Hi all,
I mass opened Hidden Fates upon release, and all my English Hidden Fates cards are now completely bent. Unsurprisingly, their Japanese counterparts which are stored in the same box don’t suffer from this problem, which leads me to believe cardstock quality is to blame.
Any US members experiencing the same issue, or is it something to do with the EU print?
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This happened to my Hidden Fates cards too. I had a stack of bulk and I was too lazy to put it in my bulk box for a bit. Now some of them are strangely bent like this. It’s like the cardstock is less resistant to air moisture than usual…
Also I live in the netherlands. This happens to most cards here in general though, particularly holos. But it usually doesn’t happen like this to regular non-holo cards because they have no metal in them. If it is the air moisture, then something about this card stock is off this time around. I also noticed it generally felt kind of shittier in the hand and felt thinner almost. My Lost Thunder and Team Up cards were very nicely thick.
Common thing with foils since there are multiple materials used that won’t behave the same way. Happens less frequently with newer sets but still can.
Solution: Keep them somewhere dry, sleeved and preferably with pressure on them from other cards etc…
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The strange thing is, for me this actually happened with regular non-holo bulk. It curved the same way as in OP’s picture after having it in the open in a closet for about a week. My holo cards were all safe since they’re sleeved up and protected from the air and would have been even worse had they stayed unprotected.
This normally hasn’t happened to me with regular bulk. Normally it’s only holos that warp like this, but somehow HF had some warping for me even on regular air exposed bulk. I noticed in general that HF had a lot of warped cards right out of the pack and generally seemed to be a off a pretty subpar print quality at least in the packs that I got.
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I thought it was only me, figured i would sort into my bulk thinking i probably left some reverse holos in between that were causing the issue; and no…all the non holos were curving the same way…weird.
That is the thing, they are well kept alongside recent Japanese cards and the English ones get completely bent whereas the Japanese don’t.
I appreciate your solution as a fellow collector, but from a consumer standpoint I don’t think this should be happening.
Whatever solutions we find, the point still remains that english cards seem to have poorer cardstock quality than their Japanese counterparts, meaning we as customers are getting less value for money.
Something I also noticed was how often I would get factory stained cards when opening Hidden Fates, got about 4 ruined shiny vaults with what looked like oil in them. Can you imagine if it was a Charizard GX?
Clearly quality control standards have been lowered for the (EU?) English version.
I have low expectations for American printing
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe there a difference between the US and EU print.
I’ll be honest, I just assumed there were different printing facilities in Europe and the US as it seemed reasonable from a logistics standpoint.
If that’s not the case, there should indeed be no difference.
I don’t know for sure either. I agree that it would make total sense. But if anybody should be printing the European cards, it would be Cartamundi in Belgium, and I don’t believe they are.
The difference could be the wear and tear of transporting them across the pond. But I think that’s a stretch, yeah.
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CartaMundi was only printing Pokemon during WotC-era. There are other printing facilities capable of printing but I doubt Pokemon uses them.
I have not enough sealed modern stuff to check on the packs where it was printed. But all the opened pre-release kits I have (which I uses to store bulk) all have Printed in the USA on the bottom.
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Right! Totally forgot the packaging says where these cards come from! 
I’ve checked some of my Hidden Fates products and they all say the same; USA.
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This did randomly happen to my Japanese counterpart, Ultra Shiny GX. I just stacked them under my printer, all good now lol
I am surprised though, the print quality for Japanese cards has always surpassed English, including the holo’s look a lot better.
Japanese cards are printed on smaller sheets and thus the sheet will warp less due less tension on the cardboard due foil layers. And I am pretty damn sure QC in Japan is 100x better.
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There is no way they print cards in EU sadly, or our cards would be cheaper since they’re constantly more expensive due to import costs 
Everything is more expensive in Europe because international companies still think Europeans have as much disposable income as they had in the 1980’s.
But nothing will change because the ECB is lead by incapable people with bad management skills only giving money away to the southern countries, ruining interest rates and making governments think it is not needed to increase minimum wages and do tax cuts. Especially the Netherlands know how to do this; increase taxes by 35%, keep wages at same level as 2004 but not taking a 10b euro loan at the ECB for 0.0000001% interest, because ‘nah we need to keep debts low’.
Lol I live in the Netherlands and I noticed or at least have theorized by now that it’s actually pretty close to being crappy here compared to other EU countries. Nobody else here seems to notice it. In certain EU countries you can at least get a darn apartment for 600/month without living like crap. Here the cheapest apartments are like 1000 euros per month and they’re in crapshoot dangerous neighbourhoods, anything better is 200 euros more expensive and it’s not even easy to get. Something worth like 700 in Austria is 1500 here.
I can’t even get a student room because people who have already graduated laze around in their cozy cheap student room for 2 extra years because why would they not pay very little rent and earn a wage when the other option is throwing away most of their income for an apartment.
I also noticed the salaries seem pretty crap. I’m studying to be a software engineer and I saw the salaries are around 2.1k to 2.3k euros a month before tax. That’s really not very much for when you’ve studied for 3-4 years and gained expertise in something.
The apartment/housing situation is only getting worse too I read because basically, Germans, the French and UK people earn higher wages than us but their housing is more expensive. However, lots of expats come here because they can easily and with their higher salaries they can just buy houses that native people here can’t afford.
Rich country my ass. This country is only good for the upper middle class and up.
Maybe you guys need to do what we’ve done here in the states and our economy is booming.
Dump the progressive Rutte.
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The alternative is way worse… so no thank you