Idk, i dont think things were so cut and dry back then. Most of these cards, like the illustrator for example, were awarded for multiple events that took place over like a year. It wasnt like a one and done, there will be 39 winners so print 39 cards type deal. It was just a fun lil promotional contest for a free card, i doubt they were super concerned with how many extras vs awarded copies they were printing
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That’s a fair assessment. We never saw extra copies of Snap Pika or Magikarp for some reason, after all of this time.
But to put into perspective, Yugioh has cards that have sold for $300k+ like the T3 trophies & no extras coming to market as of now. Each company is different of course & we’ll never know for sure, but it’ll always feel off with the selling habits of these employees or whoever they are.
Thats exactly what it is
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If any of us got these authenticated I bet you we wouldn’t be getting 10s, let alone a pristine 10.
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No matter where people stand, I think we can all agree this decreases the magic. These prototypes should be right up my alley, but the lack of care in the process, along with the physical attributes being glued paper make it very difficult to appreciate. The quote on that image, “will these be worth 10m” feels like a means to an end pump and dump. Same as the seemingly endless sheet cut cards.
I just wish more diamond hands handled diamonds.
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I’m confused as to where Beta Chansey stands in this time line of prototypes
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It’s a picture worth a post in the cringe thread.
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Reminds me of the energy in the autograph space 2022/2023. No love, just all about the money.
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‘Controversial Chinese Collector’ is hilarious. This guy is an outright scammer who has been barred from the international art space and if the pokemon community had any morals/brains he would also be shunned and ignored from this space.
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Anybody know how mtg gamma prints compare to alpha copies in terms of pricing.
In my head they are cheaper but i don’t have any knowledge to prove this.
the kingdra prime scammer right?
it’s an interesting time to be a collector and see what happens with these cards. Would be fun to redesign these cards for all 151 and make a replica poster
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I’m not sure about what he’s done recently as I don’t follow him, however previously he was cracking 10s, sending them to be regraded and putting other cards into fake slabs with the PSA 10 label for resale.
Utter scum.
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Yea he got caught doing that to a kingdra prime
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oh this dude…
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This might be the culmination of all my cynicism but I really couldn’t care any less about any of these prototype cards. I would like to care about them, I recognise them as important pieces of TCG history and the interest around how the TCG was developed is certainly there. But there is no fun here, there is no discovery, it’s like a billionaire buying a 1/25 hypercar to me at this point, or a celebrity spending 28 million dollars on a house that looks like a shopping centre. It’s just stupidly rich people throwing stupid amounts of money at the right person. Building a relationship because they have something they want.
Any historically significance or interest is eroded away. New AR card reveals in SV sets are more exciting than this.
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Are people suggesting these might be potentially made recently?
I understand the top of the hobby now keeps getting moved. It seems of unlikely consequence that has happend as organically as it appears with the WOTC x MTG protos, release of the creatures deck and now these Alphas.
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Who exactly are the employees? Do they still work there and Creatures is fine just letting them cash in? I mean, even Ishihara himself, what is he doing with all the cards of himself?
I’m honestly surprised there isn’t a Pokemon museum (or is there?) in Japan where all these materials could go. Being sold off like this to me means nothing.
I’ve also mentioned before though that none of these are really historical. People like what they like but I could not be less interested in the innumerable Base Set errors, prints and variants. It boils down to mistakes being made whilst producing a consumer product. Pokemon the franchise might be historical, but artificially scarce cardboard, even trophies and illustration contests and prototypes aren’t.
What’s more interesting to me is the design of the Pokemon itself - not card graphic design - and that information will never be in the form of a card hawked by bottom dwelling CGC and auction houses.
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Many are allegedly coming from Takumi Akabane. A large U.S.-based collector business buys trophies and niche items from him (maybe from several others too) and then sends them to CGC. Once they are graded by CGC, they show up on various auction websites.
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The provenance is there and they’re cool items, I don’t think there’s any merit in trying to disprove the authenticity. I think Akabane has just done an awful job at leaking this stuff out as slowly as he should’ve. It’s actually surprising to see so much pop up at once. Anyone with baseline knowledge of how much goes into designing a single consumer product let alone an entirely new Trading Card Game, knows there had to have been more of these types of prototypes lying around somewhere. The confusing bit is, why now? These didn’t surface for close to 26 years, so I don’t blame the people hungry and excited at the opportunity to own some of these. They’re undeniably cool pieces of history, I just think there was a much better way for these to have been trickled out to the public. I can’t think of a single time where auctioning a whole set of cards has ever been the best financial play available.
Edit: Or this just goes to show how much more insane stuff is still hiding away in cold storage. Spoil us, Akabane. We need the tease
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