At this point can we agree no one cares about this whole rookie business? Or is it just me
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It was fun when wotc was the focus. The first appearance of a pokemon in the TCG I think is inherently cool. But now the term is overused to grailify some obscure item.
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The first obscure pokemon cards and stickers are imo absolutely cool ones, but the inorganic rookie grail hype around them is ridiculous and sucks the joy out of another otherwise great product
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My Beta Playtest card comes tomorrow. After work, I planned to scan the front and back at 2400DPI (so we can try to see how these were printed), and I planned to film an unboxing video. I’m not a YouTuber, so it will probably be pretty cringy, but I haven’t seen any real videos of these online.
I might make a new thread about my card (perhaps I’ll start my own collection thread) to prevent it from being buried here, but is there anything the community wants me to look at that might be helpful? I figured the scan might be helpful, but I didn’t know if we needed anything else.
Thanks.
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I’m looking forward to seeing the content! Just be yourself bro! Embrace the cringiness 
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Today I will talk about this
card!
The Pikachu Tango prototype!
This card is the first card with an artwork not of print but Thermal. This is the first card illustrated specifically
by a Printer. If now there are the artists in Pokémon.
if Himeno, Fukuda, Saitou are Pokémon artists… If
any single card you like exist is because Arita drawn
this card and Ishihara liked the idea of a different
illustration of a Pokémon and not all drawn by
Sugimori. At the beginning Pokemon was extremely
reluctant to pay artists and do this but this card was
loved by ishihara Ooyama and Akabane in july 1996
and… The rest is history.
Funny fact: why was changed the art from his final
form we all know? Akabane told me that Ooyama
asked to Arita to change the colours a bit because
didn’t like some aspects and to make it a bit
different. So the Delta set was born and put in the no
rarity set.
Now you know basically all of the timeline!
This card rapresent basically the entire Pokémon
TCG imo.
Fun fact: I think this card is 100% the rarest card in
existence and probably kept by ishihara.
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Hello again!
I am going to share another “discovery” that I made not too long ago.
First I would like to mention that like the last time, I am not saying that any card is fake, I am just exposing some facts and I am opening a discussion to share our points of view (I also have a beta playtest card (in “good quality” obviously ) so I have no interest in denigrating them).
Please view the pictures on a computer, not a tiny phone screen ^^
So if several copies of a card are printed in similar quality, it is expected that the copies will not be strictly identical, particularly for the thin lines or thin writing.
Because all papers are slightly different in terms of the fibers that compose them, and so the ink will not impregnate the paper in the same way. Obviously I’m talking about “at home” printing (not HQ printing like for regular TCG cards for example), as this is the case with the proto cards.
For example if we take 2 copies of this Charmander:
There are many small differences in the lines, writing, etc., this is light but it’s expected and it’s visible:
The problem is that there are lot of cards that don’t have these printing differences, the little printing artifacts are the same.
For example if we take a 3rd copy of this Charmander:
We can see that the printing artifacts are far too similar between this copy and the CGC 8:
You can compare all the thin lines/characters of the cards, it’s the same problem everywhere (if there are tiny differences, it’s not the impression, it’s because the 2 scans are not strictly identical and not perfectly straight).
It is possible to do this comparison for a lot of other cards and find that 2 copies will be very very similar, while the others will not be (as expected due to the “at home” printing process).
So what do you think?
I don’t want to believe that there are fake cards, but I don’t particularly see any logical explanation for those facts here…
EDIT : I took a Delta card for my example, but this is the same for Beta cards too ^^
EDIT bis : Just in case, I made the test “for science” at home, if I print (in regular quality) the same thin text or lines or whatever, 3 or several times, I will always have a slightly different result (like for the Charmander AU and CGC 8), as expected.
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Hey nice catch. I’ve also ran some “scientific experiments” of my own and have noticed that these very minor imperfections do occur when using the same equipment. To make further conclusions however it would be best to test the same files using different printers or printer settings which I have not. I wouldn’t rule out achieving the same imperfections is plausible.
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If fakes had been made is there anyway that you could suggest to tell ?
It would not surprise me if that chinese scammer would atleast attempt to fake them given he has atleast some of the playtest stuff in his possession.
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Any thoughts that some of these could be genuine photocopies? I can’t say I know much about the state of the art abilities of colour photocopying in the 1990s. Something like that could explain why there is one clean copy and the others have repeating defects
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There will be the same creation of printing artifacts even with a photocopy, it’s the same situation because in the end you print something.
Unless the photocopy is printed in “high quality”, and the printing artifacts are negligible compared to those which appear on the original print used for the photocopy.
Afterwards we can wonder why they would make photocopies when you can see that there are many other copies which are clearly not similar (in terms of printing artifacts).
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If we assume they are photocopies, would they have the same ink dot patterns (and other identifiers) as the original? The “original” comes out of one printer and the “copies” come out of a different machine, right? This is something CGC would check anyway or no?
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I have an Alpha Playtest on the way, I will try to get some microscope pics when I can.
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What if the AU and the 9 are the just the same card reslabbed?
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Same answer than earlier, it’s the same situation because in the end you print something, so there will be some printing artifacts [copy] unless the photocopy is printed in “high quality”, and the printing artifacts are negligible compared to those which appear on the original print used for the photocopy[/copy] ^^
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They are not the same card, you can differenciate them with the cut and some minor flaws.
This is the same thing for all the other cards concerned.
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I will take another example more obvious and where we can clearly see that the 2 cards are not simply a regrade (look at the cut at the top and right bottom side of the card, you can see a small part of the black frame on the card on the left, not on the other one):
One more time the printing artifacts are too much similar:
Unfortunately the 3rd and last scan I found/have is a “good quality” print (see my comment from a few days ago to understand ;)), so we can’t compare it with the others:
EDIT : Again I am not saying there are any fake cards, those are just facts which are interesting to discuss.
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Finally got my Beta Playtest card in the mail. Was a little disappointed with how scratched up the case was, but I was able to polish most out already.
Beta Playtest Scyther
Here is the card up close
I feel like the upload might compress the image a bit, I can try to grab a better one if needed.
Here is a photo showing the paper stuck to the cardstock
Video
I’m not a Youtuber, but if you want to see a cringy video of me excited to show off my grail, here you go..
https://youtu.be/mshB1TznK7o
Anything I can try to photograph or answer for anyone?
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Good video and congrats on your card!
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Its interesting your note of how they were cut from sheets (due to the purple of mr mime showing on the edge of your card). I wonder if any of these sheets remain uncut, or even if some/all of these cards turning up on the market are recently cut or originally cut and then mounted to card.
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