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.