So I noticed a really unusual 1st edition stamp variant I had never seen before on a Blastoise in this week’s Fanatics auction. It was so unusual I tried to actually add the card to my Blastoise collection, but the bidding got too rich for me 
. Still, I was / am still intrigued by the card…
Why was it unusual? Well, it appears to have a thick stamp…
But with a normal-sized D and a +15 magenta back!
For context on the +15 back, @OCDCompletist and @Nightvulture did some great work discovering that thick stamp base set holos all appear to have -15 magenta backs (while thin stamp base set holos all appear to have +15 magenta backs). This finding was backed up by many confirmations from the community here. (In simple terms, -15 = the red dots in the N on the backs line up with the “N”, +15 they don’t line u[). You can read more about this here: First editions or shadowless with stamps?.
This Blastoise doesn’t appear to follow that rule though. However, we have a potential clue in that the “D” is also normal-sized (same size as all the other letters) - showing that the trap (“outline”) error causing “small Ds” on all other thick stamp cards was not an issue here. I’ve only ever seen non-Machamp thick stamp holos have a small D in the stamp.
For context on the trap issue, @cataclysm80 recently shared a very interesting post on the history of 1st edition stamps gleaned from discussions with the WotC head typesetter at that time. In it, he mentions how the trap was fixed after the initial thick stamp print run, leading to normal “D” thick stamps for a period, before a new bolder “thin stamp” design was introduced.
However, until this moment I personally haven’t actually seen in person or in scans any shadowless holos (outside of the special case of Machamp) with thick stamps and a “normal D”. This Blastoise is the first I’ve seen, and also has a +15 magenta back (like thin stamp cards) to boot!
I combed through a large sample of all the other 1st edition base sales on Fanatics to get more high-quality scans, and I found only one other similar example with a normal D thick stamp and a +15 magenta back with this Ninetails:
So… my questions to everyone if you’ve made it to this point:
- Have any of you seen other non-Machamp holos have a similar profile as this Blastoise and Ninetails? It seems extremely hard to find, but maybe I’m wrong about their rarity?
- Do we think this is a case of thick stamps with the trap fix (where +15 back stock was used), but before a transition to the much bolder “thin stamps”? If so, could this have been just a very brief print run before WotC transitioned to thin stamps which explains the rarity?
- Is this a misprint? The stamp appears to be on the blurry side for a 1st edition stamp, so is this just a thin stamp card where an issue with the ink led to it looking like a thick stamp card? (To me the difference is significant enough that this seems unlikely…)
- Do we think this is actually a fake??? It has to be asked, although I will say the placement in the Blastoise and Ninetails seems to be pretty spot-on and I don’t see any obvious smoking guns (other than this being an exception to the thick stamp -15 back rule).
