Search “Van Gogh Pikachu” and you’ll land on a card we don’t sell — and can’t sell, because it was never released in Japan. But the search also tends to surface a card people mix it up with: a Japanese museum promo built on almost the exact same idea, five years earlier, for a different painter. We carry that one.
This guide covers both. First, the real story of Van Gogh Pikachu — SVP Black Star Promo 085, illustrated by Naoyo Kimura, distributed by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and then pulled just over two weeks after launch. Then the card it’s often confused with in Japanese-promo circles: the 2018 Munch Exhibition set, five promos from a Tokyo museum collaboration that we stock as PSA10-graded singles, including the one you could only get in person at the museum, for a single week.
We do not stock Van Gogh Pikachu (SVP 085) — it’s an English-only museum promo with no Japanese print, tied to a giveaway the Van Gogh Museum halted on October 14, 2023. What we do stock is the Japanese museum-collab family it gets confused with: the 2018 Munch Exhibition promos, 286–290/SM-P, including PSA10 Eevee 287/SM-P currently listed at ¥1,039,475 (~$7,071) (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order).
Prices below are converted at ¥147/USD. Japanese figures are our own listing prices for PSA10-graded singles.
What Van Gogh Pikachu (SVP 085) Actually Is
The card’s full name is Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat, SVP Black Star Promo 085, illustrated by Naoyo Kimura. The artwork puts Pikachu in the pose and palette of Vincent van Gogh’s 1887 Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat.
It came out of a “Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum” collaboration between The Pokémon Company International and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, timed to the museum’s 50th anniversary. Here’s the distribution timeline as documented:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Sept 28, 2023 | Campaign launches at the Van Gogh Museum. Card given for completing a “Pokémon Adventure” activity leaflet, or as a bonus with any “Pokémon Center x Van Gogh Museum” merchandise purchase online |
| Oct 14, 2023 | Museum halts the giveaway “to prioritize safety and security of visitors and staff,” after crowds formed for the free card |
| Feb 2, 2024 | Netherlands-only retail re-run announced: get the card by spending €29.99 on Pokémon TCG products in one transaction at participating stores (Intertoys, Game Mania, Top1Toys, Primera, Bruna, Media Markt, Smyths Toys, and local game stores) |
Two details matter for anyone searching this card specifically. First, it is an English-language SVP promo — it was never packed into a booster, deck, or event product of the core TCG, in any language. Second, and most relevant if you’re shopping a Japanese card shop like ours: no Japanese-language print of Van Gogh Pikachu is documented anywhere. It doesn’t have a Japanese promo number, and it never ran through a Pokémon Center Japan campaign the way our other famous licensed Pikachu — Mario Pikachu — did.
The “Pokémon x famous painter” idea behind the card isn’t unique to the Van Gogh Museum campaign, either. It’s part of a wider pattern of The Pokémon Company partnering with art institutions to turn a gallery visit into a promo-card giveaway — getting a crowd through the door with a free collectible tied to the exhibition on the walls. The Van Gogh Museum campaign is simply the most recent, most internationally visible version of that idea. Japan ran its own version of the same playbook five years earlier, and that’s the one this guide is really about.
Why We Don’t Stock Van Gogh Pikachu
We’re a Tokyo-based shop and we deal in Japanese product. Van Gogh Pikachu was distributed entirely through a Dutch museum and Netherlands retail partners, in English, with no Japanese counterpart print. It simply never entered the market we source from, so it isn’t something we can list — not now, and there’s no Japanese release to watch for later.
If you found this page looking specifically for that card, it’s worth knowing what it typically gets confused with in searches: Japan’s own history of museum-exhibition Pokémon promos, which predates the Van Gogh campaign by five years and follows a similar idea — a Pokémon reimagined in a famous painter’s style, distributed through a museum collaboration. For general background on how these Pokémon Center-style promo campaigns work, see our Pokémon Center Pikachu promo guide. The Japanese version of the “art museum Pikachu” idea is what the rest of this guide covers — and it’s something we actually carry.
We’d rather send you to the right page than sell you nothing at all. If Van Gogh Pikachu specifically is what you’re after, the honest answer is that it’s a Netherlands-market English promo you’d need to source from a European or North American secondary market, not from a Japan-focused shop. But if what actually drew you in was the concept — a rare, exhibition-only Pikachu tied to a real museum — the Munch Exhibition set below is that concept, and it’s Japanese, and we have PSA10 copies of it.
The Japanese Museum Promo We Do Carry: Munch Exhibition Cards
In 2018, The Pokémon Company partnered with the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum for Munch: A Retrospective (「ムンク展—共鳴する魂の叫び」), running October 27, 2018 – January 20, 2019. Five promo cards, numbered 286–290/SM-P, each put a Pokémon in the pose of Edvard Munch’s The Scream — the same 1910 tempera version the exhibition showed in Japan for the first time. Lined up in number order, each card even shows the previous card’s Pokémon as a background silhouette.
This is the set we stock as PSA10-graded singles. Here’s the full lineup, its original distribution, and our current listing status:
| # | Card | Illustrator | Released | Original distribution | Our listing (PSA10) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 286/SM-P | Psyduck / コダック | Tomokazu Komiya | Nov 2, 2018 | Store pick, 1 of 3 promos, with purchase of 2 booster packs | Out of stock — recently listed at ¥1,802,500 (~$12,262) (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order) |
| 287/SM-P | Eevee / イーブイ | Atsuko Nishida | Nov 2, 2018 | Store pick, 1 of 3 promos, with purchase of 2 booster packs | Currently listed at ¥1,039,475 (~$7,071) (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order) |
| 288/SM-P | Pikachu / ピカチュウ | You Iribi | Dec 10–16, 2018 | Handed out to visitors during the museum’s “Pokémon Week,” limited to 1 per person | Out of stock — recently listed at ¥2,483,330 (~$16,893) (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order) |
| 289/SM-P | Mimikyu / ミミッキュ | Hasuno | Oct 27, 2018 | Bundled with the Scream mini card file, sold at the exhibition shop and Pokémon Center Online | Out of stock — restock requests via Quick Order (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order) |
| 290/SM-P | Rowlet / モクロー | Hideki Ishikawa | Nov 2, 2018 | Store pick, 1 of 3 promos (Pokémon Center Online excluded from this one) | Out of stock — recently listed at ¥456,244 (~$3,104) (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order) |
None of the five received an English printing, so — unlike Van Gogh Pikachu — there’s no English-market equivalent to compare against; these five exist only as Japanese SM-P promos. We’ve covered the set’s silhouette gimmick and exhibition context in more depth in our Munch/Scream promo cards guide; this page focuses on what’s currently buyable.
Pikachu 288/SM-P: The Museum-Only Card
Of the five Munch promos, Pikachu 288/SM-P is the one that carries the highest price and the tightest original distribution. The other four moved through nationwide store promotions or a purchasable product insert. Pikachu 288 didn’t — it was distributed only inside the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, only during “Pokémon Week,” December 10–16, 2018, at a strict limit of one per visitor.
That’s a seven-day window, in one building, with no way to get a copy by mail order or through a booster pack. Everything else about how the card entered circulation traces back to that one week. A PSA10 copy is out of stock, recently listed at ¥2,483,330 (~$16,893) (update: currently sold out — restock requests via Quick Order) — the highest of the five in our listings. As with any graded card, PSA independently determines authenticity and grade; we don’t add any guarantee beyond the slab.
There’s no official print-run figure published for 288/SM-P. Any specific quantity you see cited elsewhere is community-reported and unofficial — what’s documented is the distribution structure above, not a total count.
It’s worth pausing on why that one-week, in-person-only window matters more than it might look at first glance. The other four Munch promos all had a path to distribution beyond a single physical location: three went out at “participating Pokémon Centers and Stores” nationwide (plus, in two of those three cases, online), and one came bundled with a purchasable product sold both at the exhibition shop and through Pokémon Center Online. Pikachu 288 had none of that. There was no mail-order option, no wider retail rollout, and no way to claim one without physically attending the museum during that specific week. That structural difference — not hype, not artwork — is the documented reason it’s the standout of the five.
Eevee, Psyduck, Mimikyu & Rowlet: The Rest of the Set
Eevee 287/SM-P, illustrated by Atsuko Nishida (Eevee’s original artist), went out through the same 2-booster-pack store promotion as Psyduck and Rowlet, one of three cards a shopper could pick. In the silhouette chain, Eevee’s card carries Psyduck’s silhouette in the background, and Eevee itself becomes the silhouette on the next card in the sequence, Pikachu 288.
Psyduck 286/SM-P, illustrated by Tomokazu Komiya, is the first card in the set — instead of another promo’s silhouette, its background features Haunter and Gengar, a nod to the exhibition’s psychological-horror framing of The Scream.
Mimikyu 289/SM-P, illustrated by Hasuno, is the odd one out on distribution: rather than a store giveaway, it came bundled inside the Scream mini card file product, sold at the exhibition shop and through the Pokémon Center Online starting the exhibition’s opening day, October 27, 2018.
Rowlet 290/SM-P, illustrated by Hideki Ishikawa, closes out the set as the final silhouette link, carrying Mimikyu’s shape in its background art. It shared the same 2-booster-pack promotion as Eevee and Psyduck, with one notable exception noted by Bulbapedia: the Pokémon Center Online was specifically excluded from this particular promotion.
None of the five have an official print-run figure. Whatever quantity you see quoted for any of them elsewhere should be treated as community-reported and unofficial — we’re not printing a number here because none has a source.
How to Get a Munch Exhibition Promo Today
These aren’t cards you can pull from a modern booster box or order as a reprint — the exhibition closed in January 2019, and all five numbers were one-time promotional distributions. The only way to add one to a collection now is the secondary market: graded singles like the PSA10 copies above, or ungraded copies through general Japanese card marketplaces.
We don’t have a broad, multi-listing secondary-market range to quote for any of the five — our own listing prices above are the anchor we can stand behind, since these promos don’t show up with enough independent asking-price listings elsewhere to build a reliable spread. If you’re comparing against other famous Pokémon Center-era Pikachu promos while you shop, our guides to the best Pikachu cards from Japan and the top 10 Japanese Pikachu cards put the Munch promos in context against Mario Pikachu, Poncho Pikachu, and other collaboration-era chase cards.
For anything currently out of stock — Psyduck 286, Pikachu 288, Mimikyu 289, or Rowlet 290 — the fastest way to flag interest is our Quick Order page, which we use to route restock requests as PSA10 copies come through.
Where to Buy
We ship Japanese singles and sealed product worldwide from Tokyo with tracked delivery. Of the five Munch Exhibition promos, Eevee 287/SM-P is the one currently available to order directly.
For the other four — or any other Japanese Pikachu promo — our Quick Order page is the fastest way to submit a restock request or build a mixed order. If you’re building out a broader Pikachu collection, our guides to Pikachu & Zekrom-GX and the best Zekrom cards, Detective Pikachu cards, and Pikachu VMAX cards cover the other major promo and chase-card families outside this museum-collab corner of the hobby.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you sell Van Gogh Pikachu (SVP 085)?
No. Van Gogh Pikachu is an English-only SVP promo distributed by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and, later, Netherlands retail partners. No Japanese-language print of the card is documented anywhere, so it never entered the Japanese market we source product from.
Was there ever a Japanese release of Van Gogh Pikachu?
Not that’s documented. Bulbapedia’s card record lists only the museum-leaflet distribution and the 2024 Netherlands retail re-run — no Japanese promo number, no Japanese TCG product tie-in.
Why did the Van Gogh Museum stop giving away the card?
The museum halted the giveaway on October 14, 2023, citing visitor and staff safety and security after crowds formed for the free card. A Netherlands-only retail re-run followed on February 2, 2024, requiring a €29.99 purchase of Pokémon TCG products at participating stores.
What’s the closest card you actually stock to Van Gogh Pikachu?
The Japanese Munch Exhibition promos, 286–290/SM-P, from a 2018 Pokémon Company collaboration with the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. They follow a similar concept — a Pokémon in a famous painter’s style, tied to a museum exhibition — but are five separate Japanese-only promo cards, five years earlier. We currently list PSA10 Eevee 287/SM-P, with the other four out of stock.
Which Munch Exhibition promo is the hardest to find?
Pikachu 288/SM-P. It’s the only one of the five distributed at the museum itself, and only during the exhibition’s “Pokémon Week,” December 10–16, 2018, limited to one per visitor. The other four went out through nationwide store promotions or a purchasable product bundle.
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