Based off this photo its real, stamp placement and that dark vertical line along the border
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Well then guess I missed out on a cool error card.
But maybe not. The cosmic effect is my fave thing about the old cards. Still would have been cool.
It was in pretty decent shape too. Well then learn something knew everyday. Thanks!
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This is not fake. Likely an Incomplete Holo Error card. Below are some of mine from Jungle Unlimited.
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Well cool thanks for that. I had never seen one before.
Just makes me bummed i didn’t pick it up. It was in good shape too and i needed that card for my jungle masterset…
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Dropping some more fakes here:
Since I’ve seen these same packs, cards and booster boxes pop up multiple times on e4(
1, 2, 3, 4) I decided to pick up a couple packs to document them in this thread and have something to reference in the future rather than just linking to AliExpress.
There are many things wrong with these but they’re not the worst fakes out there, and they do seem to be the most common at the moment.
The holos look awful. The non-holos feel slightly thinner than a regular Pokémon card (more like poker cards).
The print quality is very high; the text and graphics are much sharper and clearer than on a genuine 1st Edition card. It looks like the cards were recreated/reworked rather than just a straight scan.
There are also several placement errors throughout the set. For example, Diglett has duplicated Energy symbols for both weakness and resistance.
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Easily identifiable by the 45 degree magenta.
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Great post, incredibly useful. Another thing that I notice is that they almost always have these extremely rounded corners, while genuine cards have a more complex cut shape.
These new non-holos are scary though, I can totally see newcomers being fooled by those, especially with someone pretending to have an “old childhood collection” or something like that.
They’re also definitely getting more common, I think I’ve already seen those a couple times here on E4, in the last months. Like this one (EDIT: that you already posted):
Fakers are definitely putting some effort into text and symbols, like they did in MTG where you can source genuinely elaborate fakes. With the amount of money involved we must expect even more of these, made with ill intentions and not simply to sell bootlegs in “good” faith.
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What minimum jewelers loupe specs are appropriate for card verification?
Wdym? What do you have to look for?
I talk about the plates in this thread. Shadowless non-holo have a -15° front and a +15° back. These fakes all have 45° front and back. If you can recognize those patterns, you can tell if it’s fake or not.
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I just want to know what loupe to use to look closer.
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Perfect, thank you!
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I’m probably just being paranoid because it’s the priciest card I’ve bought, but has anyone every come across a fake Grand Party before? On one hand all of my checks point to it being real (light test and size check out, scans seem good) but on the other hand I find the feel of it to be oddly smoother than my other vintage japanese holos, with a slight bend (if you laid it flat with front side up it wouldn’t be fully flat), and the back felt slightly more shimmery. I’m not sure if it’s placebo + anxiety or if there’s anything else for me to look at. The price was fair so no red flag on that. Seller posted on Virbank and I can see has posted for years.:
- here’s the edge of the card along with cd venusaur and corocoro steelix holos as controls
- here’s it alongside misty’s tears and cd venu
- and here’s the back compared to steelix
Maybe more broadly, are the printer dot angles the best tell that there is of authenticity? Or how would one of you try and convince yourself of 99.9% certainty? Curious if there are any further tests. I’d assume that given we are seeing textured holo fakes of SIRs now that the middle ink layer is no longer really a tell since most fakes would have it nowadays.
I can’t see the problem here. The ink dots also look authentic to me. I don’t understand why the bending is considered an issue, cards bend all the time because of humidity.
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No I agree - I think it’s more a general question about what the laundry list of the highest % checks are for authenticity that a collector can do at home. I suppose they may differ slightly between era, language, etc. but would be good to someday see what the highest quality fakes miss and whether printer dots are the best metric vs something else