Long story short I’m still doing research on the glossy base set “test prints” and instead of spitballing questions at any old WotC employee I can find, I’d like to try and identify who I should be trying to get in touch with since my knowledge of the Pokemon side of WotC is limited.
I’ve found a wiki site outlining WotC employees for MtG and I was wondering if anything similar exists for Pokemon employees during the WotC era of the game’s production.
One main theory is that they are prototypes or production samples for promotional cards like the CoroCoro Jigglypuff, which a Promotional Manager might know something about.
The other theory is that they might be some kind of experiment or material test run by a main printing contractor or subcontractor of WotC. These were definitely made by some offset printing process, I just don’t know where or why they were made or who would have the power to contract facilities to print cards at WotC.
I’m not here to debate whether or not these are fake. Assuming that these are real, I just want to know who I should try and contact about them.
Such a list would be an incredibly bad thing to exist, having peoples names and contact info solely for the purpose of harassing them for information isn’t what we should be about.
That was twenty years ago and the guys (nearly ALL guys) were my age or older. So now, they’re my age or older and they don’t care about such stuff anymore, if they ever cared at all.
Time is running out to get the information we need. All the top level people from wotc are going to be dead in 30 some odd years. Would be cool to verify(or disprove)these cards, or TCA’s base test sheet, or that blastoise prototype card, or any other test cards/oddities for that matter. There’s a ton of stuff out there that has yet to get a concrete “it’s real” from any ex-wotc employee or Nintendo employee or who the hell ever.
it’s going to piss me off if in 30 years we’re still debating about prerelease clefables legitimacy or whether or not funskool had permission to print their own tcg cards.
If all the top collectors here have contacts in the industry, which I’m lead to believe is the case, why are there so many unverifiable cards/oddities? It’s definitely easier said than done, but I want answers damn it!
Collectors need to understand these were people working a job. Not a bunch of enthusiasts documenting everything. No amount of Collector entitlement is going to force information out of people. If anything it does the exact opposite.
Oh and unverifiable cards remain unverified because they weren’t legitimately released. There is nothing you can do to get a legitimate story on an illegitimate card.
Most former employees don’t know or don’t care. The rest make up stories just so they appear important. I personally know of three types of cards that are trading today that have supposed “verified” origins based on the word of a former employee but are actually total bunk. I know of another (my old cigar hitmonlee) that a former wotc executive guaranteed what the stated origin was, and it was total bs.
I’d be happy if I never heard another word about anomalies like fpo’s, upside down stamps, or especially pr Raichu’s.
Part of the reason I really like this hobby is because you have cards like FPO, upside down WB stamps, Sample cards, Blastoise with mtg back, matchprints, ect. I like the mystery and history (what we know) behind these cards. Thats what I think makes this hobby more unique compared to any other tcg. I would never care or expect if any of these cards ever became verified by any WOTC employee. I think these cards make the hobby exciting.
