It’s Thursday, so it’s time for a new Pokémon newsletter by yours truly.

At least, that’s what I’m going to try to realize from now on: a new issue every Thursday!

This week: Pokémon's world collection release.

A promo set to celebrate different countries and languages.

Let’s see how Pokémon used the Summer Olympics to promote Pikachu cards and which languages Pokémon thought were the most important back in 2000.

The Pikachu World Collection 2000 cards were basically nine reprints of Pikachu. Each card in a different language, together in a special binder.

What makes these cards stand out is the special stamp. It’s a gold foil Pikachu tail stamped just below the bottom-left corner of the artwork.

I really love the design of this stamp. Simple but still unique enough for on a Pokémon card.

This Pikachu World Collection was sold exclusively at the Pokémon Park 2000 event in Sydney University, from September 12 to October 4.

Overlapping with the Sydney Summer Olympics.

Nintendo deliberately scheduled the Pokémon 2000 World Championship in Sydney during the Olympics to take advantage of the existing media attention.

I think it’s fun to see that Pokémon/Nintendo was looking for bigger events and tied their release to them to gain more attention for their own releases.

A sneaky but smart marketing move.

The set contains 9 cards in 9 languages.

Down here you see the different cards from this set.

The languages are:

Japanese is not included, despite Pokémon originating in Japan.

I couldn’t find a verified explanation, but my best guess is that the goal was to celebrate all other languages where Pokémon was celebrated, excluding the original language.

Since I’m from the Netherlands, something I like is that Dutch was apparently popular enough to be chosen as one of the 9 “world languages” by Pokémon.

Today, Dutch is not even a part of the Pokémon TCG's current language lineup anymore.

It was fun as long as it lasted.

By comparison, Spanish and Chinese, also part of the 2000 set, are both still active today, and have since only grown and they even have been split into regional variants.

Fun fact: The TCG has previously also been printed in Polish and Russian, both also discontinued.

I own 2 of the 9 cards.

Out of my whole collection, these 2 are among the very few cards I actually own in a slab.

The Dutch movie promo Pikachu and the French surfing Pikachu.

It's more of a personal reason than anything else. Since I'm Dutch and my girlfriend is French, I thought it would be fun to buy them both in a slab to display them

In a PSA 8.5 (yes, it’s an older slab) and a PSA 9, they are not the most expensive or rare cards ever. Even though prices are climbing the past few months (but everything is to be fair).

I’m not looking to complete the rest of the set at the moment, even though it fits right up in my alley of the kind of sets I would usually collect. But these 2 slabs are enough for me for now!

Sooooo yea, that’s it for this week!

I try to keep my newsletters a bit shorter from now on, since I noticed they can become quite long if I just keep rambling.

All my past issues are right here if you want to dig through the archive.
Check out last week's edition if you're interested in banned Pokémon cards from Japan.

And if you've got ideas for obscure vintage Pokémon stuff I should cover next, just reply to this email. I'm always open for suggestions or a chat!

See you next Thursday!