Hi everyone 
As a graded prototype collector (yeah, I did not choose the easy way), I would like to get back to the Japanese fossil test birds case.
Disclaimer: I now own the cards, so I have an interest in proving them genuine, even though I’ll try to stay as neutral as I can.
PART1: Grading test cards
Test card grading has never been as blurry as it is this year for the grading companies.
We have:
- PSA, which usually doesn’t grade test cards, has started grading FPO cards again and has always graded sample cards or cosmo holo fossil cards for example
- BGS which is aligning on PSA standards despite having graded many square cut and factory artefacts
- CGC, which used to grade anything, stopped grading some Akabane-related cards after the scandal
- TAG which explicitly says they don’t grade test cards but graded some anyway.
Anyway, it’s messy and I don’t like that. I expect authentication companies to be able to say whether or not a card is genuine rather than grading test cards only when they can flex through an article saying they made the discovery.
PART2: Fossil test birds
Regarding the fossil test birds, the points which convinced me that the cards are genuine are:
-
Matching the design evolution of the other 4 versions (Corocoro, phone cards and fossil)
-
First appearance in 2014
-
Very high quality
-
Distributed with the peelable sheets
-
At the end of the day, the only reason companies aren’t grading them is that some of them came from Akabane, who, alongside genuine cards, happened to sell the fake low-quality mounted-on-card prototypes/alphas/betas
Here are the dated facts, test birds-focused:
-
30/03/1997, the first edition of the first version of the GuideBook Strategy for Adults released. Its lottery prizes happened to be 100 test phone cards of Articuno.
-
15/04/1997, Corocoro Comics (in its May release) showed an earlier version of the test birds.
-
21/06/1997, Japanese fossil was released (improved version of the test birds).
-
14/11/1997, GuideBook Strategy for Adults revised version released, including a new lottery for new phone cards, featuring the birds.
-
From July 1998 for the Kamex Mega Battle, phone cards were distributed, featuring an improved version of the test birds.
-
In 2014, a test Articuno was shown.
-
Early 2023, a full loose set of the 3 test birds sold.
-
In 2024, many sets as unpeeled sheets came out, after Akabane mentioned them.
-
To this date, only ARS is still grading them as far as I’m aware.
PART3: Timeline
-
- 03/97 Pokémon sends early version pictures of the fossil set to Corocoro Comics.
-
- 03/97 Pokémon published a guidebook including a lottery to win 100 phone cards (it happened to be the test phone cards of Articuno, not yet designed).
-
- 04/97 Corocoro Comics shows the early version pictures of the fossil set in the magazine of May (unreleased cards).
Adding the logo and more.
-
- 04-12*/97 Testing on phone cards, printing the Articuno test phone card as lottery prices.
Adding the “Retreat” keyword.*
*if it’s just something Pokémon forgot by redesigning from scratch, the Articuno test phone cards could have been printed as late as 12/97 (date of reception of the lottery prizes based on a letter received for the guide book revised version: 4 months of open participation + 5 months delay to receive the prize). Considering the cards’ edition was rushed, it’s more likely they made it at the last moment, closer to 12/97.
-
- 05*/97 Printing test birds
Changing the illustrations for Arita’s ones.*
*if the illustrations of Arita were not meant to improve the test birds for fossil, it’s possible Pokémon intended to release them in a fossil edition of the Corocoro Comics, just like the shining Mew with Neo destiny (Darkness, and to Light, 09/03/2001), on the 15/04/2001. If it’s true and the delays are the same, the test birds would have been distributed as late as 07/97, thus printed as late as 06/07.
-
- 06/97 Fossil release
-
- 11/97 Guidebook revised version published, introducing a second lottery to win the phone cards, shipped 9 months later.
Unsatisfied with the stretched render on phone cards, Pokémon reused the files of the test birds, centering the illustrations and embedding them in the phone card format, unstretched.
-
- 07/98 Phone cards released during a Kamex side event (and later for GuideBook lottery, TMB and challenge road).
Now, the assumed first editing and printing dates of the cards (with the uncertainty):
-
Test birds: 04-07/97
-
Lottery Articuno Phone cards: 04-12/97
-
Birds phone cards: Anywhere between 01/98 and 07/98
Graphical timeline: The release dates (editing/printing intervals when unreleased)
PART4: Moltest artifacts
I put together an investigation report (using AI) on the test Moltres (can we call it Moltest?) because its artefacts can help retracing its origin. It doesn’t prove anything but it’s still interesting.
I won’t talk deeply about the minor differences on the test cards compared to the Phone cards and the fossil cards. Basically the illustration and illustrator changed compared to Fossil and the zoom and placement of the illustrations changed compared to the same illustrations on phone cards.
Investigation Report
Printing and prepress artefacts on a Japanese Pokémon test card of Moltres, Fossil expansion (1997)
The “K 97.1” mark
What it is: a date stamp. “97” denotes 1997, most likely the year when the art file was likely finalized. The “K” is a version or job code. Regarding the “.1”, possibly the “.11” (I made a lot of transformations to highlight the additional Cyan but the likelihood of another 1 is around 20% so let’s not rely on that), it’s unlikely to be the month considering the previous research. Let’s assume it’s a version.
Why it is tilted: it was placed by hand, diagonally across the picture, as draft and proof markings usually are. At 60° rising to the right it matches no standard printing screen angle — those are 0/90°, 15°, 45° and 75° — so the angle is an arbitrary human choice and carries no technical meaning.
Why it is blue: it exists on the cyan separation only. That single fact accounts for every observed appearance:
| Substrate | Inks present | With cyan added | Observed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blue | cyan + magenta | negligible change | blue on blue |
| Red | magenta + yellow | all three inks | dark on red |
| Yellow | yellow | cyan + yellow | greenish |
| White | none | cyan alone | light blue |
Why it sits on top of everything: it was added after the artwork was complete. Confinement to a single ink indicates application at or after colour separation, though a pure-cyan element placed within the file would present identically.
The band
Why it is a horizontal band: images are stored one row of pixels at a time, top to bottom. When storage fails, the damage follows that order — producing a horizontal stripe, never a vertical one or an irregular patch.
Why only the illustration: the artwork was the sole raster element on the card. The frame, text, HP value and energy symbols were vector objects, and never passed through the stage that failed.
Why this height: the band measures 2.7 mm, at 300 dpi — the standard source resolution for print at final size — this equals 32 rows, a canonical storage block size. One block failed.
Why it shows the content of the following band: the reader lost its position by exactly one block. Instead of loading the correct 32 rows it loaded the 32 rows immediately below, so the strip that belongs beneath the band appears within it, duplicating that content.
Why part of it is swapped left-to-right: within the block, row-end alignment was also lost. The tail of one row was written at the start of the next, so content wrapped around the edge and reappeared on the opposite side — the same class of error as the displacement, at finer granularity.
Why the colors are wrong: A uniform transformation happened, different on each side. Using advanced algorithms, I wasn’t able to establish a significant relation between the former colors and the new ones, nor a relation between the left colors and the right colors. The colors of the error block are not derived from the former colors, rather from other fields of data which weren’t colors, turned into colors due to the position shift of the bytes. If a complex algorithm couldn’t reproduce it, it also shows it’s not a human-made transformation, it’s an actual bug.
Huge thanks to linkdu83 for correcting most of my mistakes.
Let’s keep unraveling the mysteries about the Pokémon TCG!
Andy
PS: I write my dates as DD/MM/YY, sorry for the US citizens reading.
)
