What's the deal with Cotton and teacups?

[koifish | 561]

I've seen them on sale at super-inflated prices in akiba, and online at yahoo auctions Japan, but I don't really understand it. I've read that Success made these teacups to go along with the cotton games, but was it a prize giveaway, or a limited edition version of the games, or like a mail-order thing, or something else? I've heard only a few hundred were sold for each variety, which is part of my curiosity that they don't seem to actually be that "rare", meaning they are limited in quantity but people don't seem to hold onto them very tightly.

I'm curious too because they've promised a new teacup for the new game coming out, and I've been thinking of importing the DX version of the new "Cotton Rock'n'Roll", and feel like I'm missing details on this part of the series history, maybe because I haven't learned enough Japanese yet to really dig deep into JP news articles/etc. about this topic (or maybe they're lurking in magazines that aren't scanned but for in private databases, ie. GamePres, which I think is still working on getting their DB online for public reference).

[sp1nz | 616]

Panorama Cotton came with a voucher you could mail to the company to get the cup. You can see it in the images here:

http://www.guardiana.net/MDG-Database/Mega Drive/Panorama Cotton/

That should also mean that every voucher that was sent in is gone now on top of the vouchers that got lost / thrown away.

Racketboy claims that:

"The game on its own is rare enough (about 5,000 copies were produced), but if you really want to show everyone up, try to find the game with the rare Panorama tea cup that was available initially for free to anyone that sent in a coupon to the publisher. Only about 300 of those tea cups exist and its presence with the game could increase the overall value of a complete package substantially."

No idea if that's even close to the truth but there are low print games that appear often or sit in listings, so it's hard to confirm or deny unless you see some official sales numbers yourself.

Picture of my game+cup for funsies (my game doesn't have any paperwork beyond the manual but I do have the generic cardboard box for the cup, it's just a white cardboard box with some light green paper shoved in and around the cup - those seem to be original since they're in the Guardiana pictures as well):

Edited July 9, 2021 by sp1nz