If you look at the bottom of almost any regular Pokémon TCG card, you will see the name of the illustrator.

That’s kinda still the case with the Pokémon Rumble set, but not in the same way you’re used to.

The Rumble set still has a box to credit the illustrator. There just isn’t an illustrator to credit.

That’s because the artwork of this set wasn’t drawn specifically for the cards. Instead, it’s taken straight from Pokémon Rumble, a Wii game from 2009. The cards are basically snapshots of the game.

Because of that, the art looks completely different from any other Pokémon card. Different enough to catch my interest at least. It looks chunky and a bit retro, with a nostalgic “game vibe”, even though I’ve never played the game.

Something I didn't know before starting my research: in the game, the Pokémon are wind-up toys. So that toy-like, blocky look isn't just a style choice. They literally are toys in the game.

Pokémon Rumble is a 16-card set, released in 2009.

It’s a little different from your usual TCG set. These cards didn’t come in booster packs.

Instead, they came in a board game, and every box contained the full set. As far as I could find, this was also the only way to obtain the cards. It is a pretty simple game, mainly based on luck with dice rolls.

The fun part: this would mean that every card was printed the same number of times. So when cards like Pikachu or Mew are more expensive, that’s down to popularity, not rarity.

Not that surprising, of course. But it’s still interesting that rarity plays no role at all in the prices of these 16 cards.

Besides that, the Rumble cards were also playable in the regular TCG. And you could add other Pokémon TCG cards to the Rumble board game too.

I've got five: Bastiodon, Diglett, Mew, Starmie and Skuntank.

I found all of them at a Pokémon convention a while back. I’d been eyeing the Rumble set for a while, but never pulled the trigger. Until I saw multiple vendors selling some Rumble cards for pretty fair prices compared to Cardmarket listings.

As you might know, I mostly collect weird Pokémon stuff: old Japanese items, often outside the regular TCG. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to find these kinds of collectibles at conventions in the Netherlands. So I started collecting Rumble, to have something to hunt when I go to these conventions with a friend.

The Mew is in pretty rough shape. But I don’t care that much about the condition myself. I like to put my cards in my binder and flip through them, so a near mint copy would only make me nervous about damaging it myself.

I traded my PSA 10 slab (Team Rocket’s Zubat 1st edition) for this Mew. I got that slab a year ago for only €30, and it was just gathering dust.

Cardmarket prices for a poor to lightly played Mew are around €100-135, and I valued the Zubat slab at around €100-120 at the time. So in the end, that slab was well worth it: it went up in value, and I swapped it for a card I actually want!

The other four cards I got for pretty fair prices as well, at or even below Cardmarket’s lowest price for the same condition.

I’d normally pick Japanese over English any day of the week: better quality, and usually cheaper.

However, the Japanese version, called “Melee! Pokémon Scramble”, has 3 extra cards: Pachirisu, Croagunk and Eevee. They were never sold. You had to beat the game and win a lottery from Japan’s official Pokémon fan club, with only 100 winners. So you can probably guess which direction the prices go…

Finding one for sale is rare in itself. Every now and then a copy does pop up, though. In early 2024, all three came up for auction at the same time, each of them graded:

That’s just one sale per card, and over two years ago. They’re not a market price, just a rough idea of what we’re talking about.

So yeah, those are a bit above my usual budget (read: way above it lol).

With this set, even the regular 16 Japanese cards cost more than the English ones. They’re hard to find in good condition, and some only have one or two listings on Cardmarket, if any.

But I still wanted a complete set, so I went for the English version. Those three cards were never released in English, which makes the full set actually achievable. And a lot cheaper.

That’s it for this week!

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Talk to you next week!