Test Print Russian card from the Black & White era - "Property of TPCI"

Hi! :slight_smile:

I’m looking for information about Russian Pokémon cards. I’m not sure what to call them — maybe “test prints”?
Below is a photo from a friend who owns one of these cards. According to him, it appears to be an original. I’m trying to find any information about these cards for him. Has anyone heard about them?

I contacted CGC, but they replied: “We sincerely apologize, we have graded playtest Pokémon cards in the past, but we are no longer accepting playtest cards” — probably because of the recent controversy.

Thanks :slight_smile:

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This is super cool, thank you for sharing – @c011ect0r knows a great deal about these sorts of cards, perhaps he will have more info!

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All I can say is that the watermark is exactly the same as on the editable PDF for BREAKpoint on the Pokémon website and that this card exists as a TCG Online asset with a different layout and translation, so I would be wary of it’s authenticity for now.


A video showing the card from the side would be helpful where one could see the black layer authentic TPCi made cards have.

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Just like @Ratequaza, I have my doubts. Russian cards started during the XY era, so it’s very strange to see a Russian card from the very first BW set. If it were one of the last BW era sets, it might have been somewhat plausible.

And although it’s a test print, and I see an OPTION 2 in the bottom-left card border, there seem to be a bit too many differences with the actual released cards in terms of layout. :thinking:
If we put the scan without physical copy of Ratequaza’s post, next to your card, and next to a card from the first actually released Russian set (XY Kalos Starter Set):

We see that the online scan and actual physical card both lacked a Pokémon flavor-text, unlike that test print (or this card in other languages).
There are also a few differences in font-size, like in the texts below the artwork for example. Or the bold Weakness, Resistance, Retreat Costs, and Illus. Kagemaru Himeno at the bottom, which aren’t bold in the online/physical cards.

But one more telling thing, which wouldn’t just change due to a potential test of card layouts, are the differences in the translations of:

  1. The ‘Basic’ in the top-left
  2. The ‘HP’ in the top-right
  3. The ‘Retreat Cost’ at the bottom
  4. The second ‘Vine Whip’ attack
  5. And the ‘Grass Snake Pokémon’ below the artwork

Which I’ve also seen pretty often with fake Spanish cards, which were manually translated from existing English cards, before the actual release of the Spanish set. (Here an example of one - the smaller card on the left is fake.)

And tbh, the borders also look a bit sus on first glance, although it might just be the pictures. :thinking:

So yeah, very cool if it’s an actual Russian test print of some kind, but at this point, I think it’s simply a clever fake.. But I’ve been wrong before about a test print that looked fake, so :person_shrugging: (Or vice versa with the Japanese prototype scandal..)
Either way, thanks for sharing. Just in case, I’d love to see more pictures of it, including close-ups, if possible. :slight_smile:

Greetz,
Quuador

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That is interesting and i dont recall hearing that they arent grading playtest cards anymore.

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Too bad this was found 10 months too late

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I have more photos and a video :smiley:

Video: https://imgur.com/a/sKP8mB

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Actually, BW era Russian cards actually exist officially, but they haven’t been released physically. They appear as assets from TCG Online. This game had an option to download all the card data (including assets) to your computer in the language you’ve selected. If you had Russian selected, you can have assets in Russian. (7 functional languages and each folder is around 7 GB)

:warning: With “Functional language” (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese & Russian) I mean, languages that have card assets in that specific language. There were other languages such as Swedish or Finnish that only have card assets in English. In fact, Russian only had Card Assets translated in BW & XY eras. HGSS era is untranslated (assets in English)

Russian had card assets translated until XY9 approx. In fact, the untranslated XY era cards appeared in PDFs from the official Pokémon Site (shared by @Ratequaza above) … And, as you can see, HGSS & SM era cards are untranslated (cards in English).

You can access via Asset Studio to the asset files … The following are some examples of Russian cards taken from TCG Online.

BW era:

Red Star Promos also exist in Russian (as card assets):

XY era:

This is the Official Asset from Snivy BW1 in Russian. I’ve loaded the file in Asset Studio

This is the Asset extracted (Unedited) (I haven’t loaded it in Adobe Photoshop, GIMP, Microsoft Paint or similars)

Maybe it can be useful for you all to make a comparison …
Unlike Yu-Gi-Oh (Duel Links/Master Duel), Pokémon (TCG Online/TCG Live) tends to have the same characteristics as physical cards (font, position, etc)

Btw, if you want me to check a Russian card from TCG Online, let me know via MD (you can make your list and I’ll search in the files)

Hope this ends being helpful for you all …

:top_hat: :magic_wand:
:meowth:

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Is the back glued ontop of the card? It looks very sus indeed and the edges and the thickness of the card is not correct. But its hard to say if its real or not, I have held many Russian cards and still own a few and noone looks close to this. This could all be because it “could” be a test print, but I have my reservations at this moment

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Do you have any idea how to verify the authenticity of the card if CGC no longer handles it? I know PSA won’t grade it, but maybe other companies will? BGS?

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Check to see if it has CMYK rosette patterns

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