently released Pokémon Stadium for the Nintendo 64 to compete against each other.
Finally, 2008 marked the first year that officially-sponsored video game and trading card competitions were held simultaneously, with the Pokémon TCG World Championships and Video Game Showdown in Orlando, Florida. In 2009, both were eventually folded into the Pokémon World Championships by Play! Pokémon, a division of The Pokémon Company International (TCPi), which has organized the event — plus all qualifying regional and final events in the international market — ever since.
How Do You Compete?
During each competitive season, players can score championship points (CP) at Play! Pokemon-sponsored events, which are then synced to their Pokémon Trainer Club account. There are typically three age divisions — Juniors (12 and under), Seniors (13-16), and Masters (16 and up) — and, as of 2022, four major events — Video Game, TCG, GO, and the new multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game, Pokémon UNITE.
If you’re a huge Pokémon fan, there’s good news: you can participate in as many events as you want, in as many categories as you want! However, points don’t transfer across event types, meaning that you can’t qualify for the next level by combining your points from the TCG and GO, for example. There’s also a limit to how many different scores you can carry with you, so if you hit a certain threshold of attempts (called the Best Finish Limit) at the same tournament level, you can keep your highest scores and get rid of the rest. The higher the event level you participate in, the more points you get from competing.
Before you can make it to the world stage, however, you’ll probably want to compete in one of four equally prestigious International Championships — the Latin American International Championships (LAIC), the Europe International Championships (EUIC), the North American International Championships (NAIC), and sometimes the Oceania International Championships (OAIC). The top two finalists from each category will also have a guaranteed invitation to that year’s World Championships, along with tournament winners who compete in countries not managed by the TCPi (for example, Japan and South Korea).
What Do You Win?
In addition to a boatload of points to take forward to the World Championship, thousands of dollars in prizes get awarded to the top International Championship finalists every year, along with exclusive merchandise, trophies for 1st through 4th place, and TCG booster packs.
Online streaming audiences also get the chance to download their own cloned version of a Pokémon from a video game winner’s line-up, further cementing that competitor’s role in Pokémon history. Paul Chua’s Shiny Arcanine from EUIC 2023 for example, was given out during the broadcast for NAIC that year.
Now, onto the trophies! Here’s the current prize that’s awarded to trading card and video game winners, which features a Pikachu and International Championships logo on a stylish gold base:
Before that, the trophies resembled Pokéballs with the specific Championship logo and event listed. Here’s a side-by-side for comparison:
How Do I Collect Them?
It’s rare to see competitive trophies of any kind go up for auction. Some organizations, like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, even set strict rules for who is allowed to resell their statuettes and when.
Thankfully Play! Pokémon isn’t quite as harsh, but you’re still more likely to find trophy cards up for auction rather than the actual objects themselves. Even so, it’s not unheard of — and the asking price often coincides with the rarity.
Trophies from National Championships, like the 2008 1st place “Luxray” prize, often go for around $600 to $700; meanwhile, last year a World Championship trophy from 2014 went for $40,162, and another from 2022 garnered $19,642 at auction.
Looking to add a championship trophy to your collection? Keep an eye on Rare Candy's auctions where new exciting cards and collectibles are made available every week!
