Hello guys, I been following this auction and wanted to bid, but something about this stamp makes me uncomfortable. Here is the card, it’s a german STAFF Prerelease Gyarados, from the Ebay seller pokedadgermany
I realized the stamp looks very similar to the inverted charizard staff stamp in previous posts and also a fake one from an italian seller, so I will do a comparison here:
And here the stamps:
In my opinion it looks the same as the inverted an italian one, but I will love to hear other thoughts as I may bid on this one, thanks!
Edit: I find it suspect. After seeing my pictures posted and compared to yours, it looks like the text isn’t well indented and the S and F’s look very off.
I took some pictures of my Staff Evolutions Gyara for comparison:
I took closeups with different lighting too:
I’d personally ask for more pictures of the Staff stamp before making a purchase. I noticed that at times, depending on the lighting, the text looked similar but without further pictures, it’s hard to define.
@azulryu, interesting, yes I asked for more pics hope I get an answer before the bid ends. I will compare your pics with this, sadly the post only had 1
I don’t think new photos are needed to tell that it’s not worth your time. The stamp doesn’t have consistent coverage in the lower half of the lettering. It could be a light strike (easily chalked up to the usual variance between presses) or a fake -there’s honestly no fool proof way to tell.
@papafrankgod again, there’s just no way to tell, new photos or not, and that’s honest. That’s why advised passing on them —particularly because you’re already unsettled by the stamp. As a secondary notion, if one is fake, they’re both very likely fake. That’s usually how fake sellers work.
For what it’s worth, I’d be very surprised if he was purposefully selling fake goods. The person running the account is a very well established member of the competitive TCG community and has been for many years
Not saying that the cards can’t/won’t be fake however, or whether it’s worth the risk.
I managed to win 5 of the Staff cards this guy had for sale, and your post had me worried when I seen the seller name! Reassuring to hear he’s party of the community though so thanks @rambo!
What if different stamping machines were used for these cards? The cards shown here are European, so it would make sense for them to be stamped in Europe (as presumably the cards would already be in Europe before head counts and whatnot had been calculated for how many cards needed stamps applying to them).
The seller of the fake stamp Charizard was Italian - do Italian Evolutions cards exist with a ‘STAFF’ stamp, or could Italians have been given English cards instead?
I certainly don’t believe the Italian seller’s Charizards to have real stamps on them (they look like they use a different font face), but it definitely doesn’t feel like to much of a stretch to assume different machines could have been used which could have lead to such inconsistencies with this Gyarados card.
From what I know, its highly unlikely that you would have different stamp machines. They go through a specific process at a specific facility one time. Multiple runs of prerelease stamps or a run at different facilities would be costly and inconsistent.
We also know that foreign prerelease kits are shipped from the US because they’ve gotten lost before.
Its feasible they would do a specific foreign language differently if there was some factor involved that I’m not privy to that justifies the additional logistical hurdles. But I would just stay away from stamps that don’t match. Evolutions in particular is faked an insane amount.
Honestly, if it makes you uncomfortable, that feeling will always stay even if you win the card…might be better to pay a premium and feel comfortable with the card in your collection!
It might be good to add to this discussion (for people who are not familiar with stamps overall and with stamped copies of the older cards drying up) that Pokemon changed the design of some stamps like the worlds promos over the years. If you find a 2013 staff copy, that stamp will look different than the 2019 version, so always compare the stamp to legit/graded copies from the same release.
Oh, regarding my Matchprint post? I’d hardly call that a guide, that’s more of a shopping list than anything.
@jkanly I wouldn’t even know where to begin with trying to fake these but I’m pretty sure it’d be a lot harder and a lot less lucrative than doing it with the Matchprint cards.
