There’s an artist named ‘Moduwa’ who sketches on and signs Pokemon cards. Their autograph has been accepted into the PSA database, so many of their cards now get slabbed and sold. Most of these cards go for quite a bit of money:
However, most if not all of the art is copied directly from existing official Pokemon art. There appears to be very little if any originality in the sketches, outside of the shading.
While this could be passed off as “taking inspiration” from the original art, if you line up the stock art with many of the sketches, it’s a near perfect match.
I have nothing against the artist themselves, but I think people should be informed when they may be spending thousands of dollars on what is essentially a tracing of Sugimori stock art. We’ve been chatting on the discord about this for awhile, but I think it’s important to bring it over to the forum!
Theyre using pretty iconic art from the tcg, it doesn’t seem like theyre trying to purposefully pass of tcg art as their own original creation. And looking at some, they seem like free hand drawings. Like the dark charizard artwork doesn’t look like a tracing.
Well that’s timely. This one caught my eye about an hour ago but I’d never heard of ‘moduwa’ before so I was going to do some research. My initial thought was that they were a Pokemon artist but looking at the sketch it seemed way to intricate to be from a signing or something.
Thanks for the info. I will say I think this one looks pretty cool. Not $510 cool though (for me at least)
To me the issue would be they are using someone else’s art to profit and not even crediting the original artist. Then on top PSA is enabling this by encapsulating it. If I were a professional artist I would not want someone else profiting off my work.
They aren’t anyone special in Pokemon. Their stuff looks cool, and for something like $50 or $100 they’re nice novelties, but nearing $1000 is wild. PSA authenticating them is silly too imo. Social media hype train is in full effect.
I sold the Groudon/Kyogre shown in the OP. I commissioned Moduwa to sketch me 2 cards for $400 total in October last year, and that was one of them. Last time I talked to him 2 months ago, he was charging $300 per sketch with a 3 card minimum order.
When I saw current prices and how many cards sketches he is pumping out regularly (seems to be finishing sketches daily) I thought now was a good time to move on… also it was my least favorite of the 2 he drew for me.
I just wanted something specifically tailored to my main interests (Gen 3) to fit into my collection. The Deoxys/Rayquaza one he did I am really pleased with and since I recouped my initial cost and some, I have no desire to part with my remaining card.
Have seen a lot of his sketched cards over the past month and they do look pretty neat, but have yet to find anything on him other than his Instagram with 4 posts. Yesterday at Collect-A-Con, there was a guy with around 20 PSA graded Moduwa cards and I asked him who Moduwa was and he just said that he is an artist from Europe. I still think his stuff looks pretty nice and would probably buy one given the right card or opportunity, but wish there was some more info or other works out there.
I would say just let the guy do his thing. No one is forced to buy them.
I think my biggest issue is with PSA authenticating them. Like, what’s the threshold of someone being added to the database? Can I grade my own autos too? I think they rejected @smpratte autos in tauthenticator. he wasn’t significant enough. It just comes across like some kind of favor done by someone that works at PSA. The kind of stuff you don’t want to see from independent 3rd party authenticators.
The gradeability appears to have had added a major premium. I think that’s an indictment of the logic in this hobby though. You could take poker cards and put them in plastic and they become hundreds of dollars.
But yeah, can’t really fault the artist for taking advantage of the position he’s in and can’t blame the buyer if they really want the card. There are far more consequential things that happen in this hobby that are completely overlooked.
I have some, the art is really cool, I don’t understand why they’re so hyped up but he carved his niche. He did two cards for me back when they were $100, and then shortly after PSA started recognizing them. I sent them to PSA so I could put them next to the actual cards, sort of like an extra art piece. I am guilty of buying some at “resale” but it’s close to what he’s charging now and without extra dates or personalization.
I asked myself the same question this weekend. Liberally, it could be anyone who verifies that they signed a card with some kind of evidence. Conservatively, they would only register the select people who have influenced the hobby in some way or another.
Do they treat sketches differently from autos or are they only verifying the auto?
Funny enough, there’s a guy named “Cookie” with a big following on youtube who just got accepted into PSA’s database. He draws on cards too, like I have been starting to do. Granted, mine are just for fun and something to do.
I’m actually not sure, he was just casually posting and I was asking if he’d do a sketch for me, I just wanted one for my binder for the same reason I wanted a Moduwa initially. But I don’t know if it’s “Cookie” or “Cookie cutter”.
I will have Sirius Starr draw something for me because she was a Pokemon artist, and I just like these sketches on holo cards. It’s just something new to look at.
Here is my perspective:
Yes, there’s nothing wrong with Moduwa drawing on these cards and making money off of it. I’m glad that he can use his talent to make a profit and “create” cool pieces of art.
The problem is that once PSA slabs something, people assume Moduwa’s sketches carry some sort of official weight, even though PSA is simply just stating that the artist exists and the drawing is real. People will see the slab, see the cool Gengar sketch, and unconsciously equate it to something official even when it’s not.
