In celebration of your annual Easter egg hunt and eating far too much chocolate at a detriment to your physical health, we’ve decided to take a deeper look into a Japanese promo focusing on the Easter period. Whether you celebrate Easter or not, happy Sunday from everyone here at Ludkins Media. This is 2017’s Pikachu’s Easter 055/SM-P.
Released on 1 April 2017, as part of the Sparkling Spring Festival Campaign, Pikachu’s Easter was distributed at participating Pokemon Centres in Japan. Customers were supplied with an egg-shaped card that included 1 of 4 promotional cards when purchasing five or more booster packs in one transaction.
The promo cards in question were a Mareanie, Turtonator, Passimian, and of course, Pikachu. The cards were available up until 9 April 2017.
The Sparkling Spring Festival Campaign also included an egg distribution in Pokemon Sun and Moon as well as Easter-themed merchandise such as plush toys, keyrings, and stickers.
From a collector’s standpoint, Easter’s Pikachu 055/SM-P is rising quite substantially for a card that was given away as a free promotional release. The last PSA 10 sold at PWCC auctions on eBay at the end of February for $460 and recent solds show a stable price point currently around that mark. As far as the other cards in this collection go, due to the lack of dedicated artwork, there seems to be a very low population and a low price to match.
Focusing on Pikachu, this card is everything we know and love about Japanese Pikachu promos. For starters, we don’t often see a female Pikachu in artwork with its heart-shaped tail, and holding a small Easter basket surrounded by eggs is the kind of festive card people love. Illustrator Hanako, uses the holo pattern from Japanese holos to create a contrasting mirror-finished combined with their art style and a pinstripe wallpaper background in pastel colours – this card is incredibly cute and one to add to any Pikachu collection.
Happy Easter from everyone at Ludkins Media
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John-Anthony Disotto – Ludkins Media Editor-in-Chief
