DIY Matchprint cards

[pichufan]

@raycollect

It seems this post is derived from your realization that you could not obtain a certain card, so you now attempt to devalue the series it stems from, in order to justify its gap in your collection. Where some collectors have been trying to get a Matchprint variant card for some time.

Good quality post, but quite comical. This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.

That’s unfortunately not how things work when it comes to a printing process, let alone individually legitimizing a subdivision of unreleased test cards. Rusty would never back something that has no legitimacy behind it, though I realize you’re not directly stating that, you indirectly infer it from your post.

You don’t realize how difficult it is to properly print a trading card with accurate coloring and quality, let alone have a market accept their existence and not reject it as illegitimate (flashbacks to certain “collectors stamped” edition cards).

This thread is a bit unfortunate, as its a sign of a collector’s grief, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.

I completely understand your point of view and expected I’d get some reaction like this. I’m sure I’m coming across as a sore loser with this, but the reality is that I’d never put any time into researching what these really were until the Pichu listing appeared.

For some transparency I’ve wanted a Matchprint Pichu ever since I first learned about their existence back in 2017 or so. I offered the seller $1,500 which I was expecting to have rejected due to the item’s BIN price of $15,000 and was planning on increasing my offer up to $2,500 or maybe $3,000 at a push, but before parting with such an amount for a single card I figured it made sense to do some research. Unfortunately this morning I was faced with a dilemma as I’d essentially found out that it appears pretty straightforward to create practically identical prints with tools available for less than the individual prints are selling for.

I’m not trying to devalue the cards in any way. I do value them as a collectable with historic significance and I feel like burning bridges like this was not at all in my best interest, however I felt that I had to share this knowledge with the community before it ended up in the hands of the wrong people. This will definitely come across as a bit of a dick move for anyone who owns or is trying to sell a Matchprint Pokémon card and I guess I won’t be very popular with some of those for a while because of this, but this was something I felt compelled to share.

You’re totally correct about how difficult it’ll be to accurately print cards like this, but unlike regular TCG cards which have both a front and back and rounded corners with a specific thickness and feel to them, these are at the lowest level square cut quality prints on a specific type of paper which is readily available. A single pack of Xerox Commercial White Color Laser Proofing Paper contains 100 12″ by 18″ Matchprint sheets which if my maths is correct would be enough to print 2,000 cards on (assuming the sheets can be fed back into the printer multiple times, that is) - I’m sure that’s enough attempts for anyone to perfect the printing configuration.

The fact also stands that thanks to Pokémon digitally imaging the majority of their cards in an online database, relatively high resolution images are readily available to anyone who wants them. Fortunately for older WotC sets these are just high DPI scans, but when scaled down to Pokémon card size I’m sure the majority of people would not know the difference. Here is the Pichu scan from the Pokémon TCG Developers website, for example:

I’m pretty sure if TCA’s original leak involved Pokémon card images printed on regular printer paper it would have never gone anywhere. I think the reason these stood out was specifically because they were printed on special Imation Matchprint paper which isn’t something anyone is likely to just have laying about in their house.

Ignoring the ink cost (as I don’t know what that would be), the money I was prepared to part with without increasing my initial offer on the Pichu card would be enough for me to pick up the printer and 3,000 of those 12″ by 18″ Matchprint sheets - enough to potentially print 60,000 Pokémon card images onto, and that scared me enough to immediately back away.

I would absolutely love for there to be some redeeming feature which these cards have that would make them much harder to forge, but honestly for me the risk is just too high.

@jkanly

I get the concern. But you’re kinda telling people how to do it at a, “How to fake Matchprints, for dummies” level, which makes me worry for others who don’t have access or haven’t yet accessed the information.

If you were to mention instead that you simply know of a process to replicate them, that message could be passed along more sensitively. This thread might not get the traction needed to inform potential parties at risk of a scam —There’s lots of information that’s best not shared until the right time.

I’m a little worried about this too and I was hesitant to share this in the first place. I had considered a less factual approach but figured if I did that I’d just end up being dismissed with statements like @raycollect gave above: “This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.”

On the flip side of that, however, Matchprint cards are still very niche - I don’t think any of TCA’s videos which have been up on YouTube for over 6 and a half years have had more than 3,000 views, which when you consider he now has almost 50,000 subscribers and has videos with over 1 million views that’s almost a negligible amount. I’d like to imagine that the majority of people even remotely interested in these cards would likely know about this forum or be in relatively active discussion with someone who does frequent this place.