The Curious Case of Fossil Test "Prototype" Print Birds

I am an appreciator of all things Pokemon history and my favorite Pokemon are the 3 Legendary birds from Gen1, so when the Fossil Test Print sheets featuring Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres started coming out I was naturally intrigued. Follow along for a story that turns from history into mystery.

Context

Over a year ago, odd “prototype” versions of Japanese Fossil cards began to surface.

Origins

These cards are clearly different from what eventually made it into the Fossil expansion, and their origins were quite mysterious until very recently.

Pokemon TCG creator (and alleged accomplice in the prototype scandal) Takumi Akabane showed the very distinctive Moltres with visual artifacting in 2023:

It was also eventually revealed that these come from peelable sheets:

These sheets are the exact same size as the Vending sheets that also feature glossy, peelable cards

Several of these sheets have sold on auction houses over time. Earlier this year I decided to purchase one from Goldin Auctions since buying them directly from Japan had a higher risk (especially given the Prototype Scandal). I felt that even if things went badly and the unpeeled sheets were deemed fake, Goldin (and its associated company PSA) would have my back.

Mail day

I received the sheet from Goldin shortly after winning the auction. I recorded the full unboxing and sleeving for submission process here:

I also scanned the cards to take a look at their rosette patterns. The patterns look authentic, with proper black layer separation on the text and expansion symbol.



Additionally, I took some peeled vending sheet cards I had of each type and compared them at a 600 DPI scan.


The Articunos are fairly easy to compare–the prototype prints are printed with an offset print in the same way as the vending sheet.

Prototype

Vending Sheet

The kerning (spacing between individual characters) on the name is slightly different, but that could just be layout adjustments:

The HP text, Lv. text, and energy symbol all match up

You can again see a difference in kerning on the typeline, with the prototype’s text being a lot more spaced out

The energy symbol have consistent spacing and have the same raster graphic rosettes

The flavor text, number, and rarity symbol also all line up

And comparing them side-by-side, they have identical rosette spacing, rotations, etc

The backs are noticeably different in saturation, with the vending sheet being much richer in color (vending on left, prototype on right)

The rosettes are similar size but slightly different in arrangement due to the difference in color.

Vending

Prototype

The text is much more faint on the back of the prototype but is laid out identically. What’s interesting is that the (C) symbol is much more faint on the prototype and you can actually see more of the blue background through it than is available on the vending card.

Vending

Prototype

This implies that when the prototype was made, they likely had access to the actual digital file and were playing with some of the layout / font opacity. The vending one also has a slight bevel / emboss on each letter.

OK so are they real?

One of the reasons I felt comfortable spending a healthy sum of money on these is because PSA had authenticated 4 full sets of the trio.

While there are not telltale signs of print dates since offset prints don’t leave behind metadata, I can say with high confidence that they were printed in a way that is consistent with how Pokemon cards from this era were printed.

PSA also had an article in their magazine devoted to the cards and their authentication. They wrote about utilizing rosette patterns and speaking to “experts” (likely Akabane lol) about their authenticity.

Thanks to @smpratte for these pics of the magazine article




Sending to PSA

With PSA having written an article on them and promoting them on their social media, I sent my set in.

A few weeks later and well…that’s not good

I contacted PSA support, and received this response. The “end of January” timing lines up exactly to when PFM published his findings on the playtest / prototypes.

I asked for a bit more clarification and was met without a great response. Funny enough they tried to distance themselves from Goldin despite the companies still being in the signature

So of course, I contacted Goldin

Looks like a dead end here, so I went to CGC

Sending to CGC

CGC has also graded a set of these cards

So I went ahead and sent them in, then…

Of course, I proceed to contact CGC, and get this response

I ask for more detail and am told that I’ll get more info on the white slip that graders include when they mail it back

I’ll save you some suspense and show you the very detailed explanation I received back

I reached back out and got another CGC rep

I inquired further, because CGC graded these in the past and was finally told it was a decision made at the VP-level

Conclusion

  • Unfortunately as a result of the prototype scandal it seems that grading companies will no longer grade these cards
  • I believe they are authentic, so maybe in the future they will be graded again some day.
  • I can’t blame the grading companies from turning these away, but it feels very disingenuous given that they very recently graded them and made no such announcement that they had stopped. Nor were any of the certs for existing ones deactivated or their pop reports removed.
  • I’ve got some neat binder cards now :melting_face:
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Ink layer patterns are different or am i not seeing these right?

It looks like what you said is the vending card has a +15 magenta layer. Black looks 45. This is on par with wotc stuff

It looks like the test card has 45° magenta layer. Black looks 0 or 90. This pattern ive consistently seen on alot of my older japanese stuff though im not super experienced with japanese

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Very detailed article, appreciate you be open with your journey and willingness to share!

Tin foil hat on
Despite the dubious origins of these cards, the fact that they come in unpeeled sheets added another layer of difficulty to counterfeit. Perhaps Akabane just had stacks leftover. If I had to throw a guess, the set was meant for some promo release, the moltres printing error was discovered and they were pulled or replaced.

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The ink layer patterns are similar to what I’ve seen with my oldback cards, but I don’t have a large enough sample size of vending series onhand to compare. All mine appear to be similarly colored.

I do have some regular set cards that have similar ink layers to the test cards as well. They probably had some level of inconsistency between print runs.

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Wow, you did what I was going to do. Sorry to hear they might not get graded. Thanks for sharing all the info and video.

if possible can you share any slightly higher res scans? They all seem a bit too low for proper analysis.

Did you notice any small tags from where the cards get cut from the peel backing? I recall vending usually having a few small dots where they would connect with the cutout sheet.

I would get a black light, and look at your other vending cards for comparison.

The copyright print on the back is curious, and the rosetts look a bit off to me. The print quality overall looks a bit blurry, something I noticed with the uncut 1st ed wrappers and the disco foils that people were claiming were prototypes. They have still not been confirmed and I think are very high quality fakes.

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I bought a set too and CGC refused to authenticate them. They are currently sitting in my Fanatics vault. I haven’t seen mine in person, but I will upload detailed scans if I get them shipped to me.



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Thanks for sharing the journey. Would TAG be able to authenticate these? If PSA and CGC aren’t touching them now, I don’t see a day in the near future where they open it back up without expanding technology to be able to age date cards

I’m not sure what a black light would do here compared to looking at color channels on scans. Pokemon cards don’t really have any UV printing for auth purposes and these are non-holo.

When I was peeling them they were stickier than the vending sheets I’ve peeled in the past. You’ll notice in the video that the Zapdos got stuck on a corner and peeled off a bit.

I uploaded my scans directly to the post, but it might’ve compressed it when served through the CDN, give this a try (should be 600 DPI):

https://imgur.com/a/cTSsZCt

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UV does a ton imo

When I first discovered these cards I thought they were really cool. Despite some connections it may have to other folks :pikasunglasses: :vulcan_salute: I hope they are authentic.

Thank you for sharing and documenting everything!

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Thanks @HumanForScale for taking the time to make this article!

A couple ideas I had, which are pure speculation, card file wise, these might be more related to the TMB phone cards than anything with fossil. Their relation to vending might not be as exact. I’m not sure what would be the best comp.

What also interests me, if people consider these to be high quality fakes, what does that mean for extra trophy cards that were distributed through akabane? As of making this post, there have been many more illustrators sold than this bird trio. I think these cards suffer from not having a 1 to 1 comparable like extra trophy cards. Wherever you land, clearly there are more barriers to create these cards than the January Prototype scandal.

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I had a Zapdos TMB phone card in a PSA slab so I compared it to the test print bird

It looks like in this case the kerning on the name lines up with the phone card’s! Here’s the test print overlaid on top of the slab:

However all the other elements are slightly different, likely because phone cards have different aspect ratio + size compared to a TCG card. For example if I align the artwork, everything else is shifted

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Here is a scan of a Vending Series 3 card, and a CD promo vending card. I usually scan 2400 and then zoom and take a screenshot in order to share on E4. I don’t think I can zoom enough on the 600 DPI to to tell anything.

I definitely see some differences on the prototype back. Bottom is the prototype. The yellow seems slightly concerning in the white region, it is most noticeable above the “h” in “All Rights”. I noticed similar issues in the pure white / pure black regions with the other recent prototypes / test prints.

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Yellow is applied in a diffeeent pattern, same with black. Thats why they look weird

Every time I see that Phone Card I get emotional due to its beauty. Very interested to see how this plays out though! I’ll be watching for any updates. Thanks for putting this all together!

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Thank you very much for a detailed and informative article @HumanForScale. Really nice work. I also had the same thoughts as @rtas that they were probably going to be part of a promo campaign but somehow did not get released. Excellent video as well to document everything. It really helps for the future. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers!

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