I think I’ll reach a broader audience of collectors here than on PokeGym from whom to gain opinions. Now that I’ve stopped playing, collecting can be my only focus. Please give me your thoughts on this error card.
Way back when the Original Team Rocket came out, as a League Leader I personally saw more error Dark Dragonites both pulled from packs and in people’s trade binders than I have of these by far. How much does a Dark Dragonite non-holo #5 error go for now? Dialga G LV.X is much more rare on release than was it. Wish I could say the same about Base set Ninetales, but nothing was organized when Base set came out. At least not in the Houston area. League play started about a week after the release of Jungle.
The one reasonable clue that I see to their rarity for those who like tangible evidence- the charcteristic whitening of the edges on every copy of the card I have seen or heard of. This is characteristic of something going very wrong all at once. I’m sure there is some standard of inspection any time there is a shut-down in the factory. It could even be possible that only a few sheets with this error made it through. If anyone knew the rough distance in the factory between the printer and the cutter, a reasonable estimation could be made.
Since we can’t know the actual numbers, I wonder if we could get an approximate distance between the two. It is common-place for people to visit factories and that distance can be guessed or is even given freely. We did tours in elementary school as field trips to some and the “tour guide” always said something to the effect of ‘this has to travel this far to get from here to there’.
I was just about to respond to your pm. I am sure you will get other opinions on here as well about the card but here is mine.
I think the main issue with this card is that it is not well known. More importantly it probably will not be valued by collectors as other notable errors. I only say this because most people do not know how a card is printed with different plates/ink. I think most will consider it more of a gimmick which it definitely isn’t.
When thinking of errors a discoloration is not usually the first thing that comes to mind. However, I think that if it is indeed low in number it can generate a following.
Do you think my though process is a logical one? Does anyone know exactly WHO prints the cards for Nintendo? I’m sure we could contact then, get the distance on the assembly line between the two points and may even be able to get an idea of their inspection process if a shutdown were to occur before restarting the press. Every company has its policies and guidelines.
So this card must have had its own print plate, which means at least one sheet of the card was printed with this discoloration. I figure that the card had its own sheet because even though it isn’t a promo, they had to mass produce it for the boxes they inserted them in.
I was hoping to hear back from them today, but I have a call and an email in to PBM asking production questions that may narrow down how and how many of these were produced and made it to retail.
I doubt that they will divulge such information. I remember contacting media factory in japan and they were pretty tight lipped. If they are anything like the folks in japan, production information is not made public. Bust of luck and I hope you get some answers
On a side note is PBM the printing company for the English cards? If i am not mistaken PBM was acquired by consolidated graphics so you can try shooting them an e-mail as well.
