Hi Azi, I purchased this Variant 3 two times on Ebay and it was rejected by the authenticator. Since Ebay authentication uses PSA, there is a good chance they will reject it if you want to grade it with them. Another difference what I spotted is that Variant 3 does not have the purple neon highlight color around the Lugia compared to real version Variant 1. Also, the ‘basic’ looks slightly different between the two.
Hi Azi,
I don’t think that PSA will necessarily grade your fake just for being Variant 3 (and you are correct that it seems to be Variant 3 given the white spec, lack of bolding on ‘Basic’ text, and missing TM among other indicators). The reason is that 25% of publicly known certs across PSA and Beckett are Variant 3 - meaning they happily grade them as real all the time. About just as often as Variant 1 in fact. That’s kind of the crux of this whole thread and why it feels so odd.
So that’s a double edged sword - it also means that if you did send it in to PSA and they authenticated it then that’s still unfortunately not a guarantee that it’s real given the lack of evidence of original owners getting any variant other than Variant 1 at distro events back in the day.
You’re point that you bought it in 2008 is both interesting (perhaps the person you bought it from was the original owner, and through some detective work we can verify if non-Variant 1 copies are real) and consistent (I have records of old blog comments from 2007-2009 warning about fake shadow lugias so there were fakes back then).
Here’s what I would do if I were you:
- I will DM you all of the known Variant 3 cert URLs I have in my database. When you have 20 minutes, feel I would look at them and click on the image on the PSA site where, if you hover your mouse on the front or back, it should zoom in and show better details. This will give you a sense of if anything is inconsistent with your copy between the ones PSA authenticates vs yours. Especially the crispness of the Gale of Darkness stamp, front TM stamp, and weakness/resistance text.
- Take a look at the Variant 1 vs Variant 3 detailed image diffs on this reply here: Most difficult card to authenticate? The mysterious case of Jumbo Shadow Lugia - #25 by tval. The high exposure diffs and red overlay diff images on that comment will guide you very quickly on where to look to be confident that “yes, your copy has the deviations that PSA-authenticated Variant 3s have”. Between this + my bullet above that can at least tell you if you have a bad fake or a copy that ‘may be real or may be a very good fake but isn’t known yet’
- Optional: if you can access a high res scanner in the next month or so I can give you my discord or something and I can run it through my image processing tool I made that compares shadow lugia scans. Up to you and more for your peace of mind. Doesn’t matter either way to me.
- Optional but potentially impactful: if you can do some detective work to find any old emails on the eBay confirmation that highlights the exact date, seller ID, item ID, description, etc that could be a very interesting lead. I have a lot of Variant 3 holders DM-ing me anxious for updates so if you magically were able to dig this data up and I used it to find the truth on Variant 3 then that could be very impactful to the TCG community here. This i’m admittedly more bias for than bullets (1)-(3) above but requires some effort on your part so no hard feelings if you’re not feeling up to it. But figured I’d at least call it out
Thank you everyone for your input. It is all very helpful!
I will do some digging to see if I can find the original purchase date and seller. I was only a child back then and I purchased it with my mom’s help on her old Ebay account. I will let you know if I can get into it and find the details! I will also check if there is a high-res scanner near me. Thanks again!
In the meantime, I did find a physical paper printout in my Pokemon binder of the auction. It was only page 2 of 3. It does give the item number and date, but not the seller unfortunately. I will share it here just in case it is helpful.
Item # 110227419280
Date: 2/24/2008
I can’t yet get into the old account. Ebay does not seem to keep a record of items that sold that long ago. Unless someone has an account with Worthpoint and can look it up there, I don’t know if I can find the original posting.
Hmm, though just looking at the photo, the thumbnail photo seems to show Variant 1, but I physically have a 3. The listing probably copied this photo from elsewhere. More evidence to suggest this is probably fake.
I wouldn’t say that’s a reason that it’s fake either. Worthpoint shows that almost 90% of old eBay sales of this card used the exact same stock photo: https://www.worthpoint.com/inventory/search?offset=240&max=20&sort=BestMatch&query=Pokemon+Jumbo+Shadow+Lugia&saleLocation=US&restrictTo=worldwide&_searchByTitle=true&_img=false&img=true&_noGreyList=false&noGreyList=true&ignoreSavedPreferences=true
@tval, I sent you a DM about the BGS 9, Variant 1 obtained at the E3 event
additionally, I found some old auctions around the time @Azi bought theirs (~2 months later) with the same shipping price and 2 sold by the same seller “toygalleria”. They don’t have an account anymore, and we do need to be cautious of recycled accounts (there’s a singapore store today with very little in common with the same name but that’s not the same seller).
Some things I find interesting about it is:
- The item description is clearly copy and pasted. It also contradicts itself by saying things like “It was only given to…” and then “was also given…”
- It mentions the freeze dance contest that I suspected Variant 4 was from. But the real interesting piece here is that this is dated April 18th, 2007 meanwhile the Bulbapedia page for Shadow Lugia has logs showing that that entry wasn’t added until February 27th, 2011 by a mod named Nuvakal. I’ve spoke to Nuvakal a few months ago asked for their source and they said they didn’t keep records of it and sadly didn’t know. I think we know now that it’s most likely that Nuvakal added the 4 distrobution origins to the Bulbapedia page based on snowballing eBay item descriptions.
- How do I know these descriptions are snowballed (e.g. frankstein glued together over the years)? Because the text at the top that mentions the Expo is copy and pasted from another listing I found that is older but doesn’t include the other distros: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/pokemon-shadow-lugia-jumbo-promo-card-e3-nintendo-79 That’s a Variant 3 copy (with real photos, no stock images) from May 7th, 2007. Notice the description:
You are bidding on an extremely exclusive Jumbo Shadow Lugia promo card . This is hard to come by, it was only given to press who attended the official 2006 Nintendo Pre Electronic Entertainment Expo conference. Please remember that this card is not tournament legal, it has the words “Not for Play Use” printed on back. This promotional jumbo card measures about 5-3/4" x 8" and are enlarged Shadow Lugia cards from the Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness booster set.
It doesn’t include the later half. So toygalleria likely used a copy and paste. Also both listings incorrectly claim that the card is an enlarged copy from a fictional “Gale of Darkness booster set”. That doesn’t mean that the 2007 listing is made by someone who doesn’t know about Pokemon (eBay has had description auto fill recs for decades that most people just accept without looking) but it would definitely be helpful to find the first listing that mentioned the freeze dance.
Perhaps the most interesting bit of this, if you put together all the data is that we know that:
- The freeze dance is listed on a 2008 description
- The Bulbapedia lists the freeze dance as the competition that occurred at the Platinum release in 2009 (there was indeed a competition as i’ve seen footage; though no clue on if the card was handed out)
- That implies that either there were 2 of these competitions (I believe there was one at Houston but I know for a fact that you did not need to be a finalist to get the card, as already proven in the early comments on this thread) or that the origin story of it being handed out at the Platinum release is fabricated/got messed up via a decade-long game of telephone.
- I do know a user with a PSA-graded Variant 4 copy who claims the person they bought it from got it from someone who won it from a dance competition. So take that with a grain of salt
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One other comment on the above: in 2008 these were going for $5-$15. and take home for eBay sellers was $4-$12 before taxes. So the incentive for an eBay store to sell known counterfeits and get banned for the promise of a free lunch worth of money is quite low
You did some great research! I do remember paying around $20 for the card. It’s not a lot, but back then lots of my cards that are worth a lot more were going for a lot less. Maybe since it wasn’t tournament legal and there wasn’t a lot of them, people didn’t know the value to sell it for if it was real. All quite a head scratcher.
Update, I have a confirmed real Variant 1 copy (right) from pokemonlabs/GreatFox and can now at least provide additional comparisons to the Variant 2 I bought several months back (left).
Some observations:
- Most of the things that pop are what I already caught from my image processing code scanning the PSA grades: things like the ‘Pokemon’ logo being a brighter yellow in Variant 1, the ‘BASIC’ text being medium bolded rather than double bolded, slight color diffs in hue/tone
- The ‘TN’ logo on the front for Variant 1 has a visible gap between the right arm of the ‘T’ and the upper left leg of the ‘M’. On Variant 2 to the naked eye they look like they are tangent to each other rather than having a small gap
- The Variant 1 copy is smaller (8"x5.75") compared to the Variant 2 (which has an extra 1/16th" in length and an extra 1/32nd" in width). This is not an indicator however since we already knew from the woman with 2 copies from the same event at Houston Space Center that she has a Variant 1 in both sizes so that irregularity is fine.
- The Variant 1 is ever so slightly more rigid when lightly bent along both the length and width. Because my particular Variant 2 copy is heavily damaged with multiple creases it wouldn’t be shocking to have worn down rigidity which is normal for a card like that.
- Not sure how to describe this observation but the Variant 1 copy print pattern is slightly less ‘grainy’…?? maybe i need a better word. Not in like a ‘Variant 2 is pixelated’ way or anything since that’s definitely not the case. But you can almost see a print pattern with the naked eye on Variant 2 that is harder to see on Variant 1. This is most apparent on the front yellow border and on the back on the white of the lower half of the pokeball
I also took some images of the cards under my scope.
Bottom left card corner, front side near yellow border
Bottom left corner of Variant 1
Bottom left corner of Variant 2
Printer dot vectors drawn on each, overlayed aligned on the black corner, and angle measured. 50% transparency on overlay.
It looks like the red printer dots differ by ~30 degrees
Inside of the ‘P’ from the top ‘Pokemon’ logo on card backside, rotated to point downward
Variant 1 ‘P’ Inner Pattern
Variant 2 ‘P’ Inner Pattern
Printer dot vectors drawn on each, overlayed aligned on the black line of the ‘P’, and angle measured. 50% transparency on overlay.
I tried measuring the red dot angles in the bottom left, the cyan dot angles inside the ‘P’ bowl border shape, the black dots inside the ‘P’, and the red dots inside the’P’ bowl border shape near the cyan dots. I couldn’t really make out the rad down that were inside the ‘P’ bowl border shape alongside the cyan dots on the Variant 2 copy but they seemed to stick out on the Variant 1 copy. I tried to measure them along their primary directions as best I could though sometimes it’s difficult to tell. It’s also odd since on the Variant 1 copy it seemed like the red dots outside the border in among the yellow had a different vector direction from the red dots inside the border among the cyan. I also noticed that the black dots inside the ‘P’ gap on Variant 1 are more structured. All angle diffs seemed to be at 30 degrees which was consistent with the front side
None of this proves anything for or against Variant 2 per se - but give’s y’all more points of comparison. Perhaps it can be used by folks to at least verify their raw Variant 1 copies further.
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