What is the Eon Ticket?

The Eon Ticket is a physical e-Reader card, and the most famous piece of paper in Generation III. Scanned into Pokémon Ruby or Sapphire through the e-Reader accessory, it grants passage from Lilycove City to Southern Island, a small island where the Eon Pokémon that does not roam in that game waits in person, Latias in Ruby and Latios in Sapphire, holding a Soul Dew.

Its distribution is the story. The card was carried in issue 173 of Nintendo Power, the magazine's November 2003 issue, and handed out at events including E3 2003 and Toys R Us promotions, making a magazine subscription the era's most reliable distribution channel. One ticket could also seed others: mixing records with a ticket holder could pass the event onward, a rare piece of generosity in the system.

Japan had its own version of the campaign through its fan club, confirming the ticket as a worldwide system rather than a regional quirk, though the Western paper card is the artifact collectors handle.

The Eon Ticket collapses the era into one object: a trading-card-sized piece of dot-coded cardstock, printed in a magazine, that opens an island in a video game.