I middled an auction in Japan for an overseas friend. The auction was for three English-language cards from the Tag Team GX set. (The copyright date on the cards is 2019.)
All four cards have glossy, “slick” backs, similar to the glossy backs on the old peel-away CoroCoro cards.
Are these real cards? The only English cards I’ve ever handled before had standard matte-like backs.
Are you able to post photos of the fronts and backs of the cards? There’s a few English sets featuring Tag Team GX Pokemon, the first being “Team Up”.
I haven’t heard of any Tag Team cards having glossy backs but I’ve seen some glossier prints of certain cards in the past. Anyway it would help if we could see the cards.
Here are photos of the fronts and backs of the cards. The picture of the backs doesn’t show just how glossy they are, unfortunately. But if you’re familiar with the old CoroCoro peel-away promos, that’s what they are like.
(Also, you’ll notice that the backs of a couple of the cards are horribly off-center. I don’t know whether such sloppy production is common with English cards.)
Thank you!
Are you talking about the fonts on the front, or on the backs?
As I held them, I just felt something was wrong. But aside from the glossy backs, the production quality is actually quite good. Thick cardboard, clear fronts.
Also, are the genuine versions of these particular cards valuable? Because they didn’t hardly anything at all (though English cards rarely sell for much on Yahoo Japan Auctions).
If it weren’t for the glossy backs piquing my curiosity, I wouldn’t have ever known! They cost about 200 yen per card, so considerably less than what the genuine cards are worth.
I also middled an auction (same seller) for three other cards, all of which had “normal,” non-glossy backs, so those didn’t initially make me suspicious. I’m now guessing these are probably fakes, too.
Yep, they are. The Holo looks weird
Definitely fakes. Another way to tell is that any full-art or hyper rare GX card will have a subtle texturing to it. These are just flat which is a dead giveaway!
Was about to mention this as well. The missing texture on the Rainbow Rares and those other Secret Rares is indeed a huge indication of fake cards (especially for the Hyper Rares).
Greetz,
Quuador
Really appreciate all the feedback, everyone! This is why I enjoy the E-Four community so much. Those of us who are particularly knowledgable in one area of the hobby but don’t have a clue about another can help one another out!
From what I have seen almost all of the modern English cards that you see on Yahoo Japan are fake. If you look at the colours of the HR cards they always show up on camera as like a sheen rainbow effect with the image very clear instead of the silvery look with the slightly more distorted image that legit HR cards have.