Honestly I didn’t think of it like that at all, that’s a very valid point. For me, whenever I see a cool custom card come up I never really think that it’s copyright infringement or anything illegal but you’re right, that’s what it is. It’s definitely a grey area where I think making a card for yourself is one thing but turning it into a business is another. Oof, definitely going to rethink my position on custom cards now.
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You’re wise:) Unfortunately, some haven’t set a good example and promoted them for financial gain. It’s a cycle of greed, so it’s always best to call it what it is.
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The worry is how good the PSA fakes are going get! I watched a video where the original card had been taken out of the slab with the old label and the fake card put into a new slab with the old label!
This honestly scares the hell out of me and I know people say the fake cards are obvious and easy to spot but perhaps this might change or a newbie buys not knowing what is real or fake or a honest mistake.
Does anyone have any experience of this? Or just me being paranoid?! 
Oof, yeah that scares me too.
I don’t understand the idea of “buying a fake to fill a gap”. It might fill a literal gap in your binder but the gap in your collection remains as you still don’t own the actual real card. Might as well have an empty spot since that’s just as much as a fake is worth: nothing.
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When I used to have my Pichus in a binder I had faded black and white print outs of the cards I was missing in the slots where I had no cards with text overlaid to say what the card was.
This is one of the templates I still have saved for example:
They looked really nice in a black-background binder and made it really obvious what I still needed without pretending I had something which I didn’t.
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As a completionist myself, I have often considered buying high quality replicas of cards that I felt were out of reach, at least to use as a placeholder. Personally, I don’t care if this makes me a “fake collector” because I simply don’t care what others think since I collect for myself only.
This is the part of the collectors community that I do not like. People have many motivations for why they may want to add fake/replica cards to their personal collection. I dont think it is fair to attack them for it.
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The thing is that the people making those “high-quality replicas” are breaking the law lol. They’re making money off of reproducing someone else’s merch and IP.
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If that is your argument against it, then that’s fine, but I’m not going to argue the ethics of selling fake cards, because it’s not really black and white.
I take issue with people judging others for taking an interest in fake cards.
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I just put a card in backwards to fill in the space. Looks better than an empty slot
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In my view… the people aren’t judging the uninformed innocent intent, just the act of buying and supporting/participating in something that’s directly detrimental to to the hobby.
Jkanly,
There have definitely been certain negative attitudes towards people who buy them for personal collections. I would say, if you have a problem with the ethics of it, you should either address the source of the cards or address the underlying issue of the price hikes.
It’s an inevitably that there will be a market for fake cards when the cost of real ones have increased to the point of being out of reach the the majority of collectors.
As far as fakes like those metal cards or extended art, I see absolutely no problem with them, even ethically since they serve a completely different market than the official cards
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There’s a bit of a negative attitude but it’s because it’s feeding towards the bad side of the hobby. However, it’s more annoying towards the overall community than really pinpointing people in their personal collections, in my opinion. It only takes one bad apple who starts selling the replicas as real for it to become a huge problem, because whoever is gullible enough to believe it and then resells that fake in the future will be burned severely when the collector realizes that it is fake.
To put into perspective, back in 2015-2016, I can buy rarer/more expensive cards without worrying that fakes are out there. A year later, I had to deal with people making a fake front of the card, and then gluing the card onto a legit one to fake authenticity (pretty poor fakes basically). Another year pass, and now I have to look at stupid PSA/BGS cases to see if they are even legit, and check through the plastic to see if the card inside the plastic is legitimate or an imitation. This is basically an external consequence that happened because of all those high quality replicas that are floating around right now. The intention for most people, like you said, for personal collection purposes only is fine. However, I can’t really say I support it because it did negatively impact me and I’m glad I had a sample copy of a lot of cards to compare new additions in my collection to. It’s going to suck for any new collectors who wants to join the hobby and gets burned by their first expensive purchase because they are unable to tell real ones from fakes. Look at magic the gathering fakes youtube videos by alpha investments and you’ll see a bunch of people losing thousands of dollars on buying cards they think they are real.
I don’t think anyone has issues with the metal cards or extended art though, it’s widely accepted here and if it’s so obvious that it’s not the original, people don’t really have an issue with that here.
I am ok with every fake/proxy/orica/whatever card as long as it does not try to copy the original 1:1. Just have something on there that clearly permanently marks the card as proxy, thus distinguishing the card from the real deal, and there you go - people who find value in fake cards can buy them, while no one can be deceived if they take a closer look at the card.
My “moral” problem is, OrIcA CarD maKERs don’t do that, they try to make their cards as close to the original as they possibly can.
Look at fake packs. I’ve seen dozens of people buying fake Base 2 boosters for close to 100$ each over the last few months from the same seller, all because someone sold like a hundred of them in 2019 as “fake” and this dude resells them as real. Japanese people buy fake English holos, thinking they’re real. Parents don’t want to pay 4$ for a GX card because they can get 25 for 5$ on eBay.
People get scammed because of the same dudes you buy the cards you still don’t own from. It’s your choice if you want to support that.
I’m asking people who defend fake cards where they draw the line. Fake 60 GX card lot? Fake Base 2 booster? Resealed booster box? Fake SSB Trophy? No line at all because it’s the buyer’s fault if they get scammed?
In the end, the only objective take is that selling any of that stuff is against eBay policy and/or prosecutable & the only reason we’re debating is because neither eBay nor Pokemon care enough to enforce their own rules or defend their ip, because in their finances, that market is still negligible.
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I think your concerns are valid. As I said, this is not a black and white issue. When collectors or resellers choke out the market by buying up all the rare cards, we will end up with a secondary counterfeit market. People have said that high prices for Pokemon cards are an indication that the hobby is thriving, well so is the proliferation of counterfeits.
Now, I do take issue with people who are selling fakes in an attempt to scam the buyer.
I don’t believe the consumers should be blamed for wanting access to a replica of a product they cannot afford. The problem is a lot of vitriol IS aimed at those people which solves nothing.
In any case, there probably isn’t a real solution to counterfeits. Pokemon isn’t likely to do anything about it since it’s a problem in the secondary market. It’s probably best to try and educate as many people as possible on how to identify fake cards or sketchy sellers and hope they do their due diligence. Also, report anyone whose selling fakes without being upfront about it. And make sure you have some sort of assurance that you can get a refund in the case of being scammed, especially if you’re in the market for the kind of cards that are more susceptible to being counterfeit.
But as long as prices for popular cards are skyrocketing, can you really blame people for turning to cheaper alternatives?
Oh yeah, and I’ve seen a fair amount of criticism for people who like custom cards lol
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Where I draw the line is if the seller is being intentionally deceitful or is not being upfront. It needs to be clearly marked as fake/custom/resealed etc. Obviously, you’ll never get scammers to do that, but if I were to defend the sale of fake cards, that’s how I would draw the line.
You can’t reasonably expect someone who has limited knowledge of Pokemon cards to be able to identify fake cards, but if they are buying something that’s clearly marked as fake, then thats… uh… on them lol and there are people that will make that mistake, unfortunately.
I do support the idea of having the actual card itself having something on it that clearly marks it as fake. Maybe the back had a big stamp that says “replica”.
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I personally only find it acceptable if it’s completely new art (and even then it’s still not really legal to sell it since it’s still someone else’s IP) So when people make a whole new card with new art that doesn’t try to imitate exiting cards.
Cards that like the “luxury” custom cards still use the basic official artworks and just change the colours so those are still using the copyrighted artwork but slightly altered (this is seen as art theft in the artist communities), those are still a nono for me.
Extended artwork painted cards are a category all on their own for me since they basically offer a service of painting the rest of the artwork. Though I am also against the practice of some artists selling prints of said painted cards, at wich point they are again selling reproductions of copyrighted artwork.
For the extended artwork or the custom artworks (fanart cards or people making cards that they wish existed, like for example a James’ magikarp CHR) could be said that they have their place.
But my view is that it’s pointless to buy a fake as a placeholder for a card you’ll never own since… you still don’t own the card even if you own a fake, and the money you spend buying from what essentially is a bootlegger could have been spent buying actual REAL cards. And I have no intention in collecting customs or fakes of any sorts, there’s plenty of REAL magikarp cards to be wasting my money on.
To be clear I don’t have an issue with people using placeholders in general, like the printer versions that were shown earlier by Pichufan. What I have a problem with is people spending money on a fake encouraging the making of more fakes cause “they’ll never own the real thing”. You might as well doodle a card and put it in there and it’d have the same value as the fake, if not even more if you’re actually decent at drawing. A fake doesn’t complete your collection cause it’s not real, so my view is that there’s no point in having one. There’s plenty of other ways to appreciate the art of the card outside of supporting bootleggers.
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I simply can’t get on board if that’s the concession you’re willing to make. It opens the door to so much more 
As a principle, it’s illegal to reproduce the product of someone else’s labor for profit. While there’s a narrow grey area between, when people reproduce and sell identical artworks that’s where I draw the line without compromise.
To each their own, but let me tell you a little about something called capitalism… lol
It sounds like you’d give a very one sided opinion on capitalism.