As an aside, I had an inkling that that was your ebay account that I’ve been buying some cards from recently, just based on the types of cards you’ve been listing–and this confirms it! Haha. With regards to the Minun, I’m pretty dumbfounded as well. I can’t think of anything that explains what happened there…
That’s funny; hopefully you liked the cards you purchased from me? Haha. But yeah, I honestly don’t know how to explain it. I entirely understand why it seems insanely sketchy to the guy. There just is an explanation for it and I’m trying to figure it out what it is 
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The seller kept tabs on you months after the refund? Sure, refunds suck, but I forget about them within a day…
I think the seller is just paranoid
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I fixed the cards to match in size and placed them on top of each other and did a opacity transition on the one on top, hope that helps
Left corner has a holo big star consistent on both cards, the holo 3 dots near the right side of the minum’s belly is very faint on one of them but matches up with the other card, It seems these are the exact same cards, but not entirely sure.
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Wow, very nice job…and yes, I’ve come to the same conclusion. I just honestly don’t know how in the fuck this happened. He denies having buylisted to Troll and Toad, so I really can’t think of an explanation. Because I sure as hell didn’t defraud him, publicly list the exact same card on eBay (we met on eBay, so he knows my eBay account), then make a public forum post trying to prove that the cards are different, and then conclude that they are actually the same card, despite what many people on this thread have said. So I just have zero clue how any of this happened. Any explanation I could give him is going to sound incredibly farfetched. I’m more than happy to refund him x100; I’m just really bothered by the accusation (though I entirely understand the conclusion he came to).
I still think the most likely explanation is that these are just uncannily similar cards (because I don’t have a Plusle that matches the one I bought). But they do really seem like the same card. Totally dumbfounded.
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Same card. The back says it all, same exact wear.
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How weird. I’m in the “same card” camp looking at the wear and holo pattern. My guess is you have simply made a mistake and not marked off a received order at the time, which is incredibly easy to do when you’re busy/tired/receiving or sending out a lot of orders on multiple platforms.
It’s possible he sold to TNT but i can’t see how/why he would bother even trying to convince you it’s the same card when he knows it isn’t (or is insanely unlikely you purchased the exact one he sold to them).
Yeah, that’s possible. I also just buy a ton of Pokemon cards, so it’s possible I would’ve gotten the cards and not realized they were from him (likely after I informed that the cards hadn’t arrived). Still, I think I would’ve made the connection. But we all make mistakes, and this probably just was one. Still, a mistake that looks super sketchy. And a mistake that leaves me extra confused where the Plusle is that was supposedly shipped with the Minun…
Hey there, that sure is a strange story! I have a couple of suggestions:
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The holo pattern and the wear look pretty much the exact same to me, indicating that they’re probably the same card, but it sounds like you still have access to the card in picture 1, which means you can check it more thoroughly. One thing, aside from the holo pattern and wear, that would be difficult to replicate between cards are the holo scratches. In the second picture in the original post, it looks like some holo scratches may be evident in the tree to the right of Minun (on the branch near his cute little feet and near where the branch becomes into leaves). If you play around with lighting and inspect carefully, you can see if these scratches are also in the same position on your card.
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If you are pretty meticulous about keeping track of your cards orders coming in and going out, if you didn’t have any of this card prior to your orders, you can check if the number of Minuns you have lines up with the number of Troll and Toad orders you put in and received for this card. If you have Troll-and-Toad-orders plus one, maybe you did indeed receive the card and it just slipped your mind.
Just some suggestions to try and maybe help figure out what’s going on!
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Yup; I’ve come to this conclusion as well.
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This is a good suggestion – the only things that complicates this is that I bought a huge collection in late June/early July and it had quite a few Dragon holos in it (including, I’m pretty sure, at least one Minun, possibly more). In addition, I sent like 50 holos to Ludkins in August, and I don’t appear to have kept a record of which ones. I honestly don’t remember if there was a Minun in that submission. So it’s going to be basically impossible for me to assess whether or not the number of Minuns I have is accurate.
Very much appreciate the suggestions. I think the most likely possibility is that I received the cards from him well after I had gotten the refund for them and just didn’t make the connection. This is possible, but just to give you a sense of how many cards I order, here are my orders placed in late July/early August:
So, as you can imagine, I sometimes receive upward of 10 packages of cards in a single day (usually more like 2-5). So it is possible that I just missed it…but it would definitely not be like me to miss something like that because I’m pretty methodical. But maybe I just had a brain lapse or something…I honestly don’t know. I feel terrible because I’m sure it seems super sketchy to the guy. But, as farfetched as it might sound, it must just be a fucking bizarre mixup. There’s no way for me to prove to him this definitively, but (according to my records), I’ve had 890 unique purchases since mid-May (which is when I started keeping track) and I’ve literally only not received a purchase twice (the Minun/Plusle and some $9 purchase from eBay back in June…). It just sucks because I’m the last person who would do something like this, but the appearance of the situation to someone who doesn’t know me very well looks super sketchy.
IDK, ultimately it is what it is. I might not be able to convince him, but I’m obviously going to refund/send the cards back plus some. Whatever he wants. It’s just a crazy situation that sounds probably sounds very farfetched to people, but honest mixups do happen sometimes and this is appearing more and more likely to be just that…
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Oh man, that many orders is quite a lot to keep track of (and I can see how the number of copies of one card might not exactly be trackable). Yeah, it sounds like just a bizarre set of circumstances that unfortunately makes you look a bit shady. May this teach us to give others the benefit of the doubt sometimes! (If the situation warrants it!)
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@zorloth Sounds like you made a simple mistake. Happens to the best of us. I have a similar list of incoming cards as you (with currently around 40 incoming packages). I also have a checklist for all my Pikachu cards, but even then I sometimes see I’ve made a mistake later on. I’ve re-organized my entire collection yesterday for example, and noticed I had two Korean Pikachu cards in the status “incoming”, even though I already received one weeks ago and forgot to update it, and never ordered the second one after I added it (so that one is currently missing…) I’ve also bought cards duplicated in the same week a few times before, because I forgot to update the status in my checklist.
And it is possible two cards have the same (or almost the same) holofoil pattern, like these:
Source: www.elitefourum.com/t/what-are-the-chances-of-having-the-exact-same-holo-pattern/28633/1 (@azulryu)
Source: www.elitefourum.com/t/neo-rev-holo-bleed-variations/28183/3 (@7l7l)
Although the chances are extremely small, especially to have both of them in the hands of the same collector, the holofoil rolls used to print cards on are repeated pre-defined patterns, so there is always a small chance there are card doppelgangers out there with very similar holofoil patterns for the same card.
In this case however, the damages at the back are ALSO exactly the same. Based on that I can’t give any other conclusion than you accidently made a mistake (again, happens to the best and most organized of us) and it’s the same card.
Greetz,
Quuador
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Yup. I agree this seems like the most likely explanation. The back wear is basically identical. There are some very small discrepancies, but nothing that couldn’t be explained by camera angle and lighting. The centering also appears to be identical. So I do believe that the cards are the same. Initially, I was convinced otherwise (which is obviously why I created the thread). But people have pointed out some striking similarities that I do agree would be VERY unlikely to occur independently.
Those are very cool examples – especially since they all have really prominent swirls (which I’m assuming was how they were noticed in the first place).
I really appreciate your input. I’m waiting on a response from the guy and am obviously returning/refunding or whatever else he sees fit. The only frustrating thing for me is the appearance of impropriety. I just really hope that there’s a way to prove that this was an honest mistake. Initially, I figured that all I had to do with show that the cards were different. Not a big a deal. But it’s become clear that the cards are almost certainly same…so now I’m not sure how to do that. All that I can think of to do at this point is make the situation right and move on with my life. Though if anyone thinks of any way that I can conclusively show to the guy that it was an honest mistake, I’d absolutely love to do that.
Anyway, I apologize for airing all of this publicly. Kind of embarrassing because the original intention of this thread was just to prove that the cards were different (which I knew was the case, or thought I did). But it is what it is and I highly appreciate everyone’s help.
Would you mind putting up a few more pictures of the front of the card at different angles? I know you’re convinced they’re the same but this is interesting
Here’s a video:
Your browser does not support video embedding. Please update your browser.
Yeah I stand by my original statement. There’s no way these are the same, the double holo dot under his ear on the branch just dont match up
I see what you’re saying, but if I tilt the holo at a specific angle I can also see a double holo dot that lines up with the one in the seller’s photo. It didn’t show up in the video it looks like. So I do still think that it’s the same card. There are a couple other clusters that don’t line up exactly, in my opinion, but that could just be the angle of the photo or the lighting.
@zorloth, could you show that double holo spot? Its bugging me and yeah it didnt show up in the video. In the top one the double holo is to the right of the dark spot on the branch. In the bottom one its right on the dark spot on the branch.