Japanese Book & Comic Promos Card List
A whole slice of the Japanese promo era was neither magazine inserts nor tournaments: cards were bound into books and comics and handed over as a bonus. Eight cards are on this page and one is priced (the 1997 Official Card File Electabuzz); the rest — six How I Became a Pokémon Card comic inserts and the 1998 TCG Guidebook Venusaur — are documented at the end of the card list with their own scans, because the price source does not list them. Every one is a normal playable card, not the book it came in. This page lists every card with its printings priced separately — 1 printing records — and every one opens its own record with the prices, the printing notes and where to buy.
Card List
Japanese Book & Comic Promos At a Glance
How many cards are in the Japanese Book & Comic Promos?
The set holds 1 card, released 1997. This site tracks 1 printing of them (Fan Book 1), each with its own record and price.
What printings does it have?
One printing of each card; no 1st Edition and no reverse holo to tell apart. The cards print no collector number — the number on the Electabuzz is the National Dex the price source files it by. Sources: folio.fyi's promotional-card census; prices and scans from PriceCharting and folio.fyi.
What is the most valuable card in the set?
Mewtwo [Glossy Pocket Monsters Fan Book] #150 at $48.39 raw. One raw copy of every printing here totals $48.39.
How do these cards relate to the English printing?
No English version of these cards exists. None Japanese-only book and comic inserts, 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 Book & Comic 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 $48.39.