Two separate companies.
Alt started as an auction house alternative
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This is why provenance is the only thing that matters here, but still no one wants to reveal the sources
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I think the metapod listed is fake. I will provide more info tomorrow.
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Provenance is one of the weaker methods that can be used for authentication because it leads to a person. Outside of that person, theres no metric.
Basically, provenance is good for one individual item.
So, say you had two of the same prototypes and only one had provenance. Say the guy who can determine provenance - in this case Akabane - is now dead. How do you verify that similar cards are authentic?
Without any real metrics, its basically impossible unless you assume that cards matching the authentic cards are also authentic. Youd be assuming forgeries of sufficient quality cant be made.
Has Akabane ever said that some of them are forgeries or questionable? What makes them that way, if so?
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This thread is difficult to follow because of speculative posts vs. opinion posts vs. the concrete facts. Can anybody in the know give a short TLDR?
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Basically no. There is a combination of problems. Information being intentionally not made public. People sharing pieces of information in confidence. Unreliable narrators and some intentional disinformation. The threat of lawsuit. Even the level we can trust what Akabane and/or any other TPC employee says is unclear to me.
I’ve heard information from multiple people I would consider reliable but ultimately it’s all hearsay. Some things I’ve heard independently from multiple sources and have more confidence in - such as the primary method CGC used to learn and authenticate these are from a direct interview with Akabane. But there’s a level of uncertainty attached to every part of the story, even that last sentence. I would rather not lay out everything I’ve heard personally because of that.
That said, I do think it’s only a matter of time until a lot of the details become public.
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Honestly, you should probably just skip these threads until there is more information. Nearly all of the information posted in all these threads is just speculation heard second or third hand and most of the speculation is biased against the cards for reasons probably not related to the cards.
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Yet without these same threads we wouldn’t have people actively seeking out more information on these cards. Suspicion and wanting more info isn’t negative bias, I think we’re past the point of blindly following CGC…
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Where do these prototypes fall under in that chart? These are test prints for Neo destiny cards. There’s probably a lot more to uncover.
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These are WOTC and I believe entirely separate from this discussion. Leonhart did a video a few years ago showing these to the public for the first time (that im aware of) in an interview with a former Wizards employee.
Edit: One of these videos iirc, they both show these towards the end.
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Agreed.
I speculate that these cards will join CGC apocrypha with the likes of disco holos, white border prints, matchprints and FPOs
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give me a jumpscare warning before throwing those thumbnails in here damn!
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This can be easily manipulated on Microsoft Word if you really tried
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These should be playtest cards as they look to be rough prints of cards intended to be play tested. Its weird that WOTC is playtesting english cards because the playtesting had been completed in Japan when the sets were released months ago. WOTC’s job was to translate and distribute, not to playtest.
Maybe this was a final playtest after translation before test printing starts. I always had the idea that there never was English playtest cards during the WOTC era.
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Others have already said pretty much all there is to say but let me add more context as an MtG player here. WotC did and still does all playtest cards like this, literally for playtesting decks. Here an example of pretty much the same layout of a Magic card in a WotC article.
These are stickers on actual cards.
WotC have recently added ‘playtest’ designs to specific convention exclusive packs that look similar and have generally wonky effects often referencing well-known cards and a high meme factor. Example:
(these are printed this way, not stickers afaik)
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As was said already, these are for testing decks.
Specifically for these, since wotc decks were not taken from japanese decks they had to be made inhouse and this style of playtest card and these were part of the process to determine the playability of the proposed deck using resources to physically make it.
I have researched them quite a bit and there are several things that indicate authenticity to me, also that leonhart seems to have received them from the Lead Editor of wotc from the time period.
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Just to add a little more info on these.
All of the CGC authenticated copies of these playtests originated from Michael Ryan, former director of editing for WOTC. This includes Leonhart’s set, Carbonrod’s set, and a couple 1 offs floating around.
From what CGC told me, they’ll only authenticate these if they have the provenance back to WOTC, in this case, through Michael.
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Super helpful information. Thank you all for your insights. I’ve definitely learned something new.
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Are people buying these cards for like $1000 each? How are there so many showing up in random/new collectors hands?
I’ve seen a couple of instagram accounts that have just been created for the purpose of displaying these/selling these cards
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