I wonder why the choose to send that information to BGS and not PSA…
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I imagine that they do this because they can still profit while lowering the likelihood of attracting attention from law enforcement and receiving charges due to the collective value of the fraud.
Yes, I find that to be suspect.
Reputable companies keep documentation of every SKU/product line. My assumption is that Topps would have some of the following information housed on their internal systems or stored physically.
- Licensing Agreements (with specifications for duration and specific rights such as the use of images/logos/names)
- Paperwork outlining compliance with brand standards (i.e., to accurately represent the IP and meet TPCi standards)
- Design/Production notes
- SKU/Distribution/Marketing notes
- Royalty/Payment notes
- Continuation/Renewal notes if this set was an extension of their earlier agreement with TPCi
And even if they did hand the paperwork over to BGS, a reputable company would not give them originals.
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Just an update — I’m still waiting to hear back from Topps to see if I get the same answer as Miller.
But to add to my existing points yes, technically there’s no hard proof they aren’t authentic, but there’s a lot more evidence against than for.
If they are authentic items I find it extremely odd that Topps cropped in their own re-used artwork, used shoddy looking holofoil masking, left out the pokemon names “by accident” on some cards, and didn’t change the artwork in any way to signify a different release (the back of the cards don’t have original copyright / release information for any “vending” release).
What I’m willing to bet happened with BGS is that the first card got through by accident and the other 5 cards graded were let in by the precedent set by the first. At this point I don’t think BGS would say “actually yeah you’re right we graded fake cards our bad!” because it would hurt their reputation. It took a public post about the UV-printed 1st edition Machamp in order for PSA to remove it.
That said, another test that could be done is to submit one of these to PSA and CGC and see what happens lol.
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Thing is, they’re not “fake” in that they’re not real, our objection is that they are fake because they are unauthorized bootleg unlicensed knockoffs. They exist, but they exist in the same way that the 1st ed base shadowless charizard i printed from my home printer exists - it’s real, but fake.
They shouldn’t have been graded in the first place, in the same way they my home-printed charizard shouldn’t be graded.
Topps is now owned by Fanatics, so no, this is not surprising in the least.
Here’s the thing - you’re not wrong, this is standard due diligence; this accountability; part of GAAP. they have it somewhere. I’m making this comment because there’s something being overlooked here. Topps is above and beyond a sports-focused company first and foremost. Sports since 1938. They always have been. Pokemon is barely a footnote for them: they made some crappy, ill considered cards on garbage card stock with half-asssed distribution and next to zero promotion to capitalize on the insane popularity, i.e, profitability, of pokemon when it exploded in the late '90s.
Before you think i’m being too harsh, seriously - check out their wikipedia page or do a google search. Pokemon is the most minor of footnotes in their history. I’m not surprised that Topps themselves do not know much about the minor crappy cards they released for a handful of years 2 decades ago to try and cynically cash in on a fad for kids. They put a bare minimum of work into it, some of their cards are literally copy/paste jobs.
It is not surprising that there’s not really any people at Topps who have the history of info readily available - I mean, how many people are still at Topps who have first-hand knowledge of this? If they are by some miracle still around, they are VP level or beyond. And this information kind of exists on paper, mainly in invoices, but mostly the institutional knowledge in in the heads of people who almost certainly have long left the company.
Scammers taking advantage of this, and the fog of war surrounding it, should not be a mystery to anyone on this forum.
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This is a great idea. Normally grading a card with one grading company is a “1 out of 1” system. Whatever the grading co. says is accepted as correct. For some critical IT systems there are concepts like “2 out of 2” or “2 out of 3” systems, where 2 or more totally separate systems must agree and not fail for the output to be accepted as correct. In this case, if just 1 card is sent to PSA and PSA says fake; well now we have BGS saying authentic and PSA fake, this doesn’t answer the question of real or fake - 1 company is right and 1 is wrong, who knows which one though. But if 2 independent grading companies both determine they’re fake by their own independent processes, then we can be all but sure these cards are actually fake.
Grading companies should rely on documentation and evidence, not be the documentation and evidence. You can pick almost any Pokemon TCG card and independently verify it’s legit. You can find ads, or information about the distribution, sealed product, SKU numbers, firsthand accounts of where it came from. In the absence of all evidence, there’s no reason to believe something is legitimate until that evidence arises. It’s really that simple.
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It’s overwhelmingly obvious that these are bootlegs.
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Haha but what if right…
Prepare to have your mind blown on these it gets better and better. Hang in there for the miniature ones.
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Dyl already posted this about 30 posts before yours 
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Oh yeah thanks. I read this whole thread and missed that a vid had been posted. Concentrated on just reading and viewing pics and getting through as quick as I could as quite a lot on it. I went on a quick search and obviously found this. 9 variants/18 variants plus smalls lol. These are the sorts of things that over here in the UK arcade 2p pushers/10 p pushers would have them on top of the coins as extra little prizes. V recently went to the coast and saw even now fake pokemon cards in these coin pushers. If these were produced by Topps it would be fab as new findings are always welcome but the chances are they aren’t but you never know.
I think the strongest evidence of them not being authentic is that they don’t show on this complete topps card gallery
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The only true silver purple bible!
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You’re obviously a fake Topps fan if you don’t have the ultra rare vending cards!! 
Btw Topps never replied to me and Beckett is running me in circles and won’t go past “we authenticated them”. I’m going to keep bugging Topps until I get an answer but I doubt I’ll be able to get Beckett to admit they’re fake without showing them proof, so pretty useless to keep asking. If Topps (who has no skin in the game) can admit they’re fake I can show that to Beckett.
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This whole thread feels like Déjà vu.
As already stated above (which echoes every other post on the subject of bootlegs and counterfeits), any products in question can be validated if appropriate evidence is presented.
At the moment there would seem to be more evidence in contradiction than in support of their being licensed.
The main evidence being the generic holo patterns used, which have also been used seemingly exclusively by bootleggers/counterfeiters. The other elements being the missing titles and cropping etc. All things I’ve warned others to look out for time and time again.
Similar knock offs are constantly sold for various sets.
Look, I almost won bootleg bingo using bootlegs (stickers) based on a card from the carddass anime collection.
I just cobbled together a visual example of some of the Misty bootleg and counterfeit products being peddled. Some of the holo patterns will be familiar. None of these are licensed products - I assure you, there is no booty sparkle rarity tier (as in bootleg 
) in the Carddass Anime Collection .
People do tend to buy them though.
Buyers tend to either:
not care if the price is low enough; or,
are willing to take a gamble on the purchase as if it was like a lottery ticket and it will pay off as being rare; or,
are swindled and misled.
As for the grading companies authenticating such items, let me be clear - they’ve all been egregious.
PSA and BGS were authenticating items without even confirming where they were from, what the sets contained, and were purely going off whatever vociferous submitters provided. They had no idea what the differences are between counterfeits and bootlegs of some niche sets. They’ve since gone back and attempted to clean where necessary, but don’t hold standards of today and retroactively apply them throughout their history.
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I guess this will be my last update since there’s nowhere to go from here:
Email from Topps saying to go to Beckett for authentication lmao. And Beckett will never admit they’re fake. I guess I’ll just use this as a learning moment that even if something is graded it doesn’t mean it’s authentic.
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