Collecting the Sailor Moon CCG: The Definitive Guide to an Unexpectedly Difficult Task (UPDATED June 2024)
In 1993, a little card game by the name of Magic: The Gathering hit the market, and the gaming world would never be the same. All of a sudden, a new, addictive and scalable form of gaming had arrived, requiring little up-front investment to start playing but, once it got its hooks in someone, could potentially bleed their wallet dry one dopamine-promising booster pack at a time. It was sort of a spiritual precursor to today's free-to-play video games laden with microtransactions. Magic was a huge hit, amassing a huge fan base globally and becoming such a phenomenon that, even decades later, its profitability is basically propping up a massive toy company. So, as you might imagine, the tremendous success of Magic made the collectible card game concept very attractive. As such, over the next decade or so, there was a collectible card game (CCG) for practically every property you can imagine.
No, really. Think about anything popular from the 90s and there was probably a CCG for it. Tomb Raider? Of course! Mortal Kombat? I mean, duh. The X-Files? Oh, you betcha!
I actually have a bunch of X-Files cards, and I make zero apologies for that. It's a fun game!
The CCG boom was so all-encompassing that some properties that had card games dedicated to them, like Dr. Who and Lord of the Rings, have now been licensed as Magic: The Gathering sets of their own. They've experienced gaming saṃsāra!
But enough about Magic. The point is, there was a glut of CCGs released in its wake, and the majority of them led short lives, regardless of their quality. So it goes when the market is flooded with product. Still, that doesn't mean that all these games should be forgotten, and indeed, many of them have taken on lives of their own in the ensuing decades. To wit, I present to you the subject of today's article: the Sailor Moon CCG.
First off, let me say, I love Sailor Moon. When it was airing on pre-UPN Channel 44 in San Jose, California at 2:30 PM Monday through Friday in 1996, I was there for it, unless I was like at Knott's Berry Farm or something. It's hard to really express how different Sailor Moon was than pretty much anything else on the air at point, when anime was still a lurid curiosity you had to sheepishly rent from Blockbuster Video (shout out to Devil Hunter Yohko!). Sailor Moon was a funny, beautiful, and at times gut-wrenching story that was serialized like a soap opera, so you had to tune in every day to see what would happen next. It's no wonder it became beloved and, as was the standard at the time, memorialized in a CCG. Sadly, within a year, despite being well-received (Origins 2000 award for Best Trading Card Game, lest we forget), the Sailor Moon CCG was no more.
Sure, other games may have had longer lifespans, but did they have MAXFIELD STANTON???
Despite going out of print decades ago, however, the Sailor Moon CCG never truly died, in the sense that the Sailor Moon fan base is most definitely alive and well. And with a robust army of fans comes a perpetual appetite for collectibles. Factor in over twenty years of attrition, and you have the formula for a game that is very difficult to acquire a complete set of, complicated by the relative lack of information available online and a truly peculiar distribution model for the game's promo cards. You'll see what I mean later. With that in mind, today I seek to create the definitive guide for anyone attempting the Sisyphean task of assembling a complete Sailor Moon CCG collection. I hope to provide all the information anyone needs to pursue this endeavor. Lord knows you'll probably need the help.
One note before we proceed: two invaluable reservoirs of information for the Sailor Moon CCG, without which I could never have written this, are Miss Dream and Blue Moon Trading Cards. These two websites formed the initial basis of my research. If you're looking for more info, please check them out! My goal is not to merely regurgitate what they've said, but to expand upon and even, in a few cases, contradict (I'm sorry!) their foundational work. Together, I'm hoping we can finally figure this all out.
This article took a lot more time and effort to write than I expected (and I definitely spent too much money on it 💀), so please, take your time and indulge in this endeavor with me. Kick back, pour yourself a beverage, and throw on this playlist of 90s Japanese city pop to really set the mood. We're about to right wrongs and triumph over evil in the form of incomplete information for collectors. Well, maybe evil is a tad melodramatic.
Alright, to start things off, the Sailor Moon CCG had, in total, two commercial set releases: Sailor Moon Premiere Edition, and the Past & Future expansion set. There were the standard booster boxes/packs for each set, as well as a whole slew of preconstructed deck options. Premiere Edition had a theme deck for each Sailor Scout, and of course Tuxedo Mask had to butt in there as usual.
Past & Future has no two-player set, but does have two theme decks, named…
(wait for it)
…Past and Future.
The Sailor Scout/Tuxedo Mask decks were entirely made up of
cards you could find in the booster, but the two-player set and Past and Future
decks all come with exclusives. If you’re trying to put together complete sets,
you’ll want these.The two exclusive cards for the two-player set are Negaverse Warriors/Heavenly Kings Malachite (née Kunzite)...
…and astrology enthusiast and Guy-They-Warned-You-About-In-PSAs, Nephlite!
He has kind of a weird resemblance to millionaire playboy Maxfield Stanton, now that I think about it…
Did you know that, according to this Top Ten list from InPower! magazine (more on that later), Nephlite is the best card in the entire set?
Now, I could be wrong, but that seems wildly inaccurate given the fact that the set contains, in Magic parlance, multiple tutors and a freaking Time Walk, but what do I know? Maybe my notorious anti-Nephlite bias is subconsciously coloring my views here.
THE STARS KNOW EVERYTHING wait how old are you
ANYway, all of the Premiere Edition decks are pretty easy to find, as long as you're not picky about the packaging (unboxed versions of the theme decks are usually readily up for sale online), and they make a great place to start your collection. If you pick up one of each preconstructed deck, you'll be well on your way to a set of Premiere Edition.
Acquiring all six of these sealed decks felt like assembling the Infinity Gems
Similarly, the Past & Future decks each have a single card (Moon Kingdom & Crystal Tokyo, respectively) that are exclusive to
their respective precons. They have a very elegant holofoil treatment
and by themselves make picking up these two preconstructed decks
worthwhile. After that, things get more dicey.
You see, the preconstructed decks were so prevalent that any cards not in them, like Pocket Communicator or Imperium Silver Crystal, are exponentially rarer than you might think. So if you're trying to put together a set of Premier Edition, the precons are a wonderful place to start, but it's also important to keep an eye out for these booster-only cards. They pop up for sale here and there, and with vigilance, you'll find them. Relative to some of the cards we'll discuss later, they're not THAT rare. Worst case scenario, you could always buy a few booster packs and roll the dice.
The same advice does not apply to the expansion set, Past & Future. Hard as it may be to believe, at any given time there may well be ZERO booster packs available for purchase online (this marks a distinct difference from Magic, where all but the most absurdly rare cards are typically at least available for purchase somewhere, price notwithstanding). As such, this set is a tough one to collect. On the plus side, it's only 70 cards with 11 card booster packs and two preconstructed decks full of cards from the set, so in theory it shouldn't be hard to get everything without too much trouble. But you know what they say about theory heh heh heh.
*Really hoping there's some old saying about theory that applies here; to be honest, I'm bluffing*
My friends, when it comes to these ultra rares, I bring you joyous tidings: your journey may not be as perilous as you think! By which I mean, it's not particularly difficult to find full sets of the ultra rares for each set for sale online. I have a few theories about why this is the case: for one thing, the cards are obviously premium in a way that the others in the sets are not. That holofoil treatment sends a subliminal signal to PRESERVE ME in the way that, say, Hercules the Cat would not. As such, I believe that the ultra rare cards were more resistant to just straight up being thrown away than the normal-looking cards were. For another, apparently Dart, the publisher of the card sets, offered a program for a time by which one could purchase a full set of foil cards from a given set (the CCG promo cards from their non-CCG card line ((more later, I know that sounds confusing)) and the ultra rares from the CCG sets). I don't know much about this, but it makes sense, given how much easier it is to find "ultra rare" cards than it is to find, say, Past & Future commons. If anyone has more specific info about this, please let me know and I'll be happy to update this. In any case, at the time of this writing at least, it remains true that getting a set of ultra rare cards for the Sailor Moon CCG is pretty easy, so long as you're willing to open your wallet a bit. Even without the full-set factor, the individual singles for these cards tend to pop up pretty frequently.
A FREAKING TIME WALK...I'm sorry, I can't get over this
Whew, OK, back to Past & Future. So let's say, for the sake of argument, you bought a booster box and some decks and got a full set of Premiere Edition. And through some shrewd wheeling and dealing, you've also accumulated the 70 cards that make up Past & Future. You're basically done, right?
Oh.
Oh, no.
You don't...you don't know?
You don't know about....them?
Yes, THEM. The whole secondary rarity level to these cards that you haven't even considered. Because you didn't know. You couldn't know. Unless, of course, you knew.
It's alright to leave now. To take your set of Premiere Edition and your set of Past & Future and call it a day. There's no shame in it! You technically have one of everything, in terms of playability, and you needn't burden yourself further. Seriously, just do yourself a favor: if you're satisfied now, just stop.
.........
Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you.But if you really want to know about the borderline-mythical rarities of the remaining Sailor Moon CCG cards, I've got you covered. We're on this infernal descent together.
Let's say you didn't get a booster box of Past & Future, but you got the preconstructed decks, foils, etc. online. You may find yourself surprised by the fact that you need a bunch of common/uncommon cards, none of which are up for sale anywhere. You're beginning to see the magnitude of what you're facing here. "But they're COMMONS!" you say. "How is it possible that they're impossible to find???"
Just you wait
*Cough, cough*
You may not have signed in for an archaeology project, but my friend, here you are. As such, this is the point in our mutual project that I wholeheartedly recommend the following: search. Be vigilant. Be creative! If you know about some shady z-grade eBay "equivalent" that you trust-ish, scour it for these cards. You'll still probably come up empty-handed, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.
This was the last and hardest card for me to obtain for my Past & Future set. It is a "common."
What do words even mean.
All that is to say, if you're looking for Past & Future cards beyond what's in the preconstructed decks, you're likely to have a rough time of things. Keep a weather eye, scrutinize the photos of generic "Sailor Moon Card" listings on the online marketplaces, make some connects and maybe, just maybe, you'll get there. I'd still recommend buying a booster box if you ever see one for sale, though.
Because we're about to descend another level here. Do you know what the Sailor Moon CCG Unlimited Edition is? Do you know that it's also called the Sailor Moon CCG Base Set, despite there having already existed a base set well before its printing? Fair warning: I'm going to unpack all of this, but I can't be held responsible for how deep your heart sinks.
Remember how I said that the Past & Future set had 11-card booster packs? This is technically true, with a big but. And this big but is the following: three cards from each Past & Future booster were from the hilariously misnamed Unlimited Base Set.
The Unlimited Base Set is, more or less, a reprint of Premiere Edition. "Less" in the sense that none of the ultra rare cards, nor Malachite/Nephlite, were included in this print run (each card still claims to be "X of 160," which means every single card in this set is a liar; they should be "X of 148," technically). The only real difference between the printings is that, whereas the Premiere Edition cards had a "Premiere Edition" logo printed on the lower left portion of the card, the Unlimited Base Set ones have the Japanese kanji version of the Sailor Moon logo there instead.
Think about this for a moment: you have booster packs that are already pretty rare, with each pack containing cards from two sets available nowhere else. But one of those sets is only 70 cards in size, and makes up the majority of the pack, while the other set-which is more than twice as large-only has a few random cards in each booster. This makes for an interesting situation wherein the rarity and collectability of the named set is dwarfed by the reprints thrown into the pack as filler.
Which is to say, I am still missing several cards from my set of Unlimited (specifics to come), so if you've got some extras you're trying to get rid of, hit me up! Singles for this set are tough to find (I legitimately don't believe many people know this set exists, even people that collected the cards when they were first released) and I'm tired of looking at the empty slots in my binder and singing a pathetic solo rendition of "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday." Release me from this curse!
Here's a video of me opening some packs of Past & Future while suffering from a cold, if you want
Alright, so that covers the basics of all the commercially-released sets of the Sailor Moon CCG. But lest you think we're done, here, allow me to retort: if you are truly a completionist, we still have a final, surprisingly large category of cards to cover. Namely, the promo cards.
NOOOOOOO NOT THE PROMOOOOOOOOS
First, a word about the promos: for gameplay purposes, you don’t need any of these. Unlike other games like Middle Earth: The Wizards, these promos are visually distinct from the regular printings of these cards, but not mechanically distinct. Every single promo card has a regular version that can be opened in a booster pack with the exact same rules text. Thus, if you’re merely buying cards with the intent to play, you can safely ignore these. Simply put, there are cheaper versions of everything here that play just as well.
Buuuuut, as the subject of this article is collecting the Sailor Moon CCG, I would be remiss to gloss over the promos, which are surprisingly numerous, especially considering the relative brevity of the game’s lifespan. The distribution methods for the promos vary, and consequently, they range in attainability from fairly common to Nintendo-World-Championships-cartridge-level scarce. Actually, scratch that…at least there are some of those cartridges currently up for sale, so these promos are on another level of hard-to-findity. Seriously, I was shocked to discover how rare some of these are in the year of Our Lord 2023. So in order to aid any Quixotic quests to possess these rare gems, I’ll attempt to be as specific about the circumstances of their printings as possible.
In the spirit of card collecting, we'll begin with the cards you can actually pull from packs of...something, if not the Sailor Moon CCG. You see, Dart, the company that published the game, was at heart a traditional trading card company, and so it makes complete sense that they would have also released regular, non-game Sailor Moon cards. They wisely utilized a couple of these sets of cards as a vessel to promote the Sailor Moon CCG. So, for example, packs of the Sailor Moon Archival Trading Cards set included rare foil versions of certain cards from the Sailor Moon CCG Premiere Edition.
For the most part, the cards themselves were nothing special, but if you wanted foil versions of them, this was the only game in town. And I have to say, foil Wicked Lady looks really nice!
There were a couple other promos distributed in more or less the same fashion, except that one of them was a non-foil promo card inserted in packs advertising the game, and the other was a foil version of the same card that, as far as I can tell, was what we in 2023 call a "buy-a-box promo." Neither are playable cards, but that's not really the point.
Foil's on the right. Look, I have an iPhone 8, OK?
Dart would repeat this admittedly brilliant trick with the third series of its Sailor Moon trading cards, resulting in these gems:
That last one is supposed to be particularly hard to get, but he is EVIL Prince Darien for a reason
I think the promo card below was also in those Series 3 packs as a non-playable promo, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. It's what we in the future present call a "teaser."
Thus concludes the section of today's lesson that concerns CCG cards pulled from non-CCG packs. At this point, what could possible be left? Well...
...get ready. This is where things get really nuts. Abandon hope all ye who enter here. It doesn't seem so bad at first, and I guess it isn't, but just you wait.
I'm serious. If you're OK with just getting the cards you can get from packs, you can just stop now. There's nothing unique here, except in the most pedantic sense, and the difficulty of acquisition is so far out of proportion with the utility of the cards here that it's probably not worth your time to continue. Might be wise to turn back now.
You're still reading? Alright then. Let's do this. Just don't say I didn't warn you. This is a collecting guide, after all. I wouldn't be doing my duty if I stopped now.
We're going to get into the world of magazine promos. We'll start with the (relative) easiest ones: the cards included with copies of Scrye, one of the most popular magazines concerning collectible card games in the 90-00s (back when magazines were still a thing, basically). The promo version of Avocado, from the premiere set, was included with Scrye issue #7.5, and the promo version of Moon Princess from Past & Future was included in Scrye issue #8.4. In case you haven't figured it out by now, Scrye had one of the most singularly bizarre numbering systems of any magazine past (heh) or future. So, for your prospective collecting purposes, here are the covers of the two issues in question.
Up next, we have a magazine that, at the time of this writing, has the impressive distinction of still actually being in print! Like, they're cranking out new issues as we speak. When I started compiling this information, I honestly did not expect any of these magazines to still be in business over two decades later, but here we are. Kudos, Non-Sport Update magazine! Thanks for reminding me that Lexx was a thing. Anyway, here are the two issues that contained Sailor Moon promos.
Non-Sport Update Volume 11, No. 5, with the Simpsons cover and Thunderclap promo, is the harder to find sealed of the two, likely due to the Simpson fandom crossover. Meanwhile, Volume 12, No. 3, with the Dark Moon Minions promo and the Seven of Nine/Lara Croft cover, despite its intense significance for adolescent males in 2001, is still relatively common.
Up next, we have the promo from InQuest Gamer #65, Knight Armor. This issue was available with two different collector covers: Goku and a knight guy. Since one is an anime character and the other is a knight, they're both thematically appropriate for this promo card in different ways! Wow.
Also, I don't know if it's because people were really passionate about reading their InQuests or what, but I have found sealed copies of this issue to be very hard to come by. The promo card itself, less so.
Speaking of InQuest Gamer, a bit of history: the parent company of InQuest was Wizard Entertainment, so named after Wizard magazine, which was the 90's's definitive source of comic book news. Wizard's claim to fame was presenting traditionally dorky superhero info (the pre-MCU world was vastly different) with a heaping spoonful of Gen X edginess. A really in-depth interview with Todd McFarlane followed by Psylocke in a bikini, Venom casually dropping some mild profanity, things like that. It worked, and in this mold came InQuest, which combined thoughtful, thorough news about the emerging collectible card game industry with jokes about someone passing gas in a crowded room. And it was a success! To be honest, given Inquest's popularity and longevity, I'm downright shocked it only got one promo. But I guess it makes it easier for us retrospective collectors nowadays.
Alright, we're really about to descend into the abyss now. This is the point where collecting the Sailor Moon CCG crosses the line from being a fun hobby into being brutal, masochistic torture. I think the Marquis De Sade wrote a treatise on the subject of the following promo cards. And I know you won't stop here, but I cannot in good conscience continue without first providing this warning.
We have two promo cards to go. And, hoo boy.
Let's start with the easier one. You remember the whole thing about Wizard, and InQuest, and bringing edgy humor into traditionally stuffy, nerdy hobbies? Well, the same company decided to give a different idea a shot: what if we produced similar content, utterly devoid of edge, for children??? The resulting magazine was, I guess, "IN"Power!
This magazine was such a massive success that it's borderline impossible to find information about online, and no one can seem to agree how to even spell its name. I'm serious, I DARE you find a definitive spelling of its name online (which, incidentally, tells you a lot about the magazine's popularity). Do you include the quotation marks? Are those even quotation marks? Is it one word or two? Exactly which letters are capitalized? You tell me.
With content like this, I can't imagine how the magazine died after eleven-ish (maybe? hard to verify) issues:
They should have just called the magazine Baby Dorks.
Regardless, ""IN"PowEr! had the dubious distinction of being the vessel for the second rarest promo for the Sailor Moon CCG: Mitsuaami.
If you're so inclined to chase this one, you may want to consider camping out on eBay and saving a search for the issue of """In""pOWeR!!!!!" that's it's bundled with. I can't personally send you a copy, but I can give you the next best thing:
At this juncture I feel I must issue my final warning. We're about to delve into eldritch obscurity here, the level of rarity that taxes your very sanity. You might find yourself wondering if this card exists in anything other than vague flickers in the subconscious, its name uttered only in the sort of whispers that haunt one half-asleep on a stormy evening only to be forgotten at sunrise. If you would rather just stop now and spare yourself the weight of this knowledge, I not only understand but encourage you.
BUT.
If you must.
Please accompany me into the catacombs for a glimpse at the most elusive of all Sailor Moon CCG promo cards.
Thanks, Zoycite! Finally, we have what in my view is one of the most diabolically impossible-to-find trading cards since that rare Marvel Universe Spider-Man card where he was flipping off the camera (ed. note: this is not a real thing). Wild geese are easier to chase than this thing, and you’re more likely to find a yeti in the wild and get his autograph than you are to find one of these promos. I’m speaking about the legend itself, the one and only: FOUR FACE.
Just because there's a photo doesn't mean it's real...?
Again, the card itself is nothing special, just another ho-hum common with kind of disturbing artwork and a magazine logo on it. But it is the nature of this logo that makes the promo Four Face such a rarity. You see, for some reason, this card was inserted into issues of Canadian Sports Collector magazine. This is, to say the least, an incredibly baffling decision. Canadian Sports Collector is exactly what you would expect it to be based on the name: a magazine for sports card enthusiasts in The Great White North, focused largely on hockey but also covering baseball, basketball, etc. I can’t help but wonder, though: why choose this particular magazine as an avenue for promos? It’s already fairly niche, which is fine, but the specific niche it occupies seems incredibly far-removed from the target audience for a Sailor Moon game. Perhaps it was a crossover attempt, but if so, I’m not sure how shrewd it was to spend precious marketing dollars targeting the seven people that fall within the overlapping portion of this specific Venn diagram. It makes about as much sense as inserting Brett Hull trading cards into issues of Cat Fancy.
As such, you’d have to imagine that the majority of these Four Face promos got thrown out by bewildered collectors who were just trying to determine the value of their mint condition Theo Fleury rookie card. I’ve only ever personally seen a single copy -the one I own- and during the excruciating process of trying to locate it, my salvation came in the form of a Canadian vintage shop whose website only accepted cash and money orders as default forms of payment. I felt like I had located the Ark of the Covenant.
So let’s say you’re foolish enough to attempt to get a Canadian Four Face of your very own. What’s the best route to success? Well, you could camp out on eBay and wait for one to come up for sale, although there’s a very real possibility that you just die before that happens. Instead, your best option is probably to try and find a copy of whichever issue of Canadian Sports Collector came with the card. Of course, this is complicated by the fact that I have no idea which issue of the magazine contained the card. The aforementioned Canadian vintage shop, in its product description, said that the card was included in a 2002 issue of the magazine. Though this is, incredibly, the most specific date I’ve found for the card's release, I’ll go on record to say that there is no way that 2002 is accurate. The game had been dead for a year at that point! Hilarious though it would be, it would make no sense at all.
Instead, I’d use a few context clues to narrow down the search. Since Four Face is a card from Premiere Edition, it wouldn’t have been a part of the wave of promos for Past & Future from 2001. Thus, it was almost certainly released at the same time as the 2000 promos, which came in magazines with cover dates ranging from August through November of that year. So, were one to purchase the issues of Canadian Sports Collector spanning that period, as long as they still contained all included promos, one would most likely find themself a Four Face. Now where exactly you would find those…well, there’s a reason I don’t have any issues of CSC to show you. I hear Montreal is nice; maybe take a trip up there and scour the local comic and hobby shops. And may fortune smile upon you!
I say this in all sincerity: as I am trying to compile a comprehensive guide to collecting here, if anyone out there has any more specific information about the Canadian Four Face card, I implore you to share it. Maybe there's a rich, untapped vein of them out in the wild somewhere. As it is, I can't even definitively say where the card came from. Some random website I found had a single line of text about Canadian Sports Collector publishing quarterly issues with more of a focus on non-sports collectibles, so maybe it was one of those? That would certainly make sense, but I have no idea. Boy, at times like these I really do miss the meticulously chronicled history that basically every Magic: The Gathering card has.
Speaking of history, I feel I should take the final portion of this article to state my opinion on certain unverified Sailor Moon CCG rumors, based on my research. In particular, I have two items I feel pretty confident about:
1. I have read rumors that other promo cards exist, possibly distributed in "IN"Power!@#$%^ or even a later issue of Canadian Sports Collector. Personally, I can't imagine this is true. I have "IN"Power! issue 11 from March of 2001, so I guess it would have just barely still been in print at the time of the second wave of magazine promo cards (for Past & Future), but I haven't seen any indication whatsoever that the rapidly fading magazine was provided another one. As for Canadian Sports Collector...I cannot rule anything out, but I also cannot believe that multiple people obtained copies of Four Face but no one has ever obtained the later promo. Could another magazine have had a promo? Sure, theoretically, but again, do you mean to tell me that no one has identified that in over twenty years? I don't buy it. I firmly believe every single Sailor Moon CCG card that was printed in any significant number has been at least identified. Which leads to my second, and possibly more controversial, statement:
2. I do not believe that checklist cards for the character theme decks from Premiere Edition exist. This runs contrary to everything I have read or discussed; everyone seems to take it for granted that the Sailor Moon, Mars, Jupiter, etc. decks from Premiere Edition all have accompanying checklist cards. Oddly, however, no one seems to have copies of these checklist cards. Oh sure, they have the checklist cards that came with the two-player set from Premiere Edition, or the checklists that came with the Past & Future decks, or even the two hard-to-find ones referencing the cards in the Past & Future set itself, but they do not have the checklist cards detailing the contents of the non-two-player theme decks from Premiere Edition. I've even heard it said that these checklist cards are so common that no one has bothered collecting them.
To which I say, come on. Be serious. Multiple people have acquired bizarre promos from magazines aimed at hockey card collectors and pint-sized nerds, but not one single human being has held onto one (of six! Just show me one of them!) checklist cards from decks that are still relatively easy to find? Decks that I have purchased that somehow did not include said checklists? I don't buy it. Until I see one of these, I resolutely believe that these checklist cards are the sasquatch of collectible card games. Heck, even sasquatch has some blurry photos out there. These checklists are an urban legend, nothing more. But hey, I welcome you to prove me wrong!
On that note, I intend this article to be a living document, so if I get any more information about any of this, I will update this accordingly. Hopefully, someday, we can put all questions and controversies to rest, but for now, if you have any solid, verified info that you feel I should add, please let me know!
UPDATE: Joey Marsilio's Journal, June 15th, 2024.
I was wrong.
Look, it's hard to admit, but it's true. When I originally wrote this article, I came to what I felt was the logical conclusion that every Sailor Moon CCG promo that existed had been found and documented. There was simply no evidence to the contrary other than rumors and innuendo, which are worth less than all those promises you made me.
Sorry, I'm listening to Olivia Rodrigo while I write this.
So what changed? Simply put, I acquired one of these rumored cards, thus proving it to no longer be a rumor, unless of course I am having a particularly vivid hallucination. If you can see this, then I guess I'm not!
 |
| Still can barely believe it |
In a truly mind-blowing twist of fate, it turns out that there is another Canadian Sports Collector promo. I cannot even begin to wrap my head around how this could happen, but now that I have grasped it in my own quaking hands, I can no longer deny its reality. My apologies to Blue Moon Trading Cards for ever doubting them. Here it is, in all its glory: the internet's first photo of the Canadian Sports Collector Dark Crystal promo card. I don't necessarily think this is the only one in the world, but until I see another one, I don't know that it isn't.
But wait, there's more! Because as crazy as this discovery was, I came into possession of another Sailor Moon CCG card that is even more surprising, given that to my knowledge there were not even rumors as to its existence. Frankly, I don't even think it's supposed to exist. But feel free to judge this abomination for yourself.
No, you didn't just go blind in a very specific part of your eye. Or, if you did, that's quite a coincidence. This is a blank Sailor Moon card. The back of the card is normal, just like any other card in the game, but when you turn it around to its face, you're forced to confront this white empty void. From where does this avatar of nothingness originate? Is it a mistake, meant to be shielded from the public view, but erroneously slipped into some booster packs? I have no idea. But what I do have...is it. This thing. And I now feel that my collection would not have been complete without it.
***
Believe it or not, I could go on abut the Sailor Moon CCG, talking about how there are original printing plates for the cards out there for the truly hardcore collectors, or how there's a completely different Sailor Moon game based on a design by Richard Garfield, the guy who created Magic: The Gathering.
Trying to find some kind of full circle/full moon wordplay here but it feels forced
However, I think at this point this article risks becoming less a resource and more a Guantanamo-esque torture device, so I'll merely leave you with this: my list of wants! If you have any of these that you're willing to part with, let me know...I'm so, so close to completing my set, and I'd be overjoyed to have any of these. The only thing I need from Past & Future is the Checklist 1 of 2 card, and other than that, I just need the following cards from the Unlimited Base Set:
The non-crossed out ones, of course
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to list my extra Past & Future singles on eBay for exorbitant prices.
Hey, listen, I honestly spent like a thousand dollars in the process of putting this all together and I need to recoup at least some of it. If you can find another Greg Uwara somewhere, be my guest! I'm just doing what we in the business refer to as "correcting inefficiencies in the market." Don't lowball me, I know what I have, etc. etc.
Unless you want to trade me for some of the really rare Weiss Schwarz Madoka Magica cards. Oh, don't even get me started on that.
Still looking for that SP English Mami Tomoe, hint hint
Email Joey at joeymarsilio@gmail.com for further inquiries regarding the collection of and bargaining for trading cards related to the magical girls genre. His favorite Sailor Scout of the original five is Jupiter and his favorite Holy Quintet member is Mami, though again, this is a living document, so...
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