While this may be the case for magic FYIBelgium only used Black for pokemon. At least ive yet to find a Blue core belgium print.
Rereading this full text though has really opened my mind alot and i think i have Quebecor and Cartamundi USA printings narrowed down🔥
A few months ago, I finally found another WotC employee to confirm the UV Color print facility, and answer some of my questions about it.
When WotC first developed foil & holofoil cards, they needed a print facility with trading card experience, and UV presses which are required to print on the plastic foil & holofoil material.
The UV Color print facility had experience with sports cards, and they also had good security, which was important because WotC didn’t want any leaks or unauthorized cards.
(cough, this isn’t Yu-Gi-Oh)
It was very important for the cardstock and card back printing, to match normal cards, so the sheets of printed card backs (blank front), were printed at PBM Graphics & later Yaquinto, the same places that printed regular non-foil cards.
These sheets would then be shipped to the UV Color facility.
UV Color would laminate the holofoil to the sheets, and print the card faces on the holofoil.
Card size was also critical, so UV Color didn’t cut any of the sheets into cards.
Card size needed to match the regular non-foil cards, and WotC was using the European standard size of 63 mm by 88 mm, instead of the US standard size typical in the USA.
The foil / holofoil cards needed to be packaged with the regular cards anyway, so UV Color shipped the printed sheets elsewhere for cutting and packaging.
The PBM Graphics print facility in North Carolina didn’t handle cutting and packaging.
PBM used a separate packout facility called Wrap-It Corp, in Howard South Dakota for cutting and packaging.
So PBM would print all the card backs for their print run.
Then they’d ship some of the card back sheets to UV Color for holofoil cards, while they printed the card face on all the regular non-foil sheets.
Then PBM would ship all the non-foil sheets to Wrap-It Corp.
UV Color would print the card face of holo cards, and ship those sheets to Wrap-It Corp, where they would rejoin the non-foil cards for cutting and packaging.
Later in the mid 2000’s, PBM purchased Wrap-It Corp, and it became a PBM facility.
In the more recent era, PBM has been purchased by RR Donnelly, and rebranded to that name for current operations.
The Yaquinto process was similar, but Yaquinto handled their printing, cutting, & packaging all at the same facility in Texas.
So Yaquinto would ship some of the card back sheets to UV Color, to create the holofoil cards, and those sheets would be returned to Yaquinto in Texas for cutting and packaging.
The card faces for WotC test prints relating to the creation of foil / holofoil cards, were all printed at UV Color.
The early WotC foil / holofoil cards for normal production, all had their card faces printed at UV Color in the USA.
UV Color did Magic, Pokemon, and whatever else WotC needed to be foil / holofoil.
UV Color did this for about 2 to 3 years for the USA cards.
By the end of that time, PBM Graphics and Yaquinto had their own UV presses, and were able to handle the job themselves, without using the UV Color facility.
Carta Mundi in Belgium developed UV press capability faster than PBM or Yaquinto.
Once WotC had released foil / holofoil cards for Magic & Pokemon, all competitors also wanted to have foil cards. Carta Mundi printed cards for everybody, so they were under a lot of pressure to quickly develop UV press capability. Yu-Gi-Oh was especially impatient.
I’m not sure if Carta Mundi ever received holo cards from UV Color, but I know that some of the international releases had their first print runs made in the USA, because WotC was in a hurry to release them, even though those languages are typically printed in Belgium due to cost and logistics of shipping the product to market.
UV foil printing quickly became a requirement for any new print facility used by WotC.
WotC did temporarily bring on additional print facilities for Pokemon during the boom of 1999 to 2000, and those facilities were required to have UV presses.
At the moment, I don’t have more info on these additional facilities, but I suppose that GPS Colour Graphics in the UK, & Hannapak in Australia would fit this description, since I’ve only heard of them being used for Pokemon.
Very interesting and detailed info, thanks for that!
That would also explain why nobody could find any info on the sign-off person D.Davis for the early base set sheets. His signature was on the 1st ed. base, shadowless and “Disco” foil sheets. From that info you provided it would make sense that he didn’t work for PBM but for UV Color. Maybe something worth looking into.
Maybe I’ll do a write-up in the future on Japanese sheets. For now I can tell this much: the early Japanese sheets were printed in-house by Nintendo Kyoto since they had a lot of experience in the playing card industry. They were initially founded as a playing card company back in 1889 after all.
The new Nintendo Museum that opened in late 2024 is located at the exact spot where the factory used to be.
Ok so this seems to confirm that we should be able to find different holo cards from the same set if they were printed in multiple regions.
Belgium was the first to print any of the foreign language packs based on the 1st edition cards and pack copyrights.
For some reason very late in Base set being printed, USA had to help print what seems like a very small number of packs in French, Portuguese, Italian, and German. USA also released a second version of 1st edition and a second version of unlimited in Spanish. Unlike Spanish, the German and Portuguese cards actually retain the 1999 copyright despite the pack stating 1999-2000.
It’s true that a WotC person is required to sign off on the Press Approval sheet.
This action signals the beginning of normal production.
The Press Approval sheet gets saved for reference.
The signature on a Press Approval sheet is an actual hand written signature, made with something like a marker, pen, or pencil. Along with the signature, it usually says something like “OK for color & fit”.
Earlier examples have the signature in the margin of the sheet, but at some point they switched to adhesive labels with additional info, and signed on the label.
The hand signed press approval sheets are unique, there’s only one per print run.
It’s done this way because WotC is such a high value customer for the print facility, and a mistake that affected the entire print run could be extremely expensive for the print facility if WotC wasn’t liable for the error.
Pretty sure that Pokemon continued being done that way after they left WotC.
But the vast majority of smaller company print runs, don’t have company staff inside the print facility.
For these smaller companies, a print facility manager signs the press approvals.
The earliest WotC print runs for Magic, didn’t have anyone from WotC inside the print facility.
Magic was released in 1993, and WotC people didn’t visit the print facility until 1994.
,
D. Davis definitely didn’t work for WotC or UV Color.
D. Davis was one of the best lead pressmen at PBM Graphics, and had seniority over a lot of the other pressmen.
D. Davis didn’t sign any sheets, he scratched his name into the metal printing plate.
On a large print run, after running the press non-stop for a certain number of hours, they shut down the press for inspection and cleaning, and then they start printing again. Marking the plate with your name or initials and the date during a routine inspection, was normal practice at PBM Graphics, because it’s proof that you shut down the press. You can’t put your initials on the printing plate while the press is running. 
It feels like a big hassle to shut down the press and clean it, when it’s working just fine, but if there’s a problem and the boss doesn’t see your inspection mark, then you’re in trouble.
When you see D. Davis on a sheet, that’s not a handwritten signature, it’s ink getting into where he scratched the plate, and then that ink gets printed on every sheet afterward.
The color indicates which plate he initialed. On the disco sheets, it’s the Magenta printing plate.
I haven’t spoken with D. Davis directly, but I’ve spoken with his coworkers at PBM, who recognize his mark on the sheet edge, and explained why it’s there.
They also gave me a list of people who worked there.
If you see TP marked on any plates, that’s a PBM pressman named Tim. I know he’s on some earlier holo sheets, dated December 10th 1998.
You’ll notice that their inspection marks are on the back side of the sheets, because the backs were printed at PBM. The front side of holo sheets were printed elsewhere, at the UV Color facility.
I haven’t shared the first name of D. Davis, or the last name of Tim (or any other worker names), for privacy reasons.
D. Davis was a skilled pressman, good at his job, and a hard worker. He usually had first pick of who his assistants would be each day on the press he ran. He didn’t care about Pokemon or trading cards at all. He printed stuff every day, and it didn’t matter what he was printing, it only mattered that he did a good job.
Socially, he didn’t get along with some of the other workers, because of things that he said or believed, He could be extremely rude to certain people, and probably couldn’t have worked a job that was visible to the public without the company receiving backlash about his behavior, but inside a secure print facility away from the public, he was able to keep his job, because he was good at it.
That’s pretty awesome, I love history.
I’m sure that people would enjoy that.
I haven’t managed to contact anyone who worked for UV Color yet.
I’ve only spoken with two WotC employees about the UV Color facility.
At the moment, by biggest question for the UV Color facility, is where it was located.
Pretty sure it’s inside the USA, but no idea which state.
Last time we talked about that French card from the year 2000, the GPS Colour Graphics facility in the UK, seemed like a strong possibility.
I haven’t contacted anyone at that facility yet either, but if you want to give it a shot, find Stephen Wilks, who was interviewed in this video.
When I asked Carta Mundi Belgium about this, they said that the US print runs of European languages, were because WotC wanted to release the sets quickly, and couldn’t wait for Belgium to print them.
This seems to indicate that the US print runs were first.
The new info about the UV Color facility, helps to explain why Belgium would have been slow to print them.
Apparently Belgium needed some time to get a UV Press, so that they would be able to make holo cards.
The different Portuguese print runs, could also be due to having different sales regions.
Perhaps the US Portuguese run went to Brazil, and the Belgium Portuguese run went to Portugal?
I’ve seen WotC take shortcuts like that on several Magic sets.
Sometimes if they were rereleasing a product with only a small change, they wouldn’t update the copyright date.
Take the copyright dates with a grain of salt. They’re not necessarily the year a product was released.
The UK Base Set with 2000 copyright, was printed in November 1999.
Magic has some 1994 copyright sets, which weren’t released until March 1995, due to production delays.
A rereleased product, might have the same copyright as the original release, which can save time for WotC.
Interesting! That makes the timeline super confusing. I wonder if they were maybe referring to other sets like Jungle/Fossil?
Their timeline would mean they printed USA 1999-2000 unlimited with curved wizards logo, then switched to 1999 1st edition in Belgium with rectangular wizards logo, and finally finished with 1999 unlimited in Belgium. Making 1999-2000 USA unlimited really the 1st edition.
1999-2000 USA for Spanish also fixed an error where the 1999 packaging said “Edition” instead of “Edicion” to match the stamp on the cards. That would mean they didn’t fix the error, but Belgium later introduced it and never fixed it.
UV Color should be these guys: UV Color Cards
Their facility would have been in Minnesota.
In January 2024, I was doing some research on unusual German & Italian Base Set Pokemon cards that Chel picked up from the free table inside WotC headquarters. It was the same time he picked up the protostoise.
In particular, I was looking for information on where German & Italian Base Set were made. I couldn’t find any good photos of Italian 1st Edition manufacturing info, but I was surprised to find that Italian 2 Player Starter Sets had been made in both Belgium and the USA.
It was specifically Italian Base Set that I was asking about.
I talked to several people while researching that topic.
I just double checked what Carta Mundi Belgium told me.
Luc Mertens:
Your question about Made in Belgium: yes, if that is on the display the cards should be produced in Belgium as well. This is a rule stated by the ministry of economy and customs.
On the Italian subject, Italy was and still is extremely big on Pokémon. In certain cases indeed production for Italian product happened at both sides of the ocean.
So instead of Belgium telling me that WotC was in a hurry, that part of the info must have come from one of the WotC people I visited with. I should have the quote saved, but it’s difficult to double check, until I can remember which person said it.
I suppose that WotC could have been impatient on a subsequent print run instead of the first print run.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be the UV Press that was causing Carta Mundi to be slow, there could have been something else going on.
We’re in the realm of speculation here.
For English, shadowless Unlimited cards were released to the public first, in Demo Boosters, Theme Decks, & Two Player Starter Sets, during 1998, then 1st Edition happened in January 1999, then shadowless Unlimited booster packs were made.
”1st Edition” isn’t necessarily the first release, though I wish it were.
Either way is possible here.
Here’s a general run down of the events…
By showing how good Pokémon was doing in the USA, WotC was able to renegotiate the contract with Pokémon, expanding WotC to worldwide distribution outside of Japan.
This also made WotC more valuable to Hasbro, which resulted in higher buyout offers.
Pokémon licensed the anime separately from the games, which resulted in Topps also selling Pokémon cards to the US market.
This forced WotC to release the Jungle expansion in June 1999, a few months earlier than they wanted to, while battling Topps for market share.
July 1999 was the first international product under the expanded license contract. It was international English Two Player Starter Sets. They were first, because they didn’t require any extra time for translation into another language.
Chris was the typesetter for Jungle and all the earlier WotC Pokémon stuff, but he’s more of a Magic fan, and was happy to hand over all the subsequent Pokémon stuff to another typesetter. Her name is Kat. I visited with her a bit, and she did all the languages after this point, except for the Asian languages. She was the main typesetter for Pokémon for quite a while, and was really into it, but she’s stepped away from the industry and gone a different direction with her life now.
French, German, Spanish for Latin America, & Portuguese were the next languages made, all being done in July, August, September, & October, with a 1999 copyright date.
French 1st Edition Base Set sheets are dated September 29th 1999, and were printed at the Carta Mundi facility in Belgium. Not sure exactly when those other languages were printed, but it was before November.
German was also printed at Carta Mundi in Belgium. Most Portuguese cards are sold in South America.
September 9th 1999, Hasbro purchases WotC. I think the Pokémon license / contract was updated again as part of the ownership change, but it just extended the term for a few months longer than original.
Fossil released in October
Test prints were made for the new Cosmos holofoil, using the existing Fossil printing plates.
The English Base Set cards with the 2000 copyright date, were printed November 1st 1999, at the GPS Colour Graphics Ltd facility in the United Kingdom. Labor cost was cheaper in the UK than in Belgium.
I’ll have to dig into that a bit more, but you’re probably correct.
Thank you very much for finding it !
cant speak for the abra, appears to be of some USA origin by the border. Abras cardstockis similar to stuff UK and Belgium used, real nice card.
Ponyta and Growlithe i have ALOT of confidence were printed by Leycol in UK. Reportedly they were subcontracted by GPS.
I think these may be all i have for italian base. My german is Belgium origin.
“The Cartamundi people in Belgium, in Turnhout made the majority of ours(cards)at the time before we brought on extra factories and then we brought on a company down in canvey island called games and print” -S.Wilkes
GPS printing in late 99 would mean belgium printing some time around June is how i take this statement. They likely were somewhat backed up depending how early the order was processed but the Belgium plates look like they would have been printed earlier.
USA spanish plates indicate it was likely printed between jungle and fossil or right with fossil. They(PBM?) even printed some of the spanish first edition commons with the Blue core paper like they used on early unlimited commons and shadowless rares.
The time they were trying to save was likely a month or so if i had to guess(logistics preparing to print and shipping across the world coming from Belgium). Belgiums plates probably hint that their order was processed around the same time as unlimited(2nd print) base and jungle, prior to foreign USA plates
Reverse engineering this timeline has been so complicated 
. I think we have now aggregated more information than the company would have had at the time internally given the global distribution.
Just to add a bit more data. For the Base set 1999-2000, you can pull them from any of these packs and other decks. USA, Australia, and 3 UK versions. They are all uniquely identifiable cards based on ink, corners, and UV.
For the unusual foreign language USA cards, they come from these 6 packs. The one thing I haven’t been able to figure out is why they used the very early English Base set art work known as “thin font” unlimited, yet had the curved logo and later copyright dates. English Base would transition to “thick font” but still retain 1999 and rectangle logo.
Do you know when the curved logo first appeared? This timeline would mean curved is showing up a month or two before the Hasbro deal closed in September, and before October which was a date I saw previously as the transition date for the logo.
Here is a comparison of the USA vs Belgium packs.
Thanks!
Fantastic info, I bet Rusty @TCAGaming would really appreciate that. I always thought TP was the abbreviation for “Time for print” haha.
I initally talked to Rusty about this signature on the back of the sheets when he got his first shadowless sheet and then the disco foil test sheet.
While the print production manager said at the time that the disco foil would most likely not be a legitimate sheet since the foil pattern was never considered (they kept all the foil samples) and the sheet would never be printed without certain elements like the evolution box as well as the color bars, I told Rusty that the matching signature makes it legit for me contrary to the production manager’s opinion.
I still think that the disco sheet was not an earlier sheet, but printed after the shadowless run as a sort of layout test for unlimited base where the foil pattern and other elements were not important at all. The sheet layout matches up with what we saw later for the unlimited base holo sheet after all.
And the Disco sheet back is dated 21-1 which is late January 1999. While the earlier Shadowless sheet was dated 12-10, So December 1998 while the Shadowless holo Ver. 2 sheet matches the 21-1 date on the back.
So in total it would indeed go like this:
1st Edition Holo - 1st run (Thick Stamps): Company PBM, Date: 11/98, Form 7, Sign-Off: 11-30-98 7:25AM
Back: No sign off
1st Edition Holo - 2nd run (Thin Stamps): Company PBM, Date: 01/99, Form 7, Version 2, Job #P06057270 00 0140, Sign-Off: 1-3-99 2:45PM,
Back: 12/10/98 TP - D.David crossed out (Cyan Plate)
1st Edition Holo - 3nd run (Shadowless) : Company PBM, Date: 01/99, Form 7, Version 3, Job #P06057270 00 0140,
Back: 12/10/98 TP - D.David crossed out (Cyan Plate)
Unlimited Holo - 1st Run (Shadowless) : Company: PBM, Date: 2/99, Form 9, Job # ? , Sign-Off: 2-7-99 3:55PM
Back: 1-21-99 D.Davis (Magenta Plate)
Disco Foil Unlimited Holo (Unlimited Layout Test?): Company: PBM, Date: ?, Form ?, Job # ?,
Back: 1-21-99 D. Davis (Magenta Plate)
So in conclusion, the 1st ed. thick stamped cards were an entirely separate run. Then came the thin stamps which completed the production numbers for 1st ed. and transitioned straight into shadowless within the same printing. Then in late January 1999 they did another shadowless print run while already experimenting with the unlimited layout by printing the disco foils.
The question is, why would they even use this different foil pattern if the sheets had to be sent to UV Color? Maybe UV Color accidently used an incorrect foil type on a pallet of sheets and it would’ve been a waste to throw them out due to already lacking card printing capacity?
Discos were much later if you ask me. Near nintendo timeframe. +15 degree magenta plate with “modern” holo print plate characteristics… something to look for. Something wotc never printed on a holo til expedition. I feel like ik more.
Good call, you’re correct, those disco sheets are legit.
Correct again
Those disco sheets are not from before Pokemon was released to the public.
The date for printing the back side, is printed right on the sheet, and it’s late January 1999.
The front side was printed at UV Color, probably in February 1999.
Mistakes like that have happened, but it’s not what’s going on here.
Here, I think this will help.
Disco Foil Sheets
WotC Typesetter Chris Nitz, made all of the Protostoise. He also made all of Shadowless & 1st Edition. He created Unlimited, but it was in print for the rest of the year. He started passing the torch to the next Pokemon typesetter around Jungle. He said it was when Jungle came out, which might mean after he’d completed Jungle, it’s not clear. Chris would have only done the English versions, the next typesetter handled the international expansion.
Info from the typesetter: Either we knew something worked, or we didn’t know. This was a test for some of the things we didn’t know. A few different holofoil patterns were tried out. The team was looking for cost savings by using different holofoils, but they had to see how it would affect the final print. The gold rectangle frame around the flavor text at the bottom of the card, is overprinted on the test print. That’s why the gold doesn’t “pop”, it was adding color over color. Normal cards knockout the color under that gold rectangle frame, so that it prints on white. The corner of every card, has a tiny quarter circle. Where the corners of 4 cards meet, this forms a complete circle. That circle indicates where the sheet should be slit into cards. The color separation films this was made from, were laid out to fit any press, any sheet, anywhere. That’s also why it has a wider yellow border on the right hand side. This was made from my film, for sure something that was tweaked and rushed through just for the test prints. If it had been done with “templates”, the border would be equal on each side. We were convinced the black Length & Weight under the artwork would overprint the gold color and look good, so it was left off as unnecessary for this test. In the early days, the energy symbols and Pokémon image in the evolution box, were manually inserted by the typesetter, one at a time. These test prints were ASAP, so those things are missing. I automated the typesetting process. If a field in the database was blank, it would be blank on the card. The editors at the time, felt they could continue fiddling with the card content, and add stuff later during typesetting. With the automation, I could typeset a whole card set in under a minute per card. You type it in, I’ll typeset it out. There was no longer an excuse or reason for bad data to get into production. I was given no explanation for WHEN things would appear on cards. I separated the graphic components of the cards, so things could be turned “on or off”. I worked to have a logical way for the data to be separated for the energy symbols. Later, “libraries” were incorporated for consistency across all the different languages.
The card backs are printed in advance, because they’re the same for all sheets. The print facility calls this the “common” side, because they’re all the same. The back side of your sheet was printed January 21st, 1999 by D. Davis at PBM Graphics in North Carolina, along with many other card backs. Every so often, the press gets shut down for an inspection, and it was common practice for the person responsible for the inspection, to scratch their initials in the plate. This proves that they shut the press down, because they can’t scratch the plate while the press is running.
The holofoil was laminated on to the front side, and the front side of the sheet was printed later at the UV Color print facility, probably in February. UV capable printing presses were required to print on holofoil.
WotC would provide color separation films, which the print facility would use to burn the printing plates before production. The blank space at the bottom was intentionally created, probably to showcase the foil pattern for ease of comparison.
The bottom section of each plate was masked while the plates were burned, so that area would remain blank. At the same time the color separation film was applied to the plate, and the color bars were added. Every print facility added their own color bars, that would function with the particular quality control equipment they used. A computer reads the color bars for print consistency as the sheets pass by.
The Disco Foil sheets have the same layout as Shadowless and shadowed Unlimited cards, and was printed near the end of the Shadowless time frame. Cutting would have required shipping the sheets back to PBM Graphics, but no factory cut Disco Foil cards are known to exist. Instead, the whole sheets were sent to WotC.
I think you’d enjoy seeing my comment on 1st Edition stamp variations.
… and probably also my comment on the Pikachu variations, because it’s a good example of putting the various print runs in order.
Somewhere around here, I also posted info on why shadowless changed to shadowed, but I don’t recall which post it was on, so I can’t link it.
Nope, definitely early 1999, probably February.
