What Broccoli sold, and what it cost new

Every yen price here is printed on the product or on the publisher’s own site, and none is marked as including tax: the site gives the starter and booster prices as before tax, and the boxes print theirs as base prices (本体価格). No dated secondary-market prices for this game are on file, so this page gives none.

  • Starter. ¥1,000 for 40 cards and a rulebook. The Ver.2 box back adds that the stadium sheet carrying the printed rules ships only in the starter, and recommends buying one alongside boosters.
  • Booster. ¥200 for 7 cards, in all four versions: Ver.1 (99 kinds), Ver.2 Conqueror of the Continent (72), Ver.3 Emperor of the Glacier (72) and Expansion 3, 古よりの伝承者, the collector database’s Ver.4, on sale by 13 December 2002 at the same price; its kind count is not sourced (see the last section).
  • Joint Booster. ¥1,600, released 26 April 2002: three Ver.1 boosters, one of each expansion and a purple clear Driger F top; no shooter or winder.
  • Booster box. 20 packs at ¥4,000, both prices printed on the box.
  • Deck cases. Four, for Draciel, Driger, Dranzer and Dragoon, ¥300 each, on sale with the game in 2001.
  • Dranzer S Blue Clear bundle pack. The starter plus a blue clear Dranzer S top sold no other way, ¥1,600, released 30 August 2001, with Lawson pre-orders handed over on 21 September.
  • Constructed decks. The V2 deck and the Gaia deck, ¥500 each, sold first in the cinemas showing the 2002 film; the collector database catalogues 12 cards of each.
  • Constructed character decks. The Victory deck (Takao, Max, Kane) and the Flash deck (Ozuma, Kai, Rei), ¥500 each: a stadium sheet with the rules plus 21 cards, three ready-made decks of seven with fixed contents. None of their cards is catalogued.
  • Card file. An 80-card file sold with four PR cards inside, PR023 among them; the capture cuts off before its price.

The oldest surviving news capture, 9 September 2001, announces the game as newly on sale, and Broccoli’s Game Boy Color game of 27 July 2001 already carried five foil C.C.G. cards as a bonus (which five is not yet sourced). Ver.2 was on sale by 18 November 2001 and Ver.3 listed by 23 March 2002; exact release days are on no page read. The photographed boxes and packs are on the products page.

Set structure and rarity, as the boxes print it

Broccoli’s lists number the three versions in one run, 001 to 087, 088 to 147 and 148 to 207, beside two lettered series, SP-001 to SP-027 and SSP-001 to SSP-009. The lists do not mark common, uncommon or rare; the only rarity figures are on the boxes.

  • Ver.1: 99 kinds: 39 common, 30 uncommon, 18 rare, plus 9 SP and 3 SSP.
  • Ver.2: 72 kinds: 24, 24, 12, plus 9 and 3; by kind, 42 Beyblade, 20 special move, 10 stadium.
  • Ver.3: the same 72 kinds, 24/24/12/9/3 and 42/20/10.

The lists never say where the SP and SSP cards fall between the versions, but the box totals settle it arithmetically: 87 Ver.1 cards plus SP-001 to 009 and SSP-001 to 003 make 99, and each later version’s 60 cards plus the next nine SP and three SSP make 72, with Ver.2’s kind split landing on exactly 42/20/10. The names agree: SP-014 to 018 are Ver.2’s Chinese and American teams, SP-019 to 027 Ver.3’s tops. Our card list follows that split.

One figure does not reconcile. The Ver.1 box back was read as 49 Beyblade cards, 31 special moves and 19 stadiums, which the list cannot produce (it gives 54, 30 and 15); a misread of the photo is the likelier explanation, and it stays flagged until the box is re-read.

Parallels

Each list page has a “P” column with a dot against every card that also exists as a parallel, defined there as the same illustration, text and abilities in a shiny finish. Exactly 24 cards in each numbered version carry the dot, as do 6 of the 9 SSP cards; no SP card does. The Ver.2 box back confirms that the kind totals leave parallels out. The collector database shows silver and gold finishes: card 065 Metal Ball Defense is catalogued plain, silver and gold, and 015 Kid Draciel in silver; whether every dotted card exists in both is not yet sourced.

Parallels are not the recoloured-toy cards, which are numbers of their own: SP-010 to SP-013 are plated versions of the four starter Beyblades in red, blue, silver and green; SSP-001 and SSP-002 are Dragoon Storm in gunmetal and in gold, SSP-003 Dranzer Spiral in silver, SSP-004 Dragoon Phantom in gold plating and SSP-006 Wolborg in blue plating (SSP-005, Dranzer Flame, carries no such tag); and 088 is Dragoon Phantom with a gold weight disk.

What is rare

  • SSP. Three per version, nine in all, every one a Beyblade card, six with a parallel on top.
  • SP. Nine per version, 27 in all: 23 Beyblades, one special move, one stadium and two Majestics cards that count as both.
  • Promotional cards. The collector database holds seven: Dragoon Storm (PR-001), Dranzer Spiral (PR-003), Kai (PR-007), Ray (PR-008), a blue clear Dranzer Spiral (PR-013), Dragoon Victory (PR-016) and Driger Fang (PP-004); the gaps imply at least 16 PR cards. Promos were the participation prize at the 2002 Coliseum, run at 52 shops from 16 February to 7 April 2002, and one 2001 shop tournament banned them from play. Which promo went with which event, and whether PR-013 came in the Dranzer S bundle, is not yet sourced.

The Korean Top Blade printings

Sonokong sold the first version in Korea under the series’ Korean name, as an overprint on the Japanese pack design. What follows is what the wrapper prints.

  • Front. A blue diamond TOP BLADE logo, Korean text for 7 cards and 99 kinds, a suggested retail price of 500 won and the English line “Not sales for out of Korea.” (printed text); the Japanese rights line stays in Latin letters.
  • Back. A Sonokong label giving January 2002 as the month of manufacture, an age rating of 5 and up, an address in Incheon, MADE IN KOREA and a barcode beginning 880, Korea’s country prefix.
  • A Japanese pack sold in Korea. A Japanese-language Ver.2 pack in the collection carries a Sonokong back label, MADE IN KOREA and another 880 barcode, dated April 2002 by the product record; the Japanese-language game crossed the strait too.

A Japanese domestic pack or box names Broccoli as distributor with its Nerima, Tokyo address and prints a ¥200 base price; the Ver.3 pack adds MADE IN JAPAN and the barcode 4510417041573, whose 4510417 prefix also opens the barcode of Broccoli’s 2002 Game Boy Advance game, so it reads as the company’s own. Nothing on Broccoli’s site mentions Korea, and whether Ver.2 and Ver.3 had Korean-language wrappers is not yet sourced.

Condition

These are twenty-five-year-old cards made for elementary-school children: the entry rules for Broccoli’s 2001 national tournament and its 2002 hobby-fair challenge admitted no one older. Assume most survivors were shuffled and played. What follows is general advice for paper of this age, not anything measured on this game: check edges and corners for play wear, look at foils under a raking light for scratches and curl, sleeve what you keep, and store it flat where humidity does not swing. Broccoli’s support page told buyers how to send a faulty card back by post; check clean-looking cards for print faults as well as wear. No grading population report or graded sale for this game is on file.

Still undocumented

  • Expansion 3, 古よりの伝承者 (Ver.4). Price and pack size are now sourced from the December 2002 news page (¥200, 7 cards, on sale by 13 December 2002). Its card list is not: Broccoli’s list pages never carried it, and the collector database’s 25 cards, numbered 220 to 266, imply at least 59 if the numbering continued from 207. Kind count and exact date: not yet sourced.
  • Statistics for 104 listed cards. Broccoli’s lists give a number, name and kind for 104 cards the collector database lacks; their printed values and texts are not yet sourced, and their card pages say so.
  • The starter’s 40 cards, the rulebook and the stadium sheet. On no page and in no photographed product.
  • The decks’ cards. The V2 and Gaia decks’ catalogued numbers start at CN-031, which hints at thirty earlier cards, perhaps the Victory and Flash decks’ 42; none of those is catalogued.
  • Prices after 2002. No dated secondary-market sale is on file; this page carries none until one is.

Every card Broccoli listed is on the game page; how to play covers what the pages reveal about the rules.