Rarest Plarail/Tomy Trains

Wow this thread revived again.

In my personal opinion, if you combine all Plarail, new or old together: it will be a tough debate between the Golden Thomas, the 近郊型でんしゃ, and the 福岡地下鉄（天神）.

According to people in this forum, there are only 10 Golden Thomas units manufactured. So that is a strong hint of rarity.

近郊型でんしゃ (Suburban Train) has 2 colours: Yokosuka colour (left) and Kansai colour (right). It is hands down the uncrowned king of all phantom gems of Plarail, and much more rare than the 1973 rotary snowplough. They were only manufactured in 1976 for less than 1 year. These 2 types of trains only came in a set, no single item. Many survivors were thrown away or not found, and only 2 survivors of each colour were found till this day. It is said that the Kansai colour is 150 times more rare than the Yokosuka colour because it was never featured on the box art, so a risky gamble is to be taken when trying to collect the Kansai colour. There is only 1 auction in history for the original box, ending at 107000 yen for a junk item.
Moreover, Kansai colour's only official printed appearance was only found in the sample layout of the 1976 catalogue.



福岡地下鉄（天神）(Fukuoka Subway) (Tenjin Subway) is one of the most legendary Plarails that a collector could lay his hands on. It is manufactured in 1980 for less than 1 year. The Tenjin was only distributed in Fukuoka region and had 2 types of boxes. One of them is the yellow EC06 box, and the extreme phantom gem box is the blue Fukuoka box that looks like a EC box but it has no EC number. There were no confirmation for the box until a Mercari listing appeared for 100000 yen around last year or early this year. What is worse is that there were no sign of it's existence in the catalogues, researchers were blind to the fact that Tenjin Subway existed until around early year 2000 when a certain collector shown the Tenjin Subway to the museum owners. The number produced is unknown, but it is estimated to be much less than the C-62こうかセット which was manufactured in 1978 for only 5 months. Although the C-62こうかセット is manufactured for only 5 months in 1978, it will not be listed here as the rarest because the number of confirmed survivors with the box are 5 or 6 so far.