How to check Pkonno is not printing Illustrators in basement

Over the years, people have joked in good-nature that Pkonno is printing trophy and other rare cards from his secret basement printer. While to many this is a meme, others fear he does in fact have access to a printer today, and can print cards at will, either to make money, trade for dolls, or for pure enjoyment. Some hope for this, as it could be the key to their grail! This article will provide concrete and publicly available evidence of how to check if that is the case.

Step 1: Identifying Holo Constellations

Everyone loves a good holo swirl. Some swirls are so large and beautiful, perhaps two intertwined, they could even be considered galaxies. But let’s take it one step forward – to HOLO CONSTELLATIONS. A constellation is a clutter of sparkles, be they dots, stars, diamonds, or swirls, that is clearly identifiable. It’s extremely unlikely to come across two random holos in the wild with the same constellation. However, when they are initially printed on the same Japanese sheet, cards will share the same holo constellations, because the holo pattern is repeated throughout the sheet (think of a “pattern” like a section of wallpaper, and the sheet as the wall made up of pieces of identical wallpaper patterns). The constellation may not show up because the artwork or text is blocking the holo section of the card, but if you acetoned it all off, it would be revealed.

Here’s an example of a Japanese holo sheet. It’s 8x8 for 64 cards total, which is split into four 4x4 sections.

The red bar is NOT part of the sheet. That’s from me pausing YouTube to take the screenshot. Photo credit: TCA Gaming

If you look into the 4x4 sections of each sheet, holo constellations become apparent. Here are two examples. I’ve edited the colors so that the constellations are clearer. Photo credit: KEI

The “cluster” of stars (holo dots) is the same in each rectangle. Because part of the constellation may be obstructed, the easiest way to confirm is that every star in a true constellation will be identical size and distance from each other. The distance part is key as some stars may be covered with artwork.

As you can see, the constellations here are NOT on identical places in the holo background. The white rectangle on Magneton is on the right side of the holo, but on the left side for Raichu, despite it being the same constellation. And the black rectangle on Lapras is near the top of the holo but in the middle on Ditto. This is simply how the pattern is arranged; it is sized to avoid a completely identical holo on two cards. If you acetoned away the Mewtwo holo to the right of Lapras, you’d see the constellation somewhere.

Here’s where it gets fun. For Base holos, there are far too many to reliably check which sheet a card could have come from. But because the number of holo trophies printed is so small, you can actually check via constellation if cards are from the same sheet!

Step 2: Identifying constellations in Pikachu Illustrator

Going through scans and pictures of Pikachu Illustrators, you can begin to notice constellations that appear in two or three or more of the same card. These images have the colors edited to make the constellations clearer.

Let’s start with an easy one. These two Illustrators share a nearly identical holo background, and thus have multiple clear constellations shared. The most obvious is the three large circles on the left side in a diagonal line. These are almost certainly from the same 4x4 subsection on a sheet. The constellations are shifted down and a tiny bit to the left on the 423 cert Pika vs the 421.

This one’s a bit trickier, so I’ve circled to help:

At first glance, part of the constellation is obstructed on the Pikachu to the right (217 cert). Thankfully, I can check the other “stars” in the constellation to confirm. Notice how within the circle, every smaller dot is in the same place and same distance alongisde the three larger dots.

Are you ready for a challenge?

Without the luxury of high-res scans, it takes a trained eye and an adequate telescope (Photoshop) to identify these constellations. You’ll notice that the Illustrator in the middle (the graded one) does NOT have a blue circle. That constellation is still there, it’s just completely obstructed. Since this is a repeated pattern, it would be the same distance from the black circle as it is in the right Illustrator – below and to the left of the black circle, which in this case would be the text box. Likewise, the Illustrator on the left does NOT have a black circle. That constellation would be above and to the right of the blue circle, which in this case is hidden by the Charmander art and paper.

So – despite the left Illustrator appearing to share no constellations with the middle Illustrator – by matching it with a THIRD Illustrator, I can confirm these three cards share constellations and are thus are from the same sheet. And to think, it only took six hours of destroying my eyes by squinting at low res Pokemon cards to try and notice repeated patterns and constellations.

Step 3: Arranging Pikachu Illustrators on a hypothetical sheet

I can’t compare and identify enough constellations in the above Illustrators to accurately place them within an entire sheet. Nor can I confirm they are all from the same sheet. There could have been different printings and quantity printed per contest. However, I can at least know that the ones with shared constellations would be from the same sheet. Here’s a hypothetical arrangement of two 4x4 sections (obviously these would be actual cards on the sheet, not just the artwork, but showing the full card made the art too small to see the holo pattern:

Step 4: Is Pkonno printing Illustrators in his basement?

The purpose of this article is not to hypothesize how many Illustrators total were printed, how they were arranged on a sheet, or if multiple sheets were printed. There could have been a sheet with a few Illustrators and a bunch of random cards for the first contest, or half Illustrator half no rarity Chansey, or one sheet to cover all the Illustrators that were planned to be awarded. It was simply to check – do we have a printer running THIS MINUTE, potentially pumping out your grail card?

The answer is – no.

Here’s why. In the above examples, I made sure to compare Pkonno copies or copies without any provenance, to Illustrators we have no reason to question, and that were around years pre-Pkonno. And in all, a Pkonno or “extra” copy had constellations match one not suspected to be an extra, which would mean they are from the same sheet.

I know what some skeptics are thinking. But, Qwachansey, what if they’re ALL extras? What if you’re comparing new Pkonno to old Pkonno copies, all from his own sheet?

Fortunately, last year we were blessed that an original winner sold their Illustrator through Mercari. Included in the listing was the original envelope and congratulatory letter sent to them from Pokemon for winning the illustration contest, and which contained their Illustrator card.

Note: I’ve intentionally cropped out the rest of the envelope along with the letter. With the amount of fake “proxy” Illustator listings, I wouldn’t put it past someone to type up their own fake letter along with a well-made fake Illustrator to appear more convincing and pretend to sell as an original winner, so I’d rather not share the letter.

This Illustrator is about as close we can get to confirming a “non-Pkonno” copy. Sure, it could be an elaborate conspiracy with a fake envelope and letter, but that’s… a lot of work when people are happily forking over money anyway to get these cards.

If you recognize that Illustrator, it’s because I used it in the final bottom example. It’s the one on the right side, and shares constellations with the other two. This is critical because the Illustrator on the left side is the most recent copy sold by Pkonno – yet it’s from the same sheet as a winning copy.

There are thus two conclusions to draw:

- The Illustrators Pkonno is selling are from the same sheet(s) as the original winners. There is a finite supply. They are not being printed in a basement.

- Pkonno not only has a printer in his basement – he also went out out of his way to store multiple blank holo sheet templates in the 90s, the exact ones Illustrators were printed on, just in case he wanted to use them later on.

Storing sheets is no easy feat. If this research had shown that the Illustrators sold by Pkonno 2017 and onwards shared constellations with each other, but not with any prior sold Illustrators, that would be a major red flag that at minimum an extra sheet was printed but not awarded. However, that is not the case. The Pkonno Illustrators do share constellations with awarded Illustrators. My conclusion is therefore the first one, that these cards are from the original sheets and are not being printed today.

I hope you will enjoy searching for constellations in the future, and that someone who still has their eyesight left can do similar research for other numbered trainers.

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wow you have outdone yourself chansey! Great thread :blush:

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Bless you for this research Chansey. I am going to give this a full read before I go to bed tonight (and frankly I’ve already seen some of it :wink: ) but my favorite part about this is calling holo patterns constellations. I think this should be added to the Pokémon lexicon for sure.

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This sounds like an article someone with access to Pkonnos printer would post.

Im onto you qwachansey

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This is great! I wonder if its just the case that each sheet is the same repeated pattern, or ALL holo sheets are the same repeated pattern (or a set of 1-X variations)

We had an example of this the other day in discord too, when we saw that two T17’s I have contain the exact same holo pattern, just shifted. (Which likely came from the same case)

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I opened this thinking it would be a meme but it turned out to be one of the most well-researched, enlightening, and useful posts on E4 in a long time. Bravo @qwachansey!

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Great insight, great research, and very well thought out! Wonderful thread, Qwa!

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Good question. It’s definitely not a single same holo pattern on all sheets or there would only be a few different styles total of Japanese holo; the patterns themselves only cover a few cards are are repeated, so you’d notice within a handful of cards (hence actually being able to match up these Illustrators).

However, being truly infinite / randomized would be more expensive. I can see the holo pattern being computer generated today but would’ve been more difficult in the 90s. I wouldn’t be surprised if there forty for example different holo sheet patterns used but don’t know.

I’ve now been able to link four Illustrators together on a sheet based on constellation (thanks Montblanc for sharing an ungraded copy that matches the bottom example) and can likely link more eventually with enough patience.

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Great work on this! This is next level finding Waldo. If you want to take this to the next level, which I don’t recommend, you can compare the centering for the ones sharing top-bottom columns and left-right rows. The former should have the same left-right centering and latter top-bottom.

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It’s not a full article until I’ve recreated the sheet entirely.

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From looking at some of my holos, there are identical constellation patterns in common (at different places in the artbox). Yet these almost certainly weren’t holos from the exact same sheet. Do we know that every single holo sheet has a unique constellation pattern? Or is it possible that there were a finite amount of preset constellation patterns that holo sheets could have (i.e., they could have 20 different constellation patterns and print 1000 holo sheets of each pattern)?

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No, there were likely a finite amount, I mentioned forty as my guess to NiceWipe – would have been pricy in the 90s to computer generate a unique new holo pattern every time. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to narrow down all Illustrators to two different holo pattern sheets.

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Ah, I see – I somehow missed that response. If there only 40 different patterns, though, then identifying a common pattern between a newly-surfaced Pkonno copy and an orginal, awarded copy wouldn’t prove that Pkonno didn’t recently print his copy. It would just mean that he happened to use an identically-patterned sheet, which wouldn’t be all that unlikely given that there were only a few dozen different patterns that sheets could have.

Your analysis shows that it’s likely he’s not printing new copies. But it doesn’t seem conclusive to me.

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@zorloth if we put a guess at 40 sheets it’s 2.5%. The best thing to do is check with other holo trophies (pikas, SSB, TMB). From my preliminary research the pkonno do match with awarded copies, so eventually it goes from “I guess it’s technically possible he just happened to have the same sheet” to “statistically nearly impossible”

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I agree that it would be a 2.5% chance of a match if all of the original Pikachu Illustrators were printed on the same holo sheet. But do we know that this was the case? Or is it possible that there were awarded Pikachu Illustrators cut from different holo sheets? If so, then there would be a much higher likelihood of a match.

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Here is what I mean – let’s say there are only ten total different holo patterns for Japanese sheets. Which I would be very surprised by.
So, it could be a 10% chance of having the correct matching sheet for Illustrator.
But, I have found Pikas that match. Which puts it to 10% x 10% = 1%.
Now I am looking for SSB and TMB, which is a pain because less holo pattern. But that would put it to 10% x 10% x 10% = 0.1%

No that can’t be confirmed. But it would actually be less likelihood of a match, because remember i am not just looking at one pkonno matching to a constellation, I am looking at EVERY pkonno matching to a constellation. All pkonno ones match to awarded ones. So instead of only being to match to one sheet, you have to match to two. Right now I think there are two sheets and both match, so 2.5% x 2.5%, but have to research more.

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I have been witing to ask this for a while now, why are the pkonno illustrators considered extras? I would say the chance that he is printing them himself is incredibly small.

So I would say there are two options, he either took the extra copies from the sheet that did not go to the winners and that could either be a lot if there was a 8 X 8 sheet printed for each of the three competitions or less if it was a 4 X 4 sheet printed for each competition (or another option, but that is besides the point) If he took the extra copies from the sheets I would definitely consider them extras.

Could he not just have bought every illustrator that got on the market in Japan before the western market had access to it (1998-2008). He really likes this specific pokemon card in his live before he liked dolls and bought them all. That would make them all winner copies and now that the pokemon prices went kaboom he is now selling them all so he can enjoy retirement with his dolls.

I of course was not in the hobby in those years, so if I am saying something weird please correct me. But I would think the last option is also possible.

@thymeee,
We know at least some are extras from the sheet for a few reasons:.

  • Pikachu 97 trophies matching the holo pattern exactly on official PokĂ©mon template (displayed in silver bible)
  • Extras are known to exist for media factory vault, given to artists and employees in the past
  • Selling the 2000-2002 numbered trainers without the personalized name or region printed on the card,

As for buying up before they hit the West, at least two were graded by the end of 2000 by Western companies.

I am trying to avoid any discussion on motives / history of acquisition / selling for others consignment / history of distribution within Pokémon, as I have my own beliefs and do not want to take away from the article which has one explicit purpose.

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This is a great post but I don’t think we should be jumping to the conclusion that each holofoil sheet has a unique pattern. The holofoil pattern appears to just be a repeated square as already mentioned above. I whipped up a quick illustration of this for those who may be struggling to see it:

Here the red boxes are the repeated holofoil pattern and the blue boxes are the Pokémon overlaid on top. The illustration above obviously isn’t to scale; from a quick glimpse at a few sheet images I joked on Discord yesterday that this pretty much means the chance of a card having a spiral is probably around 2/3 making the cards without spirals slightly rarer.

As to my first comment, this assumes the sheets they used had unique holofoil patterns. I don’t know much about the printing process but I assume these holofoil sheets likely come from a large roll (think toilet roll but on a much larger scale) - for sets like Base Set hundreds if not thousands of these rolls would be used up leading to a much larger variation in holofoil patterns, but for promo cards like this they could very easily do multiple print runs from the same roll (this is me assuming that’s how it works, anyway).

As an example of what I mean, here are 3 hypothetical sheets using the exact same holofoil pattern as the example above:

Sheet 1 is the same as the example I shared above, sheet 2 has the cards printed with slightly different alignment to the holofoil, and sheet 3 has the cards printed with the holofoil sheet upside down. 1 and 2 will have very similar but much more extremely-shifted patterns whilst Sheet 3’s patterns will be reversed.

Whilst a very useful observation, without further knowledge of how Japan printed early cards I don’t think it can be claimed with confidence that each of these cards were from the same individual sheet, rather I believe they were from the same roll of sheets (i.e. all printed at roughly the same time).

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