They have the technology and knowledge to match paper quality from the 1920s so don’t think it would be that tough to match up something from the 90s tbh
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Yeah you might be right
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For me, it’s why the Takumi Akabane signed cards are a bigger draw than the unsigned ones. If they all end up fake (which I don’t believe), then worst case scenario I have a signed card from Akabane that was in his collection (fake or not). For me, that’s an attractive thought as an old Pokemon fan.
Edit: For anyone reading this thread sequentially or who found this post on Google, there appears to be fakes. Please check out this thread to learn more: Many of the Pokemon playtest cards were likely printed in 2024
Also, I can’t believe the signed cards were faked. This tarnishes anything from Akabane now. I literally can’t believe this happened and CGC allowed it to happen. We’ve known about printer encoding for decades now. How the F did they not check this before grading cards?!
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I think youre making a leap here. They can match paper quality from the 1920s when compared to paper quality from 50 or 60 years later perhaps. Youre talking about the difference in paper between 1995 and 2020. How much did paper change from 1920 to 1960 or 2020 vs how much did paper change from 1995 to 2020.
Simply saying it isnt enough and again, XRF testing is not a viable way to authenticate in TCGs. It might be for sports cards in the 20s but not so now. Just because one is true doesnt make it true for everything here.
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They could, but would they? Verifying hundreds of cards might take considerable time and manpower. I wonder if they would dedicate that kind of resource to these.
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I’m not sure what your argument is here but authenticity is proved. I mentioned this way above. It isn’t CGC’s right to claim something is authentic. They have to prove things are authentic. There are easy things that might receive implied authenticity because of their low risk and pedestrian nature but these are certainly not part of that pool. People are spending five figures on them. CGC owes it to its customers to provide that confidence. If they haven’t provided it, it isn’t unfair to assume it doesn’t exist.
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I’m just gonna throw this out there. Some stuff I learned about printing a few months ago. This is off the top of my head:
There are ways trace the origin of a digital print to a specific, machine, date, time and maybe location.
It’s called a Machine Identification Code which was a sort of anomaly dot matrix within a color print that contained information. This technology was developed in the 80s and used by media companies in collab with governments to combat forgeries.
A few matrices have been decoded most notably the Yellow Dot Matrix linked to a lot of xerox (iirc) brand machines. For example the machine that would have printed the Match Prints does have a MIC. But it is theorized that all digital printers contain MICs.
Now I’m not sure if one had access to the same machine if you could manipulate the hard/software to output false information in the print code. But it does seem like an extra layer of security. Especially if collectors or authenticators are able to identify if and what code the Prototypes have.
Here’s a website with more info!
Curious what y’all think? Maybe some members who are fortunate enough to have acquired some prototypes can test for this code. In theory The test would be using different hues of light to filter out colors from the print, revealing the dot matrix.
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I personally don’t understand the incredibly strong takes with incomplete information… I bought a few and really like them… If someone doesn’t like them, why fixate on them so much? There’s so much to be positive about in Pokemon
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Vibe check for which color to put my mach playtest cards in? I’ve never bought these before but was thinking orange or black. Thoughts?
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How precise is this though and can it be applied to lithography. You’re talking about Xerox machines and combating forgeries (presumably) for paper money, right? This isn’t exactly using XRF and doesn’t have any known application in TCGs. So, how would this work and how precisely could it date something? Decades? years? general qualitative periods?
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No this does not apply to offset or lithography style printing. MICs were developed for digital laser/inkjet printers.
As far as I’m aware the prototypes were printed via the latter.
The decoded yellow dot matrix has date, time and a serial number. Here’s more info on finding and reading it.
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Ah i see. Yeah if thats got some scientific backing, would be interesting to see the real data behind CGCs assessment just because im morbidly curious as it relates to TCGs in general. Authentication methods deserve a lot more attention.
As far as i know, all they did was check the provenance (which seems immutable for at least the ones Akabane can claim) and XRF (which only proves relation, purity or presence and not authenticity.)
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Yeah I don’t believe this was part of CGCs assessment b/c why would they not put it in the report? Or why would sellers privy to the process not mention it? Especially with how contentious the authenticity of these has been.
But it could be an avenue to explore for collectors who want to dig deeper.
I agree there’s got to be more transparency and rigorous standards with authentication. Between this and the PSA signatures it just seems negligent. But I am not a patron of these companies to begin with.
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Is anyone on E4 who has these cards willing to try and look for the printer code? That could clear this up right quick.
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I was planning on trying when I got home. I should have a digital microscope too
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I purchased a Clefairy for myself decently cheap, something like 1.7k. then I had to fight with alt to withdraw it as their claimed value was 10k when I had just purchased it.
Now I don’t know whether they are real or not but I gotta say the joy is drained out of me when I see all this stuff coming out from akabane and the "associates’ that he has.
Especially when the game freak leak just happened and only something like 1% of it was actually released to the public
What a strange time
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If I can just take a step back and say, this is how deep we are. Tediorso discovering and finding out how some secret government collusion with printing companies to counter money forgeries SOMEHOW comes back to being relevant to pokemon cards…
This is how you know you are down the rabbit hole of a rabbit hole.
Amazing share, and honestly on its own merits, wild.
I haven’t been this shocked since finding out that the government has been casually controlling the weather with silver iodide to cloud seed since at least the late 80s.
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These 3 images were shared yesterday by wataru_pokemon on instagram with the caption: “This how the 1996 prototype cards were distributed in 2024
Someone sent me those pictures in private and allowed me to share
Thx anonymous source for that”
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So a lot of high-end collectors who made the initial purchase are dumping them on the market now. They could have coordinated better. Everyone is just rushing for the door now 
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Not sure what the point of this post is other than to showcase the actual problem with these cards. Youve got scammers listed as perveyers of these questionable cards, paraiahs like Sean (Bassik?), and others.
No mention of Xiao. Missing some other things like Pokemons beef with these and Akabanes sales.
Just really showcases why third party authenticators may have been better off waiting to let things settle first.
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