Compare the Real Venusaur to the fake, you will notice the stamp is not aligned correctly. The corner of the pokemon image border should strike in the middle of the “T”. The font is subtly off as well on some. I remember mentioning these are convincing enough to fool new collectors.
It really puts into question the value of their “AI grading”. As a mere mortal like myself was able to spot these fakes on digital images 7 months ago.
PSA has graded several examples as well so far. I wonder if they’ll honor the financial guarantee on these or if the “head grader” will deem the stamps real upon review.
CGC on at least one instance caught these but I’m sure any of the “professionals” are capable of being duped, agreed?
Shoutout @rattlebear for a recent thorough video on the seller and the cert range of some graded AGS examples.
As mentioned by Rattle do not crack these cards out. Reach out to AGS or PSA if you’ve purchased affected cards to have them properly documented for any potential case against the seller and for hopefully a full reimbursement for your purchase price.
Yeah Rattles video is pretty lengthy but it did mention crunchy ebay guy (few diff usernames) Arjun Dhillon or whatever it was as the source. I have seen a couple instances where people bought raw from him too then submitted to PSA not knowing they were fake stamps as well and they were successfully graded. Rattle had am image where a zard was declined to be graded by CGC.
Ah ok I didn’t realize Rattle made a video. :boomeremoji:
This is definitely one of the more convincing fake stamps. They even attempted a ghost stamp pikachu, which I have never seen before. Either way no grading company should let them pass, or at least rectify the issue if so.
To be fair to them they aren’t the only ones who failed and they promptly made a public statememt and some posts showing how they “taught” the AI to theoretically catch them in the future though I’m not sure if it’ll work if the placement and exact configuration matches better. Mistakes will happen everywhere it’s all about the responses when they do happen imo.
There are risks for every new grading company. Authentication is a major component. Yes, you can standardize and use technology for some areas. This is in place at multiple grading companies with high volume and success. It must be acknowledged that grading services should be accountable for several key services: Quality scoring through grading, long-term protection through encapsulation, multi-factored authentication, classification/indexing, product security, and consistency across all services.
Remove a few of these and the value proposition for grading goes away quickly.
Poor buyers, hope they weren’t planning on cross-grading to to PSA. They could always get the CGC qualified shadowless “inked” grade.
I recently purchased an ACE graded pikachu on the ball from a seller who sells proxy products and I have been scrutinizing it like crazy. Looks real, but I guess there’s gonna be some concern when buying outside of PSA or the other big three.
Dang. That probably would have fooled me. I don’t know how you eliminate that. Who knows how many layers of people that went through before getting graded. So who do you go after to shut it down?
I thought AGS doesnt authenticate cards, just grades them using AI. Am I missing where they say they authenticate on their site? I cant find any mention on it.
@thsigma, @mightymax, Im not saying they dont authenticate, but the only thing they have listed on their website that I could find is that they grade, even under the specifics of what you pay for it’s nothing but grading. PSA, CGC, and Beckett all list authentication as well as grading cards as part of the service or process. Maybe it is just an oversight but if it isnt listed I wouldnt expect it, especially from a newer grading service.
Hi @smpratte , I am from AGS. Thank you for posting the video about fake cards on YouTube. Really appreciate what you’re doing for the community.
We are willing to have a conversation with anyone about what happened with the 1st edition fake cards. We are transparent and have owned up to our mistake publically. It shouldn’t have happened but it did. We have taken measures to make this right. We have put out videos of how we have trained our AI to detect it.
We are also helping anyone who has been affected by the sale of these fake cards.
Training the AI is an ongoing process and it takes time and effort to do that. We are sure that after our newest update we will be able to detect fake and altered cards easily. In fact, we have caught many fake and altered cards after this update. I hope you appreciate that Rome was not built in a day and so it needs constant work and effort to make the software flawless. Now that the mistake has been caught, we have the advantage that the program will consistently be able to detect it, unlike human grading where it is left to subjectivity and chance.
Like you, we also believe that the hobby needs to be weeded out of these problems. It’ll be great if we can chat about this sometime soon.
Same scammer had fake stamped cards successfully graded by PSA and BGS. They just haven’t been as transparent in providing a list of all cards affected. The situation is showing issues with grading more than it is the flaws with AI. It should have been extremely noticeable by both the human graders and a scan. If grading companies were paying any attention to scammer posts and videos he would have been banned before ever being able to submit these. Swole posted about him selling fake wrapped boxes and I made a video in 2021.
Arjun Dhillon
efour username: jcheung81
ebay names: CruncyCT and CrunchyCards
If you have been scammed or involved with any of it, please e-mail all information to ArjunIsADick@gmail.com as I am assembling everything for the grading companies, eBay and the FBI.
Videos:
Arjun Dhillon Is Currently Scamming Pokemon Collectors With Fake Stamps, Wrap & Cards (Part 1)
Arjun Dhillon Is Currently Scamming Pokemon Collectors With Fake Stamps, Wrap & Cards (Part 2)
Arjun Dhillon Is Currently Scamming Pokemon Collectors With Fake Stamps, Wrap & Cards (Part 3)
