What I actually came here to share, is a more exciting item that I’m pretty sure you haven’t seen before. Only a handful of people have seen it.
This is the Matchprint Color Proof for the 2000 International Ancient Mew print run.
Matchprint Color Proofs typically have a white back, because they’re printed on a special Imation Commercial Base paper instead of regular Pokemon cardstock.
But Commercial Base paper is not holofoil, so it isn’t ideal for Color Proofing holofoil cards.
Matchprint wasn’t intended for Color Proofing holofoil cards, usually you’d have to do a much more expensive Test Print at the actual print facility to dial in the color on holofoil cards.
Instead of doing an expensive Test Print, they went ahead with the Matchprint Color Proof, but instead of using Commercial Base paper, they applied the Matchprint to a piece of holofoil Pokemon sheet they had laying around the office.
This way the end result would be a holofoil Matchprint Color Proof.
This piece of holofoil Pokemon sheet they had laying around the office, had Pokemon card backs, with an unprinted holofoil front side.
If you didn’t know, sheets are typically printed one side at a time. They print a whole bunch of the back side first because it’s the same for all the cards, then they use those printed backs as needed for all the different sheet layouts.
So this Matchprint Color Proof has regular Pokemon card backs on the other side.
There’s no way to properly align the offset press printed backs with the Matchprint fronts, and they didn’t even try to accomplish that.
The regular Pokemon backs are rotated 90 degrees compared to how the front side is printed.
Definitely an interesting item. 