Hey i was trying master set team up and decided to go for the promos I saw the charizard and snagged it first but when I got the zapdos and nidoqueen the staff looks alot different. Just wondering have I been scammed on the card
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Where did you buy it from?
Does the stamp project through the back?
Looking at graded samples, the stamp should be higher and to the left:
There was also a thread looking at fake staff stamps for chairzard xy evolutions, will link if I can find it.
Edit: this thread but the images are no longer there.
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I fixed the thread so the images should be visible!
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Hey, I got it from Italy on Ebay. The seller has a couple what look like this and ones that graded too. I cant see anything on the back
+1, I found that too, though this did come up during my search:
It is PSA #44320807. Conveniently, there aren’t any scans uploaded to the PSA site, so maybe this should be taken with a grain of salt, though the current seller says that it was sold through PWCC on the 27th of October, 2020. They include a screenshot of that in their listing:
I cropped the barcode on the case (that the seller didn’t edit out) to find the cert number.
Either way, in my experience, modern staff prereleases typically only vary in “strike quality” - like your Nidoqueen. The few modern staff packs that I have opened have varied in this way, they’re usually all pretty consistent with placement, I would imagine them to be produced automatically through machinery but I do also have an old EX-era misprint as well! I hope it is real, this is an expensive card.
+1, this would be good to see in pictures.
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This isn’t the first time I hear of fake staff stamp cards from Italy.. In my opinion it is not an authentic stamp. 
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Back of the card
I tried pausing it but I still cannot tell… I don’t think it’s worth taking a new picture but I’m with @rtas, I think it is fake. If the stamp isn’t projecting through the back side then it was 100% stamped in a manner that is inconsistent with authentic copies, and thus a fake.
Check this post out:
Edit to add:
I can’t immediately find the “STAFF” logo as a readily available die (stamp) pattern, but you can easily order one from places like Etsy. It has never been easier to accomplish a convincing fake gold stamp. This is a bit of a rabbit hole, so to speak, there have also been “pseudo-official” stamped cards like the “COLLECTOR” stamp Charizard in the past (which is 100% not an official release, check below).
A future option would be to buy one with an authentication guarantee (graded by a major grading house, PSA for example). Modern staff prerelease cards were often distributed in sealed “packs” of all four Build & Battle promos, as I’m sure you may know, but you need to know how to authenticate these wrappers/check for resealing/etc. Buying them loose and ungraded is a big hazard, unfortunately.
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the thing with the misprint “pre-release” card is that it has a drop shadow printed on it that cannot be faked unless the whole card itself is faked, and if its faked to such an extent as to look real, well, we have bigger issues.
The consistent issue with a Staff stamp is that they added on cards without special consideration. And they are not using any sort of customized stamp. Any shmuck(like me) with a hot foil stamping machine could just slot in the word “STAFF” into the press, line it up and stamp a card.
I’m also curious what you mean when you say projecting the backside?
And pretty much this is why in part, I have no cause to collect staff stamp cards.
However in this case it seems like the foil color they used is just straight up wrong when side by side with the other cards.
And yes, I don’t buy anything from Italy either.
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Important edit: I let the sun set here and I checked my Ivysaur again to make 100% sure I wasn’t seeing things. I am confident that I was wrong in my initial writeup (pre-edit) after holding the card up to a bright LED light and manipulating it ever-so-slighty to cast shadows on the face and back. I unfortunately can’t photograph it with any reliability, though, so my input here is obviously devalued and I am extremely sorry about that.
The OP has messaged me between these edits, and while I am still confident that this Charizard is fake-I have clarified my corrections here in our messages. I told them to try feeling the stamp as well.
“Embossing” is the mechanical action of adding a raised, 3D texture to a piece of material so that a design can be featured. If you strike the die on the material and into some gold leaves (with the appropriate gilding chemicals, etc.) then you are left with an “embossed” pattern. This doesn’t seem to be how these stamps are made, especially for Nintendo-era PTCG prerelease stamps.
The antonym for “embossment/embossing” is to “deboss”, which is the same procedure but in reverse, and this is often how it seems both real and fake stamps are made. The die is typically gilded and struck into the card face and it creates an indented impression onto the card face.
Hot foiling is another technique as well, like you say. Any technique would be very difficult to master, you would likely never see a good replica of the various levels of foiling variations as seen in your average staff pack (for modern STAFF cards).
I’m down to show the raised impression on the back side of my Ivysaur as a result of debossing in this thread, I was just concerned that I’d be giving away trade secrets (that I don’t keep anyways, obviously, I don’t work for Pokémon) but these prerelease stamps are all factory made so their setup is “dialed-in”, so to speak. Anyone can buy an authenticated copy and try their best to replicate it, good luck not wasting money in that pursuit though, to any schemers that may be reading this!! Haha!!
Ivysaur:
Here is an important image to link, I am honestly pretty upset with myself that I remembered this after I had published this post. Either way:
Try to use the shadow to prove my edits above (these stamps are usually debossed, not embossed).
I still can’t see it from that photo lol. I grabbed my legend maker pre-release tentacruel to see in person, and yes, the text is visible on the back.
Frankly I had to look up technically what embossing really meant. So basically the difference is just that the stamp is a flat surface and the emboss/deboss is tooled on both surfaces if I’m understanding it right, and thus how you would tell a fake homemade fake stamp in part, at least, at this point in the TCG. So therefore if the back of the card has either no imprint from the second plate, or, the dent on the back is wrong, then its a give away? I’m still not certain this isn’t just a stamp. But I won’t quibble further, if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. The card shared is pretty clearly fake from the comparisons as is. Font is all wrong looking, the color is off, way off. I never even noticed the staff stamps weren’t pure gold until this. But its not just gold, at least in this case.
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You’re understanding it 100% as intended, only I messed up and misquoted the (in my observation) official technique because you truly need a consistent and fixed light source to make these stamps out (in terms of texture). I’m certain these stamps are debossed, so pressed into the face and the back shows the raised deformation.
Looking at them in ambient sunlight can cause doubt as to which way the stamp was pressed into the cardstock. If you can use a bright and artificial light source, then you’d hopefully be able to make out the ridges in the stamp as a result of the cast shadow. Feeling the stamp can cause a bit of confusion as well as it is so intricate (I’m also working with damaged fingertips from previous employment so that’s on me).
I don’t consider it quibbling at all, in fact-this is super helpful, I made a grave mistake and if I can take a chance to correct myself then I will always do that.
haha, no worries. Its all technical stuff. So I guess here is what I’m now wondering, is side by side, what does a embossed back look compared to a single sided stamped card on a flat surface? Because I can tell you from doing my E4 logo stamp for the signature exchange, it was easy to use too much pressure and the logo would be pressed so hard that it would deform the back of the card. I threw out a lot of cards where I pressed too hard. I was trying to NOT leave any pressure marks on the backside since I never noticed the backside of (actually stamped) stamped cards before today. So maybe I was being too precious about it after all…in some cases it was pretty badly showing through. Amateur hour. So now I’m wondering if there is debossing stamps, what is it called when its only stamped in from one side? Is THAT what stamping means? And thus should that mean we call these physically debossed cards deboss marks and not stamps? And of purely printed on “stamps” logos/marks or something else?
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I think that the Merriam-Webster page for the word “stamp” could be a good resource for this conversation, at this point in the thread:
I think that the word “stamp” in the context of a noun, versus a verb, fits best;
This is “stamp” as a noun within the context of this thread:
In no way is this meant to be a quip/jab at anyone’s literacy skills, I am strictly and solely including this definition to hopefully create a standard of understanding across anyone reading this thread.
I take the word “imprint” in the 2nd definition above as both a literal “imprint” (showing a physical level difference) and as a form of the word “print”, as in “to be printed with ink”. That could just be me, though.
I think that an ink-printed design or a design with a single-sided impression would still fit the definition of the word “stamp” as a noun either way since they are ultimately both an additional design applied after the card was initially finalized, something I’m positive that we all know and accept.
I think it also works (if I could choose) for any situation where an additional design has been added to a card as it defines both the STAFF logo’s manufacturing/application method as well as the fact that it is an additional design applied after the card has been printed with ink.
Again, I’m only linking and showing this dictionary definition as I agree that terminology and nomenclature can get very confusing, if others agree that these STAFF stamps are in fact debossed into the cardstock then it could make this discussion easier in the future. I again take full responsibility for doubling back on my word earlier and I would like to sincerely apologize for any contention that caused.
I also truly do not mean to go overboard at all. If there was a TL;DR: then I would again say that OP’s zard has a fake stamp as it looks like the traditional, factory-applied markings and artifacts on any other prerelease with a metallic foil “stamp” (see above, hahah) are missing.