Not a Fan of Pokémon Prototypes. You?

cardstockpile · 2025-01-01T22:24:49.380Z

It’ll be fun to look back at this thread a year from now. These were released to the public in a rushed haphazard manner. They were endorsed while being sold by the same person. They have flooded auctions consistently for the past few months. Little information has been released to the public because technically these should have never been released to the public. How many exist of each type? What other items does this tcg founder have in his closet that havnt’t been brought to light yet? Its no wonder prices have come down significantly on these. There is no question to me, at this point, that these came from Akabane and are from 1996. I do not know the exact number outstanding, why they are all in such good condition and why the population continues to grow and where these are coming from. I still believe in their historical significance and have a position myself. For the people who bought the first wave at market highs, I feel for you. I hope more becomes clear over time.

xileets · 2025-01-02T00:23:00.593Z

It’s like many things that are fresh on the market, and those who are the first to adopt:
There are always questions, and you can never know whether the risk is good or bad. It’s just risk. Radium, 737 Max, AI… It’s a lot of risk, and many can’t actually afford it.

BUT sometimes first-to-adopt pays off: Crypto, TV, and of course PkMn TCG. It all depends on what that risk evaluation is. If buyers accept the risk, it’s fine. I do not.

tidaldreams · 2025-01-02T00:29:12.263Z

alt is pretty much just unpaids in general i dont think that is anything unique to prototypes on there

tidaldreams · 2025-01-02T00:34:59.849Z

its not this charizard i believe (although there still may be more than one now)

the pop reports are pretty messed up tho since cgc doesnt know their own terminology

Cardinterested · 2025-01-02T01:43:09.271Z

Yeah it is the one I referred to as the ‘windows xp’ zard in the other thread, I seem to remember a lot of people were under the impression it was 1/1 but another turned up. haha yeah, there seem to be quite a lot of variants with different fonts and stuff too within the same categories. Further on the topic of supply numbers I remember another guy in the thread said the alpha prototypes were thought to be much more limited early on. This is all speaking within the context of cards sourced from Akabane, is Akabane the only one that had these cards? Of course this remains a point of speculation.

BANKS · 2025-01-02T02:46:10.700Z

Cardinterested:

This is all speaking within the context of cards sourced from Akabane, is Akabane the only one that had these cards?

No, I’ve heard there are 6+ other owners of these cards. 1 has already sold a set of betas via private sales in Japan

Another unnamed collector owns a set of “gamma” prototypes

meta · 2025-01-02T05:54:08.420Z

To preface, I don’t own any. People are mostly transparent about this - but whether anyone owns these seems like an important starting point before sharing opinions on them since it’s such a small market. I bid on a few but never won, so I guess that means I think they’re slightly overvalued, but not by much.

How these were released onto the market feels like more a factor of circumstance than calculated efforts. As far as the evidence seems to suggest so far it looks like they likely came from a private collection from one or a few select people with ties to early development of the official TCG. They felt the time was right to cash out on a chunk of their private stash now. Unfortunately, we don’t know how many more there are, and that’s a problem in and of itself. However, even if Akabane has closets full of old development stuff, collectors will obviously still want it.

As to the cards themselves, them being paper stuck to cardstock doesn’t really take away from my interest in them. If that’s how they were made at the time, that’s how they were made. I collect stickers from 1996 for crying out loud because that’s what the first publicly-available pokemon merchandise is. I care more about the history and nostalgia than the composition of the cards. I do find it a bit strange that they apparently are all in nearly pristine condition and were never actually played with, but it seems like these particular sets were just surplus copies stashed away untouched because they were anticipated to be cool pieces for someone, someday - and they are.

One thing that truly sours the collectibility for me is the “authentication”. I don’t really care what CGC deems acceptable business practice, because I don’t personally do business with them, but I think “authenticating” items and then releasing basically zero information on how said items were actually authenticated is nonsense at best and shady at worst. If they really wanted to add value other than by encasing these in plastic, they would release a transparent and detailed reporting of how these items were authenticated to the public.

All in all, I think these cards are most likely authentic, and they really do seem to be unique and interesting pieces of pokemon TCG history. They are scarce. They are visually appealing. If the information about them is accurate, they are extremely cool pieces of TCG development history. They are unique collectibles. Frankly, I think the market has priced them exactly correctly for what they are and what is currently known about them. I’ll probably keep bidding on them.

As to one of the original points on this thread, I also agree that it’s kind of unfortunate how these have apparently detracted a bit from super early vintage (1996-1999) non-TCG/TCG-tangential pokemon collecting. A lot of what drives collecting early Japanese official pokemon merchandise in the form of cards or quasi-cards is an appreciation of the history of pokemon, and stuff like this seems to blow away some of the Sugimori stock art on sticker paper. The main difference I guess is that these were never actually publicly available, and couldn’t be collected at the time, but they do hit on nostalgia. Assuming they are legitimate, which seems to be a relatively safe assumption, and you can get past the various “ick” factors with how they came onto the market, they are probably worth a pickup while they are available.

Cardinterested · 2025-01-02T11:53:52.921Z

BANKS:

No, I’ve heard there are 6+ other owners of these cards. 1 has already sold a set of betas via private sales in Japan

Another unnamed collector owns a set of “gamma” prototypes

Very interesting. I remember in the other thread there was speculation of other sources but nothing confirmed yet. For me this is big news. Akabane had around 10 sets, now we know of multiple other sources. So the number of sets increases from 10 with current knowledge. Then there is the possibility of even more people owning these cards.

If these people that hold other sets were to put them up for auction it would likely negatively effect the price further. It makes sense that they will instead think strategically with how they sell their sets. Private sales like the one you mentioned for the Beta set make sense as it will limit the effect on market perception (this is the perception that we hold, which informs our buying decisions).

Another thing to consider is that CGC grading is more difficult for people in Japan than America, I would expect a certain quantity of these cards would remain raw for a while at least (and therefore off the pop reports ofc).

Personally this gives me even more reason to relax on these cards (a marathon rather than a sprint), for the most part I will see how things pan out and perhaps pick up one I like here and there if the price is appealing.

gengarbrigade · 2025-01-02T12:24:13.236Z

I’ve had the opportunity to hold a few versions graded from multiple buyers that I met up with during random outings this past holiday season.

My take on this is how I look at art, and how it should always be in the form of a question, not an answer. I’m approaching this in a sense yes, there is plenty of secrecy on how these came to be, and to me that is fine. I don’t have to have the answers to everything and appreciating for what it is, is how I am accepting it. I view this the same way I look at fine art.

Once I accepted that, there really was no issues.

fourthstartcg · 2025-01-02T21:36:45.893Z

They’re pretty cool, but I agree with @Alec that my overall feeling is just one of apathy. Certainly they are interesting items, but we’ve seen so many prototypes and test cards recently that I’m just burned out on all of them. The relatively inorganic distribution of these cards does no favors for them either. They seem perfect for a certain type of collector of which I am not.

Slade · 2025-01-04T05:13:57.778Z

Surprised Pikachu Face

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SolemnStar · 2025-01-04T05:51:44.059Z

I got $20, take it or leave it.

Dirge · 2025-01-04T06:15:36.517Z

$18k drop makes me ache in a bad way. That’s a lot of money.

SolemnStar · 2025-01-04T06:37:02.828Z

Ignore the hard numbers. Look at the %. I’d say in this case there is some tomfoolery. The worst one was the same card too. %72 drop for the same card, not even another card in the same grade. The exact same one. Also I suppose we must remember the whole first to market rule. But I don’t know… With supposed super duper rare uncirculated prototypes, this seems rather severe. The whole situation, what a mess. Is anyone happy? Probably only whoever first sold them and CGC are happy. Who is the source of sending these to cgc anyhow? How rich are they now? What kind of fees did cgc charge for these cards?

HumanForScale · 2025-01-04T08:19:32.275Z

FWIW there was a small pop up store in Japan with multiple CGC graded and raw prototypes available. Based on the other items in the case I’d hazard a guess they came from a certain retired employee.

I’m fairly sure that the graded ones are authentic, and as an appreciator of Pokemon history they’re neat in their own ways. Speculating on these financially seems like a fool’s errand, so I’d just buy them to enjoy

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xliveandplay · 2025-01-04T08:43:54.244Z

What I don’t like about those cards is that the label says “mounted on cards”. Then what does it mean ? They seem to be recently printed (or not) and glued on a piece à paper, and that they were not original cards.

Cardinterested · 2025-01-04T12:37:44.478Z

The wording has always seemed a little artistic to me. I was a bit concerned that they could have been old paper mounted on new card recently, but I think it is probably accurate that they are ‘paper mounted on card at the original time of manufacture’. I think that CGC took into account that they had to mention explicitly that these are not straight up ‘cards’, rather ‘paper glued to card’. Perhaps ‘paper glued to card’ sounds a little less elegant… Kind of like all the alpha beta stuff is more elegant than print 1, 2, 3 etc.

pfm · 2025-01-04T16:21:49.741Z

Corocoro magazine demonstrates these were “mounted on card” from the beginning.

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neos · 2025-01-04T16:25:07.363Z

Literally what I wanted to write. It’s even more obvious with this pic.

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It wasn’t a fancy way to present them for the auctions, that’s how they were made back then.

GhezziTCG · 2025-01-04T16:57:15.501Z

The prototypes that Akabane has vouched for should be trusted but (ive heard) that he hasnt vetted every single one and took issue with those that he hadnt. Additionally, (ive heard) that people who consistently deal in forgeries and “problem collectors” have appeared with a concerning amount of them. Ive only heard this and PKMN isnt my hobby so thats up to yall to figure out.

If Akabane can vouch, the provenance seems legit. What CGC should have done is put something like PCGS or NGC “EX Akabane” on those holders. Then customers could have bought at least thise with confidence. From what i understand, they didnt and this is causing holistic concerns with all of them because 1) there isnt any real data on their authentication and 2) theyre being mixed in with copies from unknown origin.

The XRF tests conducted werent good and XRF remains a terrible and unproven way to do authentication. It doesnt tell you things are authentic in a yes or no sense. Its built to tell you what atoms and in what quantity are present in something. Trading cards have no purity standards and have no “markers” which is how XRF is used. This means it has no real application here. The cards generally showed that they were similar or related due to commonalities in atomic make up but again, this isnt proof of authenticity. It just means they might come from the same source. How many were testsd and how rigorously is entirely up for debate because again, the data wasnt published. How many samples were taken from each card? Where on the card or the whole card? How many cards were sampled? How did they benchmark the controls? Nothing on their methodology was every published…

I think you can trust akabane but how do you tell which were his and which werent? Doesnt seem like a permanent solution for authentication and its no wonder PSA stayed out of it. Also, the provenance isnt complete because pokemon hasnt confirmed them as real. We can only trace back to akabane, and not to production.