Tropical mega battle 1999-2001

[hapycakeoven]

Hey everyone. I've been doing quite a bit of research into the TMB tournaments lately. They are quite unique in that these tournaments really were the first events to include participants from all over the world. In fact, pokemon Worlds tournaments today are essentially an extension of the original concept. Not only this but these tournaments were hubs for distributing a host of extremely rare and lucrative 'trophy' cards. Below is a list of all cards distributed at the TMB tournaments. This is a work in progress so please feel free to help me make this article as accurate as possible!

1999
-Trophies #1-3 (Japan regionals)
- legendary bird phonecards
- bilingual exeggutor (non-glossy)
- tropical wind

2000
- lucky stadium Hawaii
- limited language specific Vs set prints
- the above includes Tropical wind (Vs)

2001
- Vs sets were again distributed. One card was altered (clair's mantine) between 2000 and 2001

[hapycakeoven]

I will post links to the several player reports when I get home later

[Deleted]

Looking forward to this!

[aj]

VS was printed in what other languages? I know of the English cards, but are there more?

[hapycakeoven]

Yea the Vs sets were given out to to each player and they had to use the deck during a round of battles. I believe there are also sets in German and italian. There may be more but these are the languages which are confirmed? The order of # of prints in order of most to least are as follows: japanese> english> other. The "other" category received extremely low prints

[smpratte]

Here is the information for the VS release.

[hapycakeoven]

Here are player reports for each year:

1999

2000

2001


Photos


I only linked 1 for each year but there are more out there. These are quite fun to read, the authors did a great job at describing the event firsthand.

[hapycakeoven]

Other giveaways at these tournaments include:

-Award medals
-Shirts and hats with logo
-Photo album (for storing photos)
-Signings (such as Imakuni? and Kagemaru Himeno)


Any more stuff?

[hapycakeoven]

I'd like to have images of all the giveaways on this thread, so if anyone has one or some of the items mentioned, please by all means post them  


Here is an image of the *photo album* and *hat* from my own collection:

[jamez]

Very cool! Love reading this kind of stuff. Thanks for posting

[poketrade]

I found a dutch article that says there where 2 kids from the Netherlands and 42 participants in total.

pokemon-paradijs.com/medianieuws/artikel-057.php

Translated:
translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpokemon-paradijs.com%2Fmedianieuws%2Fartikel-057.php&edit-text=


EDIT:
Another article (player report):
www.pokemon-paradijs.com/medianieuws/artikel-054.php

Translated:
translate.google.com/translate?hl=nl&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pokemon-paradijs.com%2Fmedianieuws%2Fartikel-054.php

[poke-geri]

Feb 17, 2015 15:08:36 GMT -6 hapycakeoven said:

Hey everyone. I've been doing quite a bit of research into the TMB tournaments lately. They are quite unique in that these tournaments really were the first events to include participants from all over the world. In fact, pokemon Worlds tournaments today are essentially an extension of the original concept. Not only this but these tournaments were hubs for distributing a host of extremely rare and lucrative 'trophy' cards. Below is a list of all cards distributed at the TMB tournaments. This is a work in progress so please feel free to help me make this article as accurate as possible!

1999
-Trophies #1-3
- legendary bird phonecards
- bilingual exeggutor (non-glossy)
- tropical wind

2000
- lucky stadium Hawaii
- limited language specific Vs set prints
- the above includes Tropical wind (Vs)

2001
- Vs sets were again distributed. One card was altered (clair's mantine) between 2000 and 2001

Keep in mind that the No.1, 2 and 3 Trainer trophy Cards were NOT given out at the TMB finals in Hawaii. They were given out at the regional TMB tournaments in Japan only. There were 7 events of which 2 were 2-day events. This makes a total of 9 copies of the No. 1, 2 and 3 Trainer trophy cards in existence.

[hapycakeoven]

poke-geri thank you, I was actually wondering about that. In general the TMB tournaments are confusing hence why i wanted to compile info here and get input from all you guys in the know

[hapycakeoven]

Were the japanese players given a regular set of vs cards? ie no tmb stamp?

[cbd1235]

Good stuff hapycakeoven !

As far as I know, there were no VS sets at the 2000 TMB, they weren't released yet I'm pretty sure. Can any confirm otherwise if I'm wrong?

The 1999 TMB trophies were from the Regionals as was already stated (9 copies of each), so were the 1999 Tropical Wind cards (copies unknown but fairly rare). The Exeggutor non-glossy was a participation prize for those at the finals in Hawaii (very rare, approx. 36 copies depending on news-published numbers of the participants), the phone cards were also distributed there in some fashion. Some have said they were given blindly if you won matches in under 15mins in some sort of dueling room. I would have to dig up whatever posts there are about this on various sites. [something along those lines, anyway] They're pretty rare too.

In 2000, there was published to be precisely 42 participants, it's in the article linked above, but it's also in the Trainer Mag No.3 which breaks down which country each participant came from. So there are about 42 TMB 9th lucky stadium cards. At this TMB they also gave out a silver TMB 2000 participant medal, and participants got a blue T-shirt with Exeggutor art on it (I put mine into the wash by mistake, it's in rough shape ).