Printing order for newer cards?

General
1

Hi all,

I always thought cards were produced in this order:

  1. First all the paper layers are placed together (as well as foil layers for Holofoil Rares or Reverse Holo cards).
  2. Then all the yellow borders are printed
  3. Then the card itself got printed on top of that
  4. And then optionally 1st edition stamps are applied in case of the WotC era.
  5. The sheets are cut up into rectangles
  6. The corners of the individual cards are rounded

But are there perhaps more steps involved, by splitting up step 3 into sub-steps? The main reason I’m asking this question is due to a post on the pkmntcgcollections-reddit: www.reddit.com/r/pkmntcgcollections/comments/75oc44/i_got_this_in_the_mythical_pok%C3%A9mon_collection/ with this Meoletta promo:

As you can see, the black text, energy symbols and set symbol on top of the white outlining is misaligned. This makes me believe step 3 might be split up into:
a. Print artwork itself
b. Print white outline
c. Print black text / energy symbols on top

And step c went wrong with this particular card. Does anyone know the productions steps of Pokémon cards. I’m sure there are differences between the old WotC era and today as well.

Here is a close-up image:

Greetz,
Quuador

2

I’ve suspected for a while that the colors are printed separately (like when you see the C/M/Y/K misaligned in a newspaper) or that at least the black text is printed separately, since I have some particularly bad examples from Evolutions where the text looks similar to the card above, maybe even farther off.

But anything from me is just going to be speculation, I have no idea what the actual process is.

3

You know what drives me insane? To this date, I have never been able to find a video of Pokemon cards being produced/packed. Has anyone seen one? Am I the only one?

5 Likes
4

I personally dont think they would do (b). That could be included in the print of (a).
But (c) as a step in itself almost looks like there was movement or misalignment within the print process. Notice how from the attack word SOPRANO WAVE and continuing down to ENTRANCING are ok but then the rest is skewed to the right…The energy symbols are skewed to the left…and the promo number and symbol are waaaay to the right!

5

Old Discovery Channel episode inside CarteMundi in Belgium. Basically same print process etc. used to print MtG and Pokemon.

6

they arent exactly carefull with the cards lol.

No wonder there’s always whitening on my pack fresh cards :sob:

7

I’ve worked with people out of the printing industry (commercial flyers etc.) and they really give a rats ass about the product. For them it’s just part of the job. Just ask any one that ever worked in the food industry how they handle the things you eat :wink:

For the Pokemon printing process. It’s identical as the playing cards, CarteMundi being the #1 play card printer in the world. Except, for Magic/Pokemon the back and front are printed separate and glued together (with the blue/black glue layer). Most likely each side doesn’t contain more than 4 pass overs, one for each color (assuming they print according to CMYK like all professional printers do), which indeed can result in misalignment in printing because the sheet has to be fed through machine for every colorpass.

8

Thanks for sharing this video with us. Now I understand how Pokémon cards are similarly printed. I also understand why their could be whitening. Maybe they don’t keep their blades sharp enough. :confused:

9

Sharp blades is often an issue, however you can often easily distinguish a bad cut from real whitening. The edges are often rough with a bad cut but I have noticed that sliding your finger alongside the edge often removes alot of the rougness without bringing damage to the card