@smokemon that’s a really interesting look into the swirl placements. I always just assumed it was a gathering of sheets, or misalignment of them or something.
Not sure if videos can be posted here, but someone reached out to me on instagram to see if I had an answer for this triple swirl Pikachu. As @Dyl said, they’re not only off center, but also there’s 3!
Couldn’t post the video directly, so here is the Imgur link : https://imgur.com/a/p1Ae9Pn
My understanding is that the holofoil pattern vibrancy really changed during HGSS & Call of Legends (i.e., far more muted than WoTC-era, EX-era, D/P, Platinum holofoils).
I am not sure when the positioning of swirls became less predictable. Personally, my D/P-era double swirls (e.g., Majestic Dawn Lv.X cards) are as predictable as WoTC-era double swirls. So it makes me think that sometime during HGSS or Call of Legends was when the swirl placement became more random.
Definitely my best guess but there are a few alternate theories I came up with too. I wanted to look at Pichufan’s uncut Pichu sheet to confirm a few things. Misalignment is very possible
And that triple swirl is awesome. I haven’t studied that era of cards but it’s an amazing card!
heh, I guess where doing this then. 
let me first say that the holo pattern for Japanese and English is the same but mirrored and that it can be found facing in multiple directions.
I have done allot of research on this and found allot of things because of it.
this is my Japanese acetoned card. note that swirl is clockwise and most of Wotc is mirrored so anti-clockwise.
I have it on my desk and look at it allot when checking cards and their holo pattern. ^^
from this I actually made a larger pattern but it isn’t perfect tho.
And on this pattern I drew loads of these “print lines” to the point where I started to see something repeating. Also the word print line is wrongly used here, I prefer to call it a weld line but that wouldn’t be right either I think, not sure. In case of these double swirls, they happen when in the factory the roll with foil ends and they stick the the new roll to it at the end and somethimes it overlaps. that’s why I say weld line. can’t explain the cross lines yet though. Wotc has the same lines as Nintendo but most of the time they don’t have that spacing in between them.
I’m still trying to figure this stuff out and I’m a self thaught person so it does take me much longer compared to people who have connections for this. For my pokédex I really tried to understand every part of the machine process and even though I have a long way to go I do feel I have come up with info and ideas that most people didn’t bother putting effort in. I do feel rewarded when I find stuff and especially when I can show it off in my pokédex and because my collection is small that reward I still get everytime I go through my binder. 
Edit: the holo pattern is not 90° so the further in the foil roll, the more the pattern moves to the sides making infinite possibilities in the artwork box. Or that’s what I think.
Thanks for sharing this @pinn033! Have you acetoned holos from other sets too (e.g., EX-era, D/P, Platinum, HGSS, Call of Legends)?
Looking into the anatomy of a swirl, there is sometimes an asterisk ‘*’ that appears next to it. This is a convenient component that can be used to identify direction. On the Japanese card stock, the swirls always flow in the sideways direction (east) whereas for English double swirls, it is typically in the south position (sometimes north).
I feel like WotC did something weird where they rotated the holo pattern around 90° or maybe even mirrored it so sometimes you’ll see orientations in all directions. Take these Lugias for instance.
The original wotc holo style is cool and all but seeing foreign fossil foils shows me just how much cooler they would have looked with the cosmo foil than the star pattern.
I think this is why Japanese Base, Jungle, and Fossil are so great. Beautiful original artwork + the cosmos holofoil pattern.
It’s taken me hours to get up to this point so allot of sweat and tears went into this. 
First I had acetoned this JP card and then a Wotc star foil as well wich I have shared in a different thread before.
When I realized the JP pattern is mirrored I acetoned my third and last card (EU base set cosmos) but it seems I was to rough on it and it didn’t turn out good. Ofcourse just mirroring the JP picture with desktop is easy but having the card physically with you has it’s advantages.
Indeed, I also use that plus looking star to see the direction of the foil and somethimes other things as well because it’s not always visible. Then I went through all the sets in JP, ENG and foreign and written down the directions of cards I could find. Still working on it actually because I get sidetracked often. 
I noticed a few things but it’s kind of a mess because some sets go in all directions.
Edit: I think the cosmos foil has four layers to it and every layer can be seen reflecting from a certain angle.
Holy F
I suck at trying to catch multiple swirls in the same photo, so here are some of my double swirls (there are a few others too, that I just gave up trying to capture):
Not sure what you mean by mirrored, but it’s very interesting information.
I might find a cosmos holo to sacrifice to the acetone gods. (It’s the only vintage one I don’t have…)
Hmmm, this is interesting! My understanding was that the cosmos holofoil layer was one sheet, and that different portions of that layer would reflect depending on the direction of the light source.
@pfm Do you know more about this? I can’t imagine that the manufacturer would use several holofoil layers to create the cosmos effect.
Here’s a gif of an IG story i posted last year. Underrated card IMO!
The holofoil sheet is produced by a proprietary method, unlike most of the printing process that is something that would be taught in a printing course.
I don’t know many of the details. Having multiple thin layers stacked in different directions would make sense though to make the pattern more variable
Maybe saying four layers was not the right thing to do here. I also think it’s just one foil but I meant that the foil pattern is like four parts that together make the full pattern. I just now tried to take a picture of each part but this is hard to do and isn’t perfect but I assume you will understand.
