Were the Espeon Masterballs you sent out not from the legitimate printing facility then? I recieved mine earlier this week and finally had time to sit down and look more closely at it. Here’s a 1200 DPI scan of it alongside a Pokeball reverse I pulled from a legitimate Gem2 box.
EDIT: The forum really compressed it, here’s the full scan
If the Masterball is indeed fake it’s very worrying. Everything on the card looks like it was printed properly from the source digital files (which would make sense if they were an old factory that had access to those) down to the rosettes and separate black vector layer for all the text.
Masterball (allegedly fake)
Pokeball (real)
Masterball (allegedly fake)
Pokeball (real)
I’ve tried closing my eyes and shuffling the two to see if the cardstock feels any different. At first I thought the “fake” Masterball felt slightly flimsier, but out of 20 or so trials I wasn’t able to easily discern a difference in the rigidity / flex of the card with my eyes closed and couldn’t easily discern the 2.
Additionally, the watermark on both look identical:
