I purchased a bunch of cards in bulk a couple of months ago to hand out to my kiddo patients. BTW it has been going super good and currently trying to figure out a way to show y’all those happy smiling faces of the children receiving pokemon cards and not break any HIPAA guidelines.
Okay, well looking through some of those cards I found this pinkish boarder magnemite. Just wondering if this is an error or did this card forget some suntan lotion at the beach? lol
I think you hit the hammer on the nail here. 99% of all Albino errors are due to sun discoloration. Although the card itself usually is slightly lighter as well, with the early WotC cards the border discolors way faster than the rest of the card, starting pink and becoming beige when exposed for an extensive amount of time.
Here an example of a Pikachu I own with pink borders, but at the top-right it still has yellowish borders:
Here another one that was exposed for a longer period of time, making the card overall lighter, and the border more beige instead of pink. With this card a small portion (bottom-left) is not very discolored as well.
And when a card is sun-discolored in an all-year-around sunny area on purpose every day for more than a year, it ends up completely bleached:
Some other sun-discolored cards I own:
Jumbo with partial Albino borders:
Bunch of other sun-discolored cards (with non-discolored one in the middle as comparison):
And my second on-purpose sun-bleached card, which looks pretty cool with the blue background:
Anyway, sorry for all the pictures. As I mentioned, in almost 99% of the cases it is discolored by the sun. I have seen some examples that were short on ink and were pulled out of the packs like this (most likely). Here is one of the two examples:
Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of the Albino Zapdos that former member @darkrai owns. Does anyone still has any pictures of this discolored Zapdos somewhere?
The best advice anyone can give: Albino is not actually a thing. Even if there was a factory shortage on ink, this is one of the easiest alterations and there is no 100% way to verify.
Thanks for the responses everyone. Quuador you could write a thesis with that much info on sun exposure to cards. Great stuff and I appreciate y’all taking the time. Still learning.
@pokemondentist Really good idea giving out cards to your patients! I gave a few japanese holos to a teachers kid and they lost their mind. I forgot how much kids appreciate those gestures. You giving them cards might be what keeps them in the hobby!
You can see the psa graded one there is definitely dirrences between the middle and border, there’s no way it can be saturated by light as if it was it would affect the middle section as well. It’s more as though the border ink used was a completely different colour. As it’s clean and very vibrant in person. Maybe wotc did a bad batch and put the wrong ink for a short time. Then realised and corrected it. But I don’t know. Or ink was running low.
I found this in bulk I bought ages ago. Just was random and lucky to find in the middle of a bunch of normal cards.
I’m not trying to endorse or sell or even chase these really. It was just an obscure random piece I stumbled on over the years. But it’s clearly different and not faked, and was approved by psa. Not something I want to sell anyways.
Sorry about that… And I indeed think that in your case the yellow border was just low on ink. Possibly an entire sheet of these are out there for the Jungle Commons in that case.
Yeah, I agree with Scott as well, be careful when buying these… as it could be faked or light induced.
Your post was really helpful though.
Thank you!
I don’t particular focus on errors myself, I just know the one I own the colours are clean, and differitiated nicely. There is clear variance with the colours and ink.
And the texture is the same as a normal card.
The texture would also change if the card is light induced or heated over a long time.
The card doesn’t look fake. It is interesting to see all the changes on the card from shadowless to unlimited. Just helps highlight all the errors WOTC had in 1st edition and unlimited prints before someone complained (likely Nintendo) and got them to fix the cards.
I actually have the same exact one that I just got in a bulk box I bought, and a jungle snorlax as well, but both have about 1/3 of the yellow border left. both appear to be perfect color for the rest of the card, so I’m guessing that it was an issue with jungle specifically?
Although the card itself usually is slightly lighter as well, with the early WotC cards the border discolors way faster than the rest of the card, starting pink and becoming beige when exposed for an extensive amount of time.
