Card Illustration Figure Collection: Waterside Pokémon, PCO Only

Pokémon put twelve water-type card illustrations into physical form, priced them at ¥1,800, and then sold them through the single channel an overseas collector cannot open. The Card Illustration Figure Collection: Waterside Pokémon (カードイラストフィギュアコレクション みずべのポケモン) is a Pokémon Center Online exclusive, capped at one box per person, and PCO restricts both membership and delivery to Japan. The practical route runs through the Japanese secondary market instead, and on September 16, 2026 that market was asking ¥1,700 to ¥4,000 for a named single figure.

What is in a Waterside Pokémon box, and what does ¥1,800 buy?

One figure, one display frame with a stand, and one card, drawn at random from thirteen kinds. Twelve are published. The thirteenth is a secret, printed on the official list as ??? ???/??? with its rarity withheld.

The card is not a bonus promo. Pokémon lists every enclosed card by the set code, collector number and rarity it already carries, which makes the contents unusually easy to price before you buy.

Read the prefixes and the shape of the thing becomes obvious. Two codes begin with S rather than SV, which is the Sword & Shield block, and the other ten are Scarlet & Violet. Nine commons and uncommons, three at R. Pokémon names ten source sets on the announcement, and only nine of them appear among the twelve revealed codes: Battle Partners is the one missing, which is our reading of where the secret comes from rather than anything the page states.

Both the announcement and the store listing carry the same line: 「この商品にはスタンダードレギュレーションの大会では使用できないカードが含まれております。」 The product contains cards that cannot be used in Standard-regulation tournaments. That is arithmetic, not a defect. Standard has been limited to regulation marks H, I and J since January 23, 2026, and this line-up reaches back to Star Birth in 2022. The full decode of that corner of the card is in what Japanese card codes and regulation marks mean.

Why Pokémon Center Online is a closed door, and what is open

PCO blocks this at the account, not at the shipping label, which is the part most people get wrong. A Japanese forwarding address fixes the delivery problem and leaves the membership problem untouched.

Two clauses do the work. PCO’s terms state that applications for membership are limited to individuals resident in Japan (日本国在住の個人に限られるものとします), and that delivery under the service is limited to within Japan (商品の配送は、日本国内に限ります). Its delivery guide repeats the second point in plainer words: overseas delivery is not accepted. The same terms list reselling goods to third parties for profit among the prohibited acts, and the product page adds お一人様 1点限り, a hard cap of one box per person.

The one-per-person cap deserves a second look, because it quietly kills the obvious plan. Thirteen kinds at one box per account means completing the set through PCO takes thirteen separate people, not thirteen clicks. Even a collector standing in Tokyo with a verified account buys exactly one. Whatever route you take, set completion happens on the secondary market or it does not happen.

What one figure actually lands at

The stack is short, and every line in it is a published number rather than a guess.

Run a ¥2,000 figure through Neokyo’s ¥850 and Japan Post’s ¥1,670 and it lands at about ¥4,520 to a US address, or about ¥4,080 to Europe on the ¥1,230 rate. The band across realistic combinations is roughly ¥4,200 to ¥6,000 before import tax. Two things move that total more than the figure’s own price: how many separate sellers your order touches, since proxy charges fire per order, and whether the packer keeps you under 500 g. The bracket table and the carrier comparison are in what proxy shipping from Japan really costs, and the fee stacks side by side are in Japanese proxy services compared for cards.

What the Japanese secondary market was asking on September 16, 2026

Eleven listings came back on the first page of a Yahoo! Auctions search for カードイラストフィギュアコレクション みずべ. Most carried a buy-it-now price, so these are asks rather than live bidding.

Three readings fall out of that. Identical figures sat at ¥1,700 and ¥3,500 in the same search, so the spread is seller behavior rather than scarcity. A stated-unopened box at ¥2,222 cost more than a named Poliwag at ¥1,700, which means the blind box carries a gambling premium over the known outcome. And the twelve-box lot works out to ¥2,333 a box, above PCO’s ¥1,800 shelf price but below most of the singles.

Yahoo! Auctions also lists an earlier Card Illustration Figure Collection at the same ¥1,800, which is why sellers bundle 2種セット (two-wave sets). Both waves sat at first and second place in PCO’s overall ranking when we checked. The mechanics of reading either marketplace are in Mercari versus Yahoo! Auctions for Japanese cards.

Is the card inside worth anything to you?

Treat it as packaging. Nine of the twelve are commons and uncommons from sets between 2022 and 2025, and the three R cards are Slowbro, Starmie and Golisopod. None of these are numbers anyone hunts, which is the whole reason Pokémon could put them in a ¥1,800 figure box in the first place.

So what for overseas collectors?

This is a small, cheap, pleasant item behind a gate that has nothing to do with scarcity. PCO is not rationing these. It simply does not sell to you, and the official announcement names no other retailer, so there is no second channel to watch and nothing to preorder.

Everything with a confirmed Japanese release date sits on our JP release calendar, and PCO’s structural gates across its other exclusives are documented in entering the Pokémon Center Online lottery from overseas. We will recheck the secondary-market band once the first wave of sellers has worked through its stock.