I assume that Takumi Akabane closed his IG account for privacy reasons. It’s an unfortunate fact that as someone with notoriety in the Pokemon space gains traction, they are often harassed or solicited for signatures, questions on buying rare items (along with information about rare items beyond what is already posted/given freely), and just weirdo general para-social behavior. That could be why the real account was shut down, though that’s personal speculation and nothing more.
I’m not sure who is behind the fake account, but I think any deception definitely warrants criticism and skepticism.
That said, the hate boner for CGC authenticating the cards is more of that shitty entitlement behavior I hate to see. I guarantee you that CGC has the factual evidence they need to have slabbed these cards and they do not owe the public anything more. If you don’t want to buy the cards, that’s fine. But I dare you to buy the cards then try to sue them claiming they are not authentic.
We live in a world where CGC could have received well documented video and photo evidence, as well as signatures/statement signoffs/ as well as anything else requisite to the cards being slabbed and guaranteed by CGC when and if prices ever hit auction houses/markets at high prices and require additional information by a notable third party. My first thought on why everything documented that you’d like to see remains out of public eye is privacy to the individual as per Japanese Culture. Secondly would be privacy to the owners who are selling, which there’s an established history of sellers being targeted/shit talked for years now due to differing opinions on what they should be allowed to do with their property.
Just my two cents before I leave for vacation. Cheers boys.
It seems like any time people ask for proof of authenticity theyre met with this line - “this is the hate boner for CGC”. Critical thinking regarding their authentication practice isnt a moral crime. Its warranted (if not mandatory) when you have cards of this magnitude with such a storied background.
The truth is that CGC, as an authenticator, does owe proof of authenticity. If they have the capacity to publish substantive and data-driven articles on it, they should. It would provide more confidence in their authentication method.
By method i mean the scientific method theyre using to do authentication. If theyre using XRF, what data/publications exist to prove its a legitimate way to authenticate (there arent any substantive paper explaining XRFs use in trading cards by the way). What metrics are they using? Surfaces, cardstock, rosette, dot matrix, color, provenance, history, etc… there are so many ways to do this.
CGC, like anyone here, cant just leverage an appeal to authority to justify their claims. No third party authenticator can. That includes psa, bcg, sgc etc…
I believe most of the frustration here comes from the way these are being shoved onto the market like any base set common.
I would like to think that in proper hands and paired with the right documentation these would be shattering all records as far as sale numbers, views and subsequently demand for other exemplars.
They are supposedly the first ever prototypes and sketches of the biggest media franchise in the world, it’s sad to see them being handled this way.
I share my 2 cents because quite frankly I am the target buyer for these things.
When I (and others in my same position) don’t want to touch them it’s safe to say the item itself is the problem. We all lose in this scenario, the hobby at large.
You may claim its “warranted” but this boils back to entitlement.
Entitlement defined - : a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract. 2. : belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges.
No, CGC doesn’t owe you this. It doesn’t owe the public this. It owes ITSELF this for legal protections if they are ever sued/accused of falsely authenticating something and pushed to compensate accordingly.
Sorry you don’t like my response, you can trash on CGC all day for all I care. I don’t own any of these cards nor do I own a stake in CGC, Beckett, PSA, or any other authentication platform.
I mean, their business is based on trust and reputation of them being accountable so they kinda do need to be able to provide solid provenance, moreso than “trust me bro”. Of course they may have solid provenance but it doesnt help their case when they arent transparent about it when people are asking, maybe they are with high level buyers but to me thats its own issue.
Edit: whoops, my page didnt reload so i didnt see that this was already being discussed. Disregard if the points have already been made.
The biggest issue is conflating this special instance with a litany of generic instances. This is a false equivalency.
These arent generic cards pulled from packs that have implied authenticity. These are prototypes that are
A. Expensive
B. Ostensibly rare
C. Sought after
D. Not well known or understood and most importantly
E. Are very different from other pokemon cards.
Two groups owe the hobby answers:
A. Community leaders or at least the ones who style themselves that way
B. Authenticators whose interest is their image and customer.
Hey man I’ll reply to you but this is my last response on this thread because the last thing I want to do is get sucked into a back and forth with individuals with strong emotions/feelings about this rather than sticking to facts.
I absolutely agree with you that authentication platforms and auction houses often live and die by their reputation and if people trust them or not, but that does not mean they owe the general public what people arguing in here consider to be “solid provenance”.
An auction house, moreso than an authentication platform, is actually incentivized by providing said provenance beyond the authentication provided by CGC, PSA, Beckett, TAG, etc. It helps them realize higher price points and their auctions often perform better with this additional information, but no, once again, they are not obligated to provide it and the general public is not entitled to it. The authenticator is entitled to it because they won’t take on the risk to authenticate without it - it’s embedded into their terms of servicing. If the owner does not wish for the information to be made public, for whatever reason, that is his prerogative and likely the reason why the authentication platform and/or auction house does not offer the information freely.
I haven’t read any cgc hate in this thread. The criticism is valid regardless of the 3 letter company. PSA denied these cards, so that is even more to the point that everyone is making on how cgc or any company who grades them should explain why they are authentic. Especially since that is what they have done in the past.
Look at how they handled the Prototype Blastoise compared to these prototype cards. They were shouting everywhere about that card. If a company wants to authenticate an undocumented card, knowing it will be publicly displayed and sold, but doesn’t want to publicly explain why its authentic, this is the natural outcome.
No one is “entitled” to the documentation of authenticity.
But when information is intentionally obscured, then the natural consequence is that many people are not going to automatically believe in the authenticity of the cards. The overall mixed response to the surfacing of these cards is a direct consequence of all the secrecy. And this is further complicated by the apparent misleading provenance being intentionally generated.
So yeah, while there is no requirement to reveal information there are consequences for not doing so. Specifically an erosion of trust and a lower auction sale prices.
CGC has a very strong team of attorneys. They have used this team to go after bad actors that impact their appearance, they write up NDAs, they close mergers and deals, etc.
My understanding, though incomplete like everyone else here, is that CGC has full documentation on these cards, but is legally prevented from providing information to the public. If I had to make an educated guess, an ex-employee provided documentation to CGC’s attorneys in exchange for some amount of money and legal protections.
Given how secretive and tight-lipped TPC is, I would assume that ex-employees signed various legal documents that prevent spillage of information when parting with the company.
The main problem here is that even if CGC has the burden of proof, I would guess that they are handicapped by their legal department. As such, the authenticity of these cards will never be confirmed in the public eye and the perception of CGC handling this scenario will degrade.
It’s a tough situation to be in from an industry perspective. They want to be innovative. They want to grade unique items. But when they are legally unable to make certain statements on the authenticity of the items that they grade, it negatively impacts everyone - buyers, sellers, the collecting community, and them as a grading company.
These are all speculations and we may never know what happened.
Yes, you articulated this better than I was able to.
The natural consequences of the general public not getting an info-overload to quench their provenance questions and curiosity would be a suppression of sales prices due to skepticism and “FUD”. Obviously the owner(s) that purchased and are now selling these cards , did so at a price point where they value privacy over additional “transparency” to realize those higher margins on initial sales.
It will likely be the burden of the buyers/additional owners to bring more information/provenance to the table; for now, that likely weeds out collectors content with the authentication slab, from the flippers looking at these cards as “investments” and needing that extra layer of information to push the prices up further. It is what it is.
If I had to guess, they can’t do anything at all. If they signed NDAs, they could be liable for significant damages due to breaching their contracts of privacy.
Let me start by saying this… they have proof of provenance and history seems to be on the side of authenticity. This is based on my proximate knowledge of the situation. This is good but complicated by Pokemons dismissal of the cards, if this happened as alleged.
One of the problems they have is that they rely heavily on XRF, which is a problematic test in trading cards. It is unproven at best.
XRF has value in spaces where quality is diluted to counterfeit (like coins) or where presence is limited (like medicine). In spaces where the goal is to make the counterfeit as atomically close as possible to the real card and the cost incentive isnt against this, XRF eventually fails if counterfeit quality is above a specific value. I could go on but this is the summary.
Their claim that the cards match based on XRF doesnt prove authenticity, it proves that the cards come from the same source. Possibly…
The only place of disagreement I have with your post is the phrasing of this line. It’s not a lack of excessive information, it’s a lack of any information. “What are these things?”, “Where did they come from?”. Extraordinarily basic questions with no definitive or clear public answer
