Thick Vs Thin Stamp

General
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I’m almost positive it came from a zap theme deck, someone correct me if I’m wrong. Theme decks were usually printed with their cards on a single sheet (PCD sheet), excluding the holo cards for foil treatment.

Wizards hasn’t come out and shown how they print cards, but Bycycle has a few videos to show their process. I can’t imaging Wizards would be too far from the same production techniques. So this video might be a good way to get an introduction to the process.

After the cards were printed, we know they took the 1st edition cards to a seperate machine for 1st edition stamping.

I’m strongly leaning towards the edition being on the same template as the text ink, aka not a seperate process from the time they placed black ink on the card. It just doesn’t make sense from a production standpoint to print the card, add an e_ition stamp, then a 1st edition stamp. It does make sense to print the e_ition stamp on the card durring the first step for alignment purposes.

3 Likes
22

Love How It’s Made! haha.

I agree with you there, could have been overlooked. But if 1st edition cards were and afterthought to Shadowless Base as some suggest… shit gets weird. Not really sure what they’d need an alignment stamp for to begin with anyways. Still kinda scratching my head on that one.

The PCD deck makes some sense. Seems that’s where a lot of early errors are assumed to come from. Things like the Evolution box error Wartortle and stage error Blastoise confuse me. They printed the card correctly for so long then… something changed and it got printed wrong.

Anyways, fun speculating, love hearing others opinions!

1 Like
23

Hmm, never knew this. But it indeed explains the E_ITION “Ghost” Pikachu. When I look at my Red Cheeks 1st edition Pikachu, it’s just a regular 1st edition stamp. But when I look at my Yellow Cheeks 1st edition Pikachu, I see the same effect as on the Charmander linked by @muddy :


(Took a photo through my 45x mini microscope :slightly_smiling_face: )

Here it’s even more zoomed in:

Just took a brief look on eBay, and it seems all Red Cheeks Pikachus have a properly printed 1st edition stamp, and all yellow cheeks Pikachus have this outlined 1st edition stamp.

TIL :grin:

Greetz,
Quuador

4 Likes
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haha, @quuador . I was doing some scans of cards and I figured I might as well get close up scans of what we were talking about. Looks like you beat me to it though, anyway here’s my scans:

Non holo, off aligned

Non holo, aligned

Holo Thick

Holo Thin

We can clearly see the non holos didn’t have this applied to them, I’ve searched many cards and none have it. It’s debatable if the aligned one has it applied and the outline is covered by the stamp, or if it doesn’t exist at all.

8 Likes
25

Hmm, might be cool to create an overview article covering all these stamps, as well as the Greys, Pikachu Ghost, and Back imprinted ones. :blush:

So we have these stamps in the Base set:

  • Thick aligned / 2D
  • Thick misaligned / 3D
  • Thin (holos, and a very select few non-holos)
  • Thick Grey (non-holos only)
  • Thin Grey (holos only)
  • Ghost (Yellow Cheeks Pikachu exclusive)
  • Black back imprinted (non-holos only - I think)
  • White back imprinted (energies only - I think)

Greetz,
Quuador

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Excellent post. Thanks so much. Will help a lot of collectors particularly new gain clarity.

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Interesting discussion, this is new to me. Is there a rarity/value discrepancy between thick and thin first edition stamps?

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Thick are in shorter supply…

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~ on holos.

Thin stamp non-holos are almost non-existent.

Greetz,
Quuador

1 Like
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Can anyone give me a rough estimate of what a thick stamp psa 9 first ed. Zard would go for at the moment? Trying to see how much more of a premium they usually command. Thanks!

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26-3400

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Or 6-7 1/4 oz Gold Standing Libertys

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Or 2-3 1oz buffalos.

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Or 4-5 1/2 oz American eagles.

I realized we didn’t have a picture of the “ghost” pikachu to compare, Here’s my scan :blush:


2 Likes
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@1by1collector, @scratchdesk,@ssjc,I know its 3 years too late, but anyone know the current differences in the values of these variation? Which one is the most sought after and what kind of markup are people paying?

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The markup is never going to be truly clear. All I can say is that true “Gray Stamps” tend to run a slight premium, but appeal to less collectors and “thick stamps” tend to run a premium as well, but is entirely depends on card and condition. A thin stamp can sell for just as much as a thick stamp based simply on the fact that some people do not care or do not realize. It took me several years personally to finally notice what the difference even was because for the longest time I though thick stamp was in reference to how dark it was… oops.

I will say that certain gray or thick stamps will appeal more heavily to serious collectors, for instance I have seen a lot of collectors here reference the rarity of grey stamp red cheeks pikachu and some people really will payup for a gray stamp in PSA 10 like Gemmintpokemon, but again… this does not apply to everyone. I have a PSA 8 1st ed grey stamp raichu and I love it. I know it probably can fetch a price similar to a regular PSA 9 even.

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Thank you for explaining!
I also thought it was in reference to the thickness of the black stamp before reading the post haha.
Personally, I never really distinguished between them before either haha, but its good to know :blush: