Lucky Kagemaru Himeno signature find, or is it fake?

General
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Hi everyone!

I’m afraid I’m not the most active member on the forums, as far as creating posts goes, more of a discord man myself, but I need some help and would much appreciate some knowledge from the community!

First some context:
I own a natta wake set, some loose, some graded , some sealed in the manga, but as much as I love the cards I always liked the manga themselves for the artwork, so I saw a Japanese 2nd hand book seller selling the set for £90 and sort of impulse bought it. Nice complete set without the cards, all shown with some stock images as they had a few sets for sale.

Today they arrived, and I was flicking through enjoying the art and checking the condition when on the back page of the Pikachu one ( vol.6)

I discovered this :

imgur.com/kB7oha7

At first I thought, huh that’s weird, none of the others in the set have this random (I assumed) print of from the Artist and her sig with an illustration, how neat. But upon looking closer it dawned on me that they were clearly actual pen strokes, and not just printed into the back of the cover… So of course I thought it’s probably some kid’s attempt at copying the signature, there’s no way it could be real, right?

But it looked soo well done!

I must admit I know nothing about signatures, the signature market, prices or any of that. the only signatures I have I got myself from Mitsuhiro Arita at Hyper Japan 2019 in the UK ( where I’m from) and they’re a treasured possession that will never leave me.

Needless to say though, I don’t know how to authenticate signatures…so I jumped on the discord, and initial reactions seem pretty good, I was told it looks quite real to some of those whom have handled signatures before.

But of course I need convincing, in my mind there’s no way I stumbled across a cool find like this, so i thought I’d make this post to get some thoughts from the wider community, what do you think? Any chance it’s real?

Any help is much appreciated. regards,

  • Alex
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Ooooh man it looks good

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I’m a proper boomer and don’t know how to share images on the forum properly, but here’s another pic:

imgur.com/JnJCOHD

I should note the original listing from the book seller did not mention this whatsoever lol, presumably bbecause they had stacks of these books so they probably didn’t check through them

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Looks very nice, don’t know about validity but I really like it

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Himeno signature is my dream. She’s my favorite artist by far. When I’m admiring card art that really catches my eye, it almost always end up being Himeno without me even first realizing it.

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Himeno is a master. I still get the warm and fuzzies looking at her original Pokemon art from Jungle.


I’m most familiar with her original stuff but from everything I’ve seen she’s been killing it for like 24 years now.

@lasbrisas, No idea if that’s authentic but it looks amazing!

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Seriously one of my favourite artists going

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Looks 100% legit

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I want to stress, if it does or doesn’t turn out to be real, it won’t be for sale. I think it’s really cool in any case and I think it’s pretty unique to have a sig and illustration of this size, however:

In the event that it is real…what do I do with it?

Are her signatures rare, are they costly, can I authenticate this in any way professionally? Like would PSA look at this sort of thing, or even be able to authenticate anything like this?

If I have something genuinely sought after I’d like to know, as the level of care in storing/ protecting it would vary greatly depending on those factors, and if I ever lose interest in pokemon, or ‘‘kick the bucket’’ it’d be nice to know what should be done with it.

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They are rare. Somewhat costly.

And psa or bgs would be able to authenticate it. Either they could authenticate the book and place a sticker on it deeming it authentic with a serial number. Or you could remove that page from the book and psa or bgs would be able to slab it .

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Hmmm that’s a tricky one, I’d have to dwell on it for a while, but my initial instinct is I’d want to keep the book in tact. I wonder what’s common in the book/novel industry, as I suppose it’s common to get authors to sign the inside covers of books?

It’sd just be nice to have it professionally authenticated than to be guessing as to whether it is or isn’t.

My initial instinct would be the sticker

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Whatever you do, please keep the book intact. This is the coolest non-card object she could have possibly signed. Ripping the page out would both destroy the book and the signature’s context.
I wish you the best that it can be authenticated and proven real!

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Yeah I don’t think I could, you’re totally right @muk !

Thanks, I’m soo excited by this find, it’s very cool :blush:

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WOW WHAT A FIND!

Looks good to me! I’ve seena few of that same signature floating around on cards, and it looks to match up nicely!

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That’s incredibly exciting! Congrats on an amazing find!

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Thanks very much @swolepoke, and @azulryu ! I’m still in shock haha

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