Pokemon Center Regional Special Boxes: Guide

What Are Pokemon Center Special Boxes?

A Pokemon Center “Special Box” is a store-specific product sold through Pokemon Center Online, built around a single exclusive promo card that isn’t available anywhere else. They’re tied to a real-world event at a specific store — an opening, a renewal, a relocation — rather than to a card set’s normal release schedule. Because the promo card only ever ships inside that one box, from that one campaign, these products get chased long after the original sale window closes.

Our Japan-exclusive Pokemon cards guide covers this category more broadly; the sections below focus specifically on the region-and-store-branded Pikachu boxes, which is where most of the confusion starts.

Meet the Three Promo Pikachu

Each 2025 box’s promo card is a Pikachu bearing the host store’s name, all issued under the SV-P promotional card series:

All three cards are Electric-type with 70 HP and share the same first attack, “Renewal Open!” (draw 2 cards from your deck) — a direct nod to the store renewal each box was built to celebrate. Only the second attack and illustrator change store to store: Tohoku’s Pikachu (illustrated by Kouki Saitou) also knows “Odorimawaru” (flip coins until tails, 30 damage per heads), Hiroshima’s Pikachu (illustrated by REOspikee) also knows “Norikonasu” (30+ damage, flip a coin for an extra 30), and Fukuoka’s Pikachu (illustrated by Nelnal) also knows “Tabearuku” (30 damage, heals this Pokemon for 30).

Our Pokemon Center Pikachu promo guide rounds up the wider family of store-exclusive Pikachu cards if you’re tracking the set beyond this trio, and our SV-P promo guide covers where these three sit inside the current SV-P promotional numbering.

The Earlier Generation: Sapporo & Kanazawa Pikachu

Before the 2025 renewal trio, two other Pokemon Center promo Pikachu picked up the “regional” label — and both come from a different kind of event entirely.

Sapporo’s Pikachu (SM-P 005)

Sapporo’s Pikachu was released Thursday, December 1, 2016, to commemorate the reopening of Pokemon Center Sapporo at its new Daimaru Sapporo location, illustrated by kawayoo. The card itself wasn’t a Sapporo-store-only giveaway, though — it was distributed at every Pokemon Center and Pokemon Store location nationwide, plus online, with one card given per five expansion packs purchased (any expansion, buyer’s choice). The “Sapporo” in the name refers to the store whose reopening the card commemorates, not a store-exclusive pickup location.

Kanazawa’s Pikachu (S-P 144 / S-P 147)

Kanazawa’s Pikachu was created to mark the opening of Pokemon Center Kanazawa, and it exists as two distinct printings. 144/S-P, the version we carry, is the “with mark” printing that was distributed free to visitors at Pokemon Center and Pokemon Store locations nationwide during its distribution period. A second printing, 147/S-P, was only available bundled inside a purchase-required Special Box. We don’t currently list 147/S-P. The exact date the 144/S-P distribution began isn’t documented in our sourcing, so we can’t put a specific calendar date on it.

Note the price gap: our PSA 10 Sapporo Pikachu sits well above every 2025 box promo, and above the Kanazawa piece too. Nationwide distribution didn’t make Sapporo’s Pikachu common — it’s simply an older, 2016-era promo where high-grade population is thinner, and demand for the reopening-commemoration card has stayed strong for nearly a decade.

Don’t Lump These Together

Search results and secondary listings tend to group every store-branded Pikachu under one “regional Pikachu” label, but the five cards here come from two genuinely different kinds of event, five years or more apart in launch context:

• Store renewal (2025): Tohoku, Hiroshima and Fukuoka Pikachu were each created to mark a specific store’s renewal or relocation, sold by lottery in a purpose-built Special Box.
• Store opening or reopening commemoration (2016 and S-series): Sapporo’s Pikachu commemorated Pokemon Center Sapporo’s reopening but was distributed nationwide at any Pokemon Center or Pokemon Store visit, not picked up in-store. Kanazawa’s Pikachu marked a store opening rather than a renewal.

Treating all five as one interchangeable “regional Pikachu” bucket misses the reason each card exists, and can lead to comparing a nationwide campaign giveaway against a single-store lottery box as if they were the same kind of product. They aren’t — and the price table above reflects that.

Frequently Asked Questions