Japanese Ivy Pikachu Reprinted CoroCoro Variant

I am no grading expert, but I would definitely bet on you copy being one of the rarer glossy reprints. As @redsky pointed out, the Corocoro glossy versions have a very recognisable trait outside of their glossiness: the star in the Colorless Energy symbol in their retreat cost is visibly offset top-right. In the non-glossy version, the star in the Energy is cleanly aligned smack in the middle of the circle – it also appears to be smaller relative to the surrounding circle.

The graded copy you shared pictures of clearly has the offset Colorless Energy symbol, which can only mean one of two things:

  1. Either all Corocoro versions (both the original and 2000 copies with the corrected illustrator) of the Ivy Pikachu have an offset Energy Symbol, in which case your copy is indeed the rarer glossy reprint
  2. Or there are different versions of the non-glossy Ivy Pikachu, some with offset Energy symbols and some with centered symbols.

Until someone can share a non-glossy Ivy Pikachu with offset symbols, I think it’s more likely the former explanation is correct.
It is kind of intriguing that Corocoro’s reprint from 1998 fixed the Illustrator name but kept the offset Energy symbol, while the non-glossy version from 1996 had already fixed both the name and symbol. I assume there were different image files for the Corocoro version and the Gift Pack version, and the Corocoro reprint was based on the original Corocoro file, only fixing the obvious error and leaving the less obvious one.

So although this is just my personal deduction mostly based on what I’ve learned from @prochaos 's amazingly thorough explanation, I’m tempted to congratulate you on your PSA 10 copy of a 2000-only card from over two decades ago :grin:

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