What’s the provenance?
the akabane guy worked for pokemon and told cgc they were real
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Thank you for the answer. Is there a source where I can read up on that?
Slightly more info here :
Not sure CGC has said anything via their news page specifically about speaking with Akabane but it’s possible they did: https://www.cgccards.com/news/
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CGC have done a completely shit job of reporting on why they think these are legit, and frankly they shouldn’t be grading them as they aren’t factory cut (just slab as authentic).
Anyway, here is a diglet test print of mine.
I have no idea if it’s legit but it’s cool.
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That would be because a certain rich someone got in contact with them to buy prototypes and once it started happening the floodgates opened. I think the only reason they didn’t all sell during COVID peak is because people simply didn’t know how much they were worth. If the mentioned rich someone contacted them during COVID we would have seen it a lot sooner.
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Based on the information I’ve heard circling, I don’t think most of these prototypes came from Akabane but I have heard he was involved in the authentication. All unverified claims, but the moral is I wouldn’t latch on to any particular story as truth.
I think the information unbalance is also what really rubs me the wrong way. A “secret” person sold these to a “secret” buyer and authenticated them via unknown means.
There’s no context to these items or what they were used for at what time. What do the variants represent? Where’s the story? Basically all I’ve seen is I should want it because it’s a prototype and kangaskhan something something same stock photo as trophy kang.
There seems to be no care in thought into explaining what they are to the general public. So it’s not suprising that the general public feels left out of any emotional connection or meaning to what these prototypes actually are
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Don’t worry bro they’re “doing it for the collectors” 
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Everyone involved:
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For the community 
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The funny part is that we haven’t seen all the variants yet lol
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dont worry there will be more first ever coming soon from A to Z
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I mean supposedly these are all coming from one source and we have no idea how many of each card there are. There could be several people with several copies of each play test card.
They also could be faked or reproduced. Nobody should be so foolish as to think that these “mounted on card” cards can’t be faked in 2024 by malicious actors.
For all we know there’s former Pokemon employees that have the files and could print new copies of these play test cards and nobody would know any better
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Love the history behind these, but they dont do much for me personally.
Just saw these today for first time. I actually like em
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I know that these are coming from (I think?) reputable sources but its really hard to not be dubious when prototypes, that were previously only ever whispers on the wind, start to come out every other day in droves
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The stuff I posted is from an ig account that supposedly belongs to akabane. Weird that he’s posting them in a public forum with cryptic captions, and photo filters.
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Don’t mean to be a negative Nancy but I just have a hard time believing any place can truly authenticate a lot of this stuff. “Reputable source” to me is shaky ground to begin with, especially when these things can potentially be worth tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’d be real easy to “mis-remember” when you’re offered lots of money.
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