Have to wonder what they were testing with these cards, because they were seemingly made after no rarities released.
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It could be a shadowless situation where the no rarities were made first but were still released alongside the other first waves of products.
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Personally I plan to try and pick up at least one and maybe a couple of these Prototypes in the future. Although I’m not actively chasing them until there is a better understanding of the supply. I think we’ll see more pop up and lower prices before things settle.
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I still stand by my feeling these are fake. I don’t not believe for a minute that these have lasted this long in 9 plus grade condition considering the printing of these wouldn’t have been anywhere near today standards as these are just test prints. I also would love to no who mounted it onto card and is there other no mounted.
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I’ll stick my head above the parapet too… I also think they’re fake, but only in so far as I don’t believe they were legitimately created during the infancy years of the TCG. I think the employee(s) involved created them much more recently. 100% baseless speculation, but I think the market craze (read: easy money) has incentivized OG Pokemon employees to collaborate with the likes of CGC to create and distribute some of these test/prototype cards. As far as CGC are concerned, they can simply provide justification of their grade-ability through the fact that they have been directly sourced from Pokemon staff. I mean, how can the cards’ provenance be anymore airtight than when they’ve been sourced directly from a Pokemon representative, right? This is a win-win for all parties involved: direct financial gain for the “legitimate source”, and market recognition for CGC. tips tinfoil hat
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I agree that what you describe is totally plausible and is the primary skepticism I have too.
That being said, just because something is plausible doesn’t make it true. Occam’s razor would suggest the answer is simply that the items were printed for testing in the 90s and there’s not much more to it than that. That’s why I lean heavily in that direction while keeping the alternative explanation you provided as an option in my mind.
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Yeah mine is definitely just “cynical old man skepticism” of human nature when dollar bills are waved around, more than aiming to offer precise explanation or truth. The fact the situation just feels so off has soured my view and just leaves me being a grumpy old skeptic more than anything else. The opposite/more optimistic viewpoint to mine is that the employee didn’t offer them up for public scrutiny before now simply because they didn’t realise their cultural significance, or just didn’t think the cards were interesting enough to do anything with, until approached by hobbyists and/or st0nkers, and/or shady grading companies.
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It’s worth noting these are graded relative to the other prototype cards, not compared to the standards of regular cards. So when they say a Prototype is Pristine, they’re not saying it’s the same condition as a WOTC Pristine. They’re saying it’s the highest standard of Prototype cards. If every single Prototype has X issue, they don’t dock every single card, they deem that as the standard.
In my opinion, it’s still an issue that CGC doesn’t really broadcast that information for education sake because it has lead to the confusion we’re discussing here. But at least there is a reason behind it.
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For me, It’s not about being optimistic or cynical. It’s about getting to the actual truth regardless of how it makes me feel.
Reading this current prototype thread, my thoughts just constantly go back to this old thread Pokemon Card Front MTG Back. In retrospect, it’s crystal clear how dead wrong all the replies were and how closed off the default position was when it comes to something that is weird and not really seen before. Just trying to avoid that here.
For further reading you can also look here Pre-Base Set Test Print / Prototype Blastoise but unfortunately this one is harder to follow because the OP ragequit halfway through and deleted most of their replies.
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In the current situation where there’s a lack of direct evidence as to the exact provenance of the cards, I guess our choices are either fun speculation or stay schtum if/until more evidence appears. In retrospect, my main concern with speculating in this way is whether there’s any risk of claims of libel from certain grading companies… do tinfoil hat conspiracies count as libel? 
hovering over comment delete button…
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Libel is when you say something you know is a lie with the intention to cause damage to the other party. So you’re probably good 
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Tbf didn’t the mtg blastoise end up having a lot more supply than initially thought inc uncut sheets?
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the more I see these pop up the more I question exactly who has kept these so long in their collection and how many exactly were made/given out. seeing as how more and more pop up almost every week. it does raise more questions. it does also give me a wonder if there are more complete sets out there that people just have and dont want to share.
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I don’t think anyone had initial thoughts on the number of copies because most of the discussion was about whether it was even real. Then CGC graded 4 of them https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/8744/pokemon-test-print-blastoise/ and there was the 5th one on the sheet. As far as I know that’s all that surfaced.
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Thanks, not too many then.
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After thinking a lot about these cards, I think I just prefer the official released cards. And I’m not really into incomplete/test/prototype ones. I think that there is more beauty in final prizes and trophies than in drafts…
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My theory is that at least there should be 4 of each for playtest, and 8 for mirrors. But how many people tested them? How many cards were damaged?
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I’m going back and forth on if these are real or not still. Something I just noticed and would like explained is why Bulbasaur Delta Playtest cards have breaks in all of the straight lines.
Not to start conspiracies, but this looks like someone scanned the real card, rotated it slightly in photoshop to fix it, then printed. Why would the real cards have rotational line breaks in them? I can’t see the person designing the original card on the computer being incapable of making straight lines or a rectangle.
To be transparent, I am bidding on a few cards, but after seeing two Bulbasaurs with the same issue, I’m getting a little spooked.
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It very much does.
To play the other side, one could argue that the original scan of the Bulbasaur art was slightly crooked and whoever whipped these cards up long ago noticed it and fixed it by selecting the art box+art and rotated it. Creating those jagged lines.
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Good point, but it’s also visible on the lines around the text at the bottom. It’s basically the entire card being rotated before printed.
Edit: looking at Ivysaur, it has similar, but less noticeable issues. There are two noticeable issues on the thicker lines. In this case, the bottom line actually does appear to be not straight. It actually touches the artists name in the bottom left due to how skewed it is. So maybe I’m wrong and these are real. Perhaps the artists literally can’t make straight lines before they print.
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