‘Secret Mew’ Card Allegedly Pulled from 30th Celebration Pack – is it Real?
Are we getting another brand new rarity in Pokémon TCG 30th Celebration – one that has yet to be officially announced by the Pokémon Company?
That’s what Collectors Republic is claiming. The Online TCG store that identifies itself as “#1” for Japanese TCGs has allegedly pulled a Mew card with a brand new rarity never before seen in the Pokémon TCG.
Collectors Republic has been posting many Pokémon 30th Celebration pack openings over the last few days, following what is becoming a common trend of would-be influencers leveraging the hype around Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration for views. It’s a strategy that’s been working in the absence of much recent news around the set, either in terms of official card reveals or leaks from the Pokémon Company itself.
From Crystal Lugia, to a Shinji-illustrated Pikachu, these early product openings are spoiling a lot of the set before official channels can. While that might not be such a big problem if these were officially condoned early pack openings, as is always the case with leaks this early out, it’s highly likely that these packs were never intended to be opened and their contents revealed at this point in time.
If not gifted for the express reason of creating hype ahead of the set by the Pokémon Company, it’s hard to say how then these products were obtained in the first place. Regardless of their origin, unsanctioned openings disrupt the intended preview cycle and spoil the discovery experience for the wider community.
Is the Mew B/RGB real?
Image of the ‘Secret Mew’ card allegedly pulled from a Pokémon 30th Celebration pack
While most of the cards getting featured in these early pack openings from various creators have included features of cards we already had a rough idea about existing, this Mew is a different beast. It’s clearly not a card from the Classic Collection as those are all reprints of older cards (and we already know the complete list).
Nor was this card pictured in any of the unofficially leaked or officially revealed cards so far.
B/RGB is missing a 30th Celebration stamp
All 30th Celebration Pokémon cards revealed so far bear the Pikachu stamp seen above
Beyond those concerns, a few things on the card itself appear fishy. For starters, this Mew does not have the 30th Celebration Pikachu stamp that is included on all the cards from the set: whether those are main set cards, secret rares, or even related promo cards.
To me, that’s the biggest red flag that this Mew may not be all its pack opener is claiming it to be.
Mew B/RGB is missing a set number
While not quite as big of a deal to me as the missing stamp, this Mew also lacks a set number. That’s definitely more than a little odd as almost all Pokémon cards have a set number. It’s part of how the card is identified. While this Mew does have the B/RBG, that’s not in any way a traditional set number.
Now, I can’t say that no Pokémon card has ever been printed without a set number. Indeed, some older Japanese promo cards lacked a set number, as you can see on TCGPlayer. Perhaps more famously, the original Mew promo you could get from seeing Pokémon 2000 in theaters does not have a traditional set number.
That doesn’t prove this Mew is real, however. It just shows there is some precedent for unnumbered cards, however far fetched assuming a new rarity from a modern set would be printed without one.
Strangely, the B/RGB mew has a familiar illustrator
One last thing to consider is this: the newly revealed Mew card bears the same illustrator as the officially revealed Future Mew and Mewtwo cards: YOSHIROTTEN
If this were a fake, whoever conjured this image up paid an impressive amount of detail to give it the same illustrator as the eagerly anticipated Future Rarity cards from the set. That being said, it could also just be an artifact from those very cards – especially plausible if those future rare cards were fed into some AI tool to generate something new and convincing like this.
B/RGB Mew description
Although I couldn’t read the flavor text on the bottom right hand side of the card, I fed the image through Gemini to get what the words actually say.
“So rare that it is still said to be a mirage by many experts. Only a few people have seen it worldwide.”
As seasoned Pokémon fans will know, this is the original Pokédex entry found in the original Red, Blue, and Green games – directly tying in with that odd B/RGB on the image of the Mew card.
That being said, this same text is on several well known Mew cards, making it a relatively standard flavor text/Pokédex entry for a Mew card, and not necessarily a sign that this card is actually authentic.
Is the Secret Mew card real? Or is it a craftily created fake? Or maybe something else entirely like a factory error never intended to see the light of day?
While we don’t know for sure, we’ll likely get our answer when Pokémon 30th starts hitting the streets. Based on what we’ve seen of this card so far, my guess is that it’s likely not intended to be part of this set.
