Japanese Asobikata Promos Card List
Two Japanese rulebooks — Easily Understand How to Play Pokémon Cards (“Asobikata”) — came with a card. The 1996 volume handed out Pikachu and Jigglypuff in matte prints of artwork that had already appeared as glossy CoroCoro Comic inserts two months earlier; the 1998 Latest Edition handed out Diglett and Dugtrio. The finish is the whole identity here: the same drawing exists glossy and matte, and the matte one is the book's. None of the four prints a collector number, and none was ever sold in a shop. This page lists every card with its printings priced separately — 4 printing records — and every one opens its own record with the prices, the printing notes and where to buy.
Card List
Japanese Asobikata Promos At a Glance
How many cards are in the Japanese Asobikata Promos?
The set holds 4 cards, released November 30, 1996. This site tracks 4 printings of them (Book Print 4), each with its own record and price.
What printings does it have?
Book inserts, so there is no 1st Edition and no Unlimited run; one printing each. ⚠️ The price source files three of the four under CoroCoro rather than “Asobikata” — only Dugtrio carries the family name — so a search for the family word finds one card of four. On the Pikachu the identifying tell is the illustrator credit: the book print credits Keiji Kinebuchi, the CoroCoro print credits Ken Sugimori. The Jigglypuff is the untagged CoroCoro product, because the source tags its glossy twin explicitly. Sources: Bulbapedia's unnumbered-promo table; elitefourum's promo thread; price-source product naming.
What is the most valuable card in the set?
Pikachu [CoroCoro Non-Glossy] #25 at $584 raw, about $8,000 in PSA 10. One raw copy of every printing here totals $862.
How do these cards relate to the English printing?
No English version of these cards exists. None book inserts with no English counterpart; the glossy CoroCoro prints of the same artwork are a different promotion, so these are the only printings of these cards that were ever made. They are one of just two Japanese releases of the era with no English counterpart at all.
How do I tell a Japanese Asobikata Promos card apart from the English printing?
Turn it over, which is the quickest tell there is: this set predates July 2001, when Japanese cards carried the Pocket Monsters Card Game back — a design no English card ever had, against the blue Pokémon back. The back changed once, with Pokémon VS in July 2001, so the back alone dates a card to this era.
Either way, the symbol beside the number is the Japanese set's own, not the English set's.
Prices are PriceCharting sold comps read 2026-11-07 and are per printing. This set is not in TCGdex, and no structured fact source covers it, so rarity, type and illustrator are omitted rather than guessed. One raw copy of every printing on this page totals $862.