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Are some of the early certs for these when they were blue label march playtest labels here is some screenshots. Hopefully the cgc scans are good enough to check for dots on these original surfaced lower grade copies
Also I want to say that this should not surprise anyone - although the breadth of the problem is truly horrifying. I did the research into the Magic & Wizards forgeries that CGC authenticated, and this just seems like more of the same flippant attitude towards authentication.
red/blue international release, or red/green japanese? Sorry, I want to just be sure Iâm understanding. And that is a very good point. You should try to contact a fella who goes by the name âlewtwoâ. I havenât follow him for a few years now, but he has done legendary stuff to preserve, uncover and restore art from the early days of pokemon. He also lambasted and kicked bulbapedia in the ass to have better archives of art too. he may be a good touchstone on unwinding the timeline in a quicker manner https://www.youtube.com/@LewtwoYT/about
Best of luck. I am sorry about things. Iâd be gutted right now. I hope you get made whole from all this.
Thereâs a few interviews that claim the game sprites were made first and than Sugimori created that original watercool artwork for each pokemon. The purpose of the art was to finalize designs for anything outside the game such as guides, tcg, or the anime. Thereâs an Arita interview where he says that when he was introduced to the tcg project, only game sprites existed but when it came time to making the tcg art, Sugimori artworks were available to him in '96.
Could you share how that situation was resolved
It may be possible but if the " ex Akabane collection " pedigreed signed cards are also 2024 hard to deny at that point.
I feel like this will force cgc to expose the information or videos as there gonna get killed with bad press and potentially financial gurantee claims.
I always knew that these were fake. Only dummies bought them.
Absolutely love that they preserved Sugimorori lmao
pfm has always been a real one
You just called him a dummy though.
Thanks for putting in the work on this research PFM, itâs greatly appreciated; I have strong opinions about this whole thing even as someone who has 0 stake in ownership of the prototypes, and hope ultimately that something good comes of unravelling this whole mess. At this point I imagine this all came from a legitimate starting point and someone saw it as a good opportunity for shenanigans, but fingers crossed weâre provided with more answers one way or another. Unfortunate to say the least.
Here are the three Alpha starters that sold on Goldin mid last year (rest of the auctions are listed here: Goldin)
:
https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/1401030937061/
https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/1401030937067/
https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/1401030937064/
Between the lighter coloring, loss of clarity, and cleaner edges of both the paper and cardstock, the alphas that sold on that block just look different.
@pfm are the images provided by CGC a high enough resolution to spot any MIC? I couldnât emulate it when adjusting the layers but I may have missed something.
There is a post I made on E4 sharing all of the documentation and the paper I wrote up but I will provide a succinct timeline here.
In 2023 CGC reached out to me to ask me about a pile of âMagic and Wizardsâ cards they had received. They wanted to know if they were real. I never responded to them because I consult with PSA on yugioh and it was a ton of work. I knew very little at the time, so I didnât email them back. I didnât think much would come of it.
Months later more than 50 very high end versions popped up. Most of them were from the email I received. They all had very concerning issues worthy of suspicion and I was surprised they were authenticated. I spent months asking the owners questions and they provided some real data but mostly conjecture on this stuff.
I ended up buying two real copies that I could rely on as controls and started buying an example of every release from the period. I bought a forgery and cracked it live. I scanned everything in 1200 DPI (all of the data is available in that post I mentioned).
The preliminary analysis showed that the preponderance of the cards were forgeries. I messaged TCA Gaming about the Blue Eyes he had purchased and he was concerned and connected me with Matt Quinn.
Matt was uninterested in the research I had conducted and despite offering it to his team for review, he never messaged me back. I expressed doubts about a âtest printingâ since absolutely no literature in yugioh shows tests or discusses a test. He was resolute that his team had visited factories and knew what they were doing. Still, he did not provide any evidence that any tests had occurred and to date I have not found any data on that.
I finished up the paper and information this month before my move because I wanted to get out a final draft, which was published on Medium. To date I have not heard back on this and I donât think TCA was able to get them to honor their âauthenticity guarantee.â
Thanks for sharing the certs. I donât see dots so either itâs not high enough res or they werenât printed on.
The one thing Iâll say is regarding the backside.
The backside gives interesting information. This back is uniquely high-quality. Most backs look more like this:
Alpha Machop and Alpha Pidgeotto.This is speculation but I also believe the backs could be scans/copies. For example, the two above have the same hair:
For alpha I have found 10 copies with this hair. This does not say anything about when the cards were made as they may have been scanned/copied in 1995
But one card I could find shares this uniquely high quality back:
which seems to be the copy posted years ago:
I see. Sorry to hear you are impacted by this. Still, Iâd say getting the ball rolling to look for legal resources would be prudent so that if it comes to that you can just hit the ground running. Whether or not it will be needed, I hope it wonât. But I am a cynic and believe it probably will.
I also thought that since auction houses are also a victim of this, they may also have some leverage and grievances here. Or maybe the victims have to seek compensation from the auction houses? Its rather a mess isnât it?
sheesh. I just feel really bad for everyone. This is why from the get so many of us were bummed out that all of it was so heavily monetized instead of just a fun a happy showing off of various prototype test cards.
Okay everyone for now Iâll clear the airwaves, and just let PFM, affected parties and those with something meaningful to contribute do the talking.
Iâll sign off with âI was here when the news droppedâ. I pray for all those who got scammed to be made whole, and that the criminals involved are held accountable.
This is really just more confirmation that XRF, which was used in their authentication work, has no place in TCG authentication.
The controversy finally comes to light. Iâve been intrigued by these prototypes since they hit the public market but there was always some mysterious aura around them. Good thing I stayed away with a 1000-foot pole. The old saying is true: âwhen in doubt, stay awayâ.
CGC (Clown Grading Company) better come out with all the evidence/provenance they are withholding to prove their legitimacy otherwise their reputation is 100% done
Thanks for all the detective work. Sorry to anyone financially invested in this situation
