I don’t see any dots on my side (if anyone else can confirm).
Definitely sounds like bs. Pretty much zero chance that Pokemon company comes out and makes any statement about these other than if they would for some reason pursue legal action against people involved in this - which is what I would expect before any other type of acknowledgement from them.
Yes but nothing with the magnitude of the mistake being multi millions of dollars…
How they verified all fake CGC prototypes on their platform and now have 0 responsibility and don’t even want to refund BP?
Screenshot from bidding screen:
Has anyone heard back from Goldin? I haven’t gotten any responses from their support or from folks on this forum representing them.
Yes, they’re working on finalizing small details. Sounds like we’ll be taken care of.
That’s great news. Thanks for the response.
I disagree with your second part. CGC authenticating these is the reason, why their price is that high at all. Otherwise they would never fetch the prices, they have. For example if I print a fake first ed. shadowless base zard and try to sell it on my own, nobody would ever buy it because they know it’s fake, however if I grade it with CGC first then I would be able to sell it for a higher price because it’s been authenticated by CGC.
IMO Collectables in general only have value when they are authentic. While the scammers should also be blamed. For me it’s like 10% on them and 90% on CGC as authenticating collectibles is their only job and the only reason why they earn money.
That’s why them mentioning only 0,03% was insulting and downplayed the situation similar to your statement especially when you don’t own a prototype card.
Just a devils advocate question…if the founder of Pokemon tcg showed off these cards and then offered them to you in person, but you asked cgc if they would grade and they said no…you wouldn’t have purchased it?
I would not, just like many others didn’t because PSA did not grade them.
Also the problem with this whole situation is that we do not know how Akabane is involved.
Why did CGC not come out with documentation on how they graded these as authentic? (I mean we should wait a few months but them not being transparent is highly suspicious). Did he confirm every card with them? We don’t know and I doubt we will.
The only thing we know thanks to Pfm is that some if not most were printed in 2024, that CGC graded them as authentic, that many of them sold for a high price, Akabane is involved somehow and that prototypes did exist in some kind of form with proof in magazines back in 96. (Let me know if I missed anything).
IMO everything else is speculation and ppl sharing their opinions and feelings.
If you want to believe that a person (or persons) who maliciously defrauded millions off people by injecting fake, photocopied duplicates into market with real cards by leveraging their credibility to trick buyers and CGC alike are only 10% responsible for this travesty; that entirely is your prerogative. If Fraud isn’t a big deal to you but negligence is, then go off.
That sort of frauds are usually the biggest, because people trust them a lot more. Similar has happened in the whisky world for example, at least one of the people behind some of the best ever bottles of whisky is behind some of the better fakes later in time, and because of his history people trusted it more. He also had a better overview of how to make good fakes due to making the originals too. I’d say an auction company/verification company should not just trust one person’s word because of this sort of thing. I’m pretty skeptical on auction houses who do poor service too, once they get to a certain size they often seem to give poor service and just rely on people continuing to go via them in future. So great job to those who are taking responsibility, despite likely having far less profits.
If no one has talked to a lawyer about class action suits, then y’all are gonna go nowhere. This has to be taken to the courts asap. That would likely get a federal agency involved, which would only help with the investigation.
There are at least 9 different backsides for cards with the alpha dot pattern.
What I mean is, there are printed artifacts on the back of alpha cards that let you put them into nine different buckets.
First, the alpha Gyarados that was part of the larger alpha playtests group that hit the market has a distinct backside from the nine types I’m referring to.
This is similar to copies with the 1996 dots demonstrated earlier in this thread. I don’t know what kind of dots the Gyarados has.
For the others, there are little print artifacts, especially around the pokeball, that suggest all the alpha cards with the alpha pattern had their backside copied from 9 distinct sources. In theory, this could be a photocopy of a 3x3 set of backsides that were printed multiple times. For example:
Keep in mind, even if this theory is true, there’s currently no way to determine whether this happened in 1996 or 2024.
Also, these backsides share major artifacts in common but may have subtle specs or debris picked up by the imaging that are not shared. So don’t be surprised by minor differences in the same category.
Here are the 9 different backsides and the number of cards that have each (that I could find):
Ball type 1
10 cards, Poliwag & Kakuna shown below
Ball type 2 - “T” pattern
9 cards, Poliwag & Tangla shown below
Ball type 3
7 cards, Venusaur & Zapdos shown below
Ball type 4
8 cards, Electabuzz & Haunter shown below
Ball type 6
9 cards, Vulpix & Porygon shown below
Ball type 7 - similar to type 6 but displays consistent differences
8 cards, Nidoran & Dratini shown below
Ball type 8 - With hair type 1
9 cards, Alakazam & Machamp shown below
Ball type 9 - With hair type 2
10 cards, Charizard & Machop shown below
This one is easy to tell at a quick glance because there is a spec in the whitespace of the Pokeball.
Alignment of dots
The dot patterns also seem to align between different backs. Shown below is a high-res scan (Defender) versus auction house image (Pidgeotto). Despite the lower quality of the Pidgeotto image, you can still see the alignment where the dots are able to be picked up. These are Ball type 9 with the hair 2.
I interpret this as evidence of them being printed at the same time, or at least from the same digital origin.
Connection to Beta Playtest
Shown below is the back of a HQ beta. Note the shared features to Ball type 9: similar lossy pattern on the Pokeball, spec in the whitespace of the ball, hair 2.
This backside contains traces of the alpha pattern. This leads me to believe that the HQ beta backside is a copy of some alpha playtest card (which itself is also likely a copy), or at the very least they share a common origin.
Was my Scyther’s backside in one of those examples? Mine had a weird shape/scribble on the pokeball button that I have not seen on another card. Maybe that’s just an artifact of its being scanned and reprinted.
A few more notes, here’s an alpha back type 8 versus HQ beta Dodrio
Here you can see alignment of the dots. The Dodrio is a lower quality image so the dots are going to appear weaker. Notably, it doesn’t seem to share a lot of the weird edge-based artifacts and striations seen on other HQ Betas.
HQ Betas vs Alpha back, images at similar resolution:
There’s actually a good chance that the back of the beta Dodrio is from the same printed batch as the alphas which is concerning.
LQ beta also shows evidence of photocopying. This might seem like a stretch but it shows up on multiple backs. Shown below is a Butterfree.
First notice that the LQ beta backs look distinct from HQ beta and alpha show above. They are even more washed out. Second, there is evidence of two dot patterns on the back (2024 dots printed on alpha pattern dots). Third, some backs share properties of ball type 9. Notice the spec in the whitespace of the Pokeball aligns so a significant degree with ball type 9 and also a very subtle artifact where we would expect hair 2 (expected placement of hair annotated by a square).
Similar artifacts on this LQ beta Seaking.
What does this all mean? I don’t know. Just more evidence on the pile and for future reference. What it does indicate to me is that there is evidence of a concerning amount of photocopying happening.
New lore just dropped, finally proof my HQ betas are real
(kind of joking but also kind of serious)
Can you please give the CGC authentication team a workshop on how to conduct proper analyses on paper, printers, and cardstock in order to support their current authentication process of “we did an interview to confirm provenance?”
Thanks,
cpbog1
can you please elaborate?