I suppose it was only a matter of time but someone seems to have successfully re sealed a wotc wrap on a gym hero’s booster box
Check out UAE_Pokemon on IG who unfortunately got scammed. He has sold hundreds of boxes so I’m sure it must have been a convincing fake.
Certainly puts me off buying vintage boxes in the future, although the chance is slim, the potential of it being a re seal would eat away at me.
source > price
This is sad to see, but kind of inevitable now that prices are so high. The higher the value, the higher the risk. I’ve always shied away from sealed product for this reason. It’s why I’ve never strongly considered going after a sealed Neo Genesis box even though it has a Pichu on the side. There’s just too much risk.
Selling a fake box to a trusted source who is completely unaware > source > price?
Wow. That seal though. Terrifying.
I agree, completely puts me off. What’s worrying is I have never seen a convincing WOTC shrink wrap fake before.
In the video he does mention people reaching out in order to buy the rappers on boxes that he does open. Gary did also show how to cut open a box on the side and take out the packs while leaving the rest of the wrapper intact. This was common in first edition base set when the boxes were over $10,000. it was only a matter of time before the other boxes increased in value to the point where it would become profitable for scammers
just a general rule for high end stuff
Based on the interior though, it seems like the scammer managed to package the box very nicely in a way that I would say it’s impossible without a full box opening, since theres wrapper in the front of the box and the cards are held in a stack with tape?
I’m still blown away at how this is a resealed box…there’s 0 telltale signs from what I am seeing, aside from maybe that tiny tear he mentions in the video.
That’s why it was safer to purchase boxes pre-2019 (cheaper boxes and no point putting the effort into an elaborate endeavour) - before the dark times, before the Empire …
Provenance.
I think it’s a bit irrelevant in this case though. If you can make a fake convincing enough that it can fool anyone it’s not going to matter if you got the box from someone trusted within the community versus completely unheard of. The best thing a scammer who does something like this can hope to achieve is having the box eventually be sold on to someone else after they’ve already sold it, ultimately making it much harder to trace the source of the scam. Especially when dealing with high value items like these which would very much be grounds for police involvement.
Scammers probably aren’t going to be selling boxes like these directly, they’re going to be selling them onto large resellers who they will trust won’t open the box to discover the scam.
For all we know this box was resealed 10 years ago and has since exchanged hands a dozen times.
The Wizards logos doesn’t look to be the correct size (slightly bigger), and also the wrapper doesn’t sound the same as an authentic one. Thats something we have to look out for now i guess
Funnily enough I also noticed it didn’t sound like it should.
Yep was just going to say this, I said it in the other thread too.
Both these boxes had incorrectly sized logos, so they arent reseals exactly, someone is printing new wrap. Its only a matter of time before you cant tell the difference unless someone has a plastic/paint dating machine.
Luckily prices are at a point where its probably worth doing something like that.
this is sad to see, the logos do seem off so it must be a fake wrapper vs a legit wrap reused. Hopefully this wasn’t intentional by the person he bought them from but if so hopefully they can be caught.
Yeah these logos look like the ones on the other “new fake seal” box:
Someone is making these wraps and they are using different material from a normal WOTC box. You’re right though- it’s only a matter of time until you can’t tell the difference.
It reminds me of a weird “cryptic” comment I read on a booster box sale where someone claimed that there was going to be a flood of boxes and that people should “mark his words” that people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. It was weird, but the timing seems to have aligned with these fake boxes coming up.
So I can think of three potential ways to counter this:
X-ray – though this would only work if the resealer doesn’t actually put resealed packs into the box. But it would work for the Gym Heroes box in question.
Inspect the box itself for any dents/marks and make sure that those exact same marks are also on the wrap. If they aren’t, then it’s almost certainly a reseal.
Plastic ages in a certain way. Anyone who’s owned many vintage sealed boxes should be able to tell whether or not the box was recently sealed.
None of these are fool-proof, but these would help spot most fakes, IMO. Definitely a scary thing that fakes as good as the box in question are exchanging hands. Luckily, I’m pretty sure that people will develop surefire ways to authenticate booster boxes. The three tests that I outlined are just off the top of my head; I’m sure there are a much better authentication methods that could be developed.
x-ray method would work but it wouldn’t be hard for the faker to bypass that too…just buy cheap modern packs as filler. I don’t think an x-ray would show what type of packs are inside but there might be higher-end scanners that could be able to detect the fakes easily…probably cost millions though.
2/3 are definitely the most reliable methods, even though people require some sort of experience when examining the boxes. You can even see in the video that the plastic itself looks different than the real deal - should be much more obvious when you have it actually in hand.
Agreed. The issue with #2 is that it might be possible for a resealer to convincingly damage the seal to make it match the damage on the box. And #3 is also complicated by the fact that the seals on authentic vintage booster boxes have aged differently depending on how they were stored. If they were exposed to sunlight for a prolonged period of time, for instance, the wrap may display yellowing and be slightly more brittle. So there’s not some objective way that the wrap on a 20-year box should look. Still, it should be possible, with enough experience, to identify if a box was recently sealed.
There may also be ways to chemically test the age of the seal. No clue on this, though.