The notion has always been 1st Edition Base Thick stamps are more rare than 1st Edition Base Thin stamps. I am starting to record down cert numbers and track whether the card is a Thick or a Thin stamp and after multiple hours of digging through eBay recording over 1,000 cards right now Thick stamps are coming in at about 60% vs 40% thin stamps. Charizard with 114 copies available on eBay is about 50/50 with 58 Thin vs. 56 Thick. Now of course this is a way too small sample size of 1st Edition Base Holos and is not be very accurate in my opinion. Even getting 10,000 cards recorded down the results could be skewed because well of all the other cards that would not be recorded could sway the results either way. Also with the notion of Thick being more rare, people might be holding more of those cards and selling off thin stamps skewing my results.
Started a post on IG asking for help, if people were wanting to send me what they have in their collection to add to my research. The only two responses I got were from people bashing me, saying thick is clearly more rare, don’t bother doing the research I am simply wasting my time. I respond asking how they are so confident in knowing, and there is no clear answer besides from personal experience. I am not trying to prove anything, simply just curious to see what the results are from as large of a sample pool as I can get.
Should I bother continuing to ask people what they have? Is it a waste of time because the sample pool might not be large enough to get accurate results?
I think this is a misunderstanding. I don’t believe thick stamps are more rare. They are just earlier prints, which is what makes them more desirable to some collectors. They can be thought of as “true 1st edition”.
I have never held the belief nor taken the position that thick stamps were rarer. Just older.
Edit: To expand a little bit, I collect vintage 1st Editions myself and I only collected thick stamp Base Set cards so that all my stamps would be uniform.
Even if one of the stamps is definitively less numerous than the other, I don’t believe this disparity is significant enough to matter. Both stamps are readily available almost all the time in adequate proportion, are they not? One may be rarer than the other but that’s not really what distinguishes them to me.
I am not doubting you but what evidence leads to “thick stamps” being known as printed first? Also when saying the disparity is not significant enough to matter, what do you mean by this? Matter in what way? I am just curious is it 50% Thick and 50% thin, is it 60/40 one way or the other etc.
We know, or can at least confidently deduce, that thick stamps were printed first because…
Thick Stamps were only seen on Base Set cards, all future sets were printed with Thin Stamps. Chronologically we can conclude that thin stamps were printed as a stopgap with the revised stamp, which was then used for all future cards.
There are *exceptionally* small numbers of non-holo Base Set cards printed with thin stamps. While we do not know for certain where these were printed in the chronology, we can assume by their very small population that they were probably late in the game.
As for what I mean about the difference in population overall not being very meaningful, I just think that if both prints are widely and easily available then it doesn’t really matter if one is more rare than the other. So whether it’s 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever just doesn’t contribute to the appeal of the thick stamps to me.
1000 is more than enough of a sample size and 600 is a very significant result.
You can use this tool to see the probability of observing this result purely by random chance:stattrek.com/online-calculator/binomial.aspx(Probability of success on a single trial =0.5, Number of trials =1000, Number of successes (x) =600)The resulting number (P(X = x) =< 0.000001) is the probability of seeing that result (or a more extreme result) by random chance.
Put simply, it’s the same test you would use to see if a coin flip is fair. If you flipped a coin 1000 times and got 600 heads, then it’s very safe to say that the coin is unfair.
In this case - assuming the data was randomly sampled in an unbiased way - you could definitely say that there is more thick than thin. Although you bring up a perfectly good reason to believe that the data is NOT unbiased which throws the whole result into question. If you do want to take this analysis to the next level, I would recommend collecting data in a more unbiased way. Collecting data from owners is probably the way to go.
Honestly I think its possible to get some sense of ratios, but impossible to understand origin/definitive numbers. When and why was the stamp changed to thin? I remember years ago explaining how the appearance is just a difference in pressure. Its been debated for decades now, and even wotc employees don’t have a straight answer. Basically the unanswered questions make it really difficult to quantify.
There is so much minutiae as well; Do certain species have more thick than thin? Did certain sheets receive more thick vs thin? Or even if thick/thin were 50/50, because thick is only in 1st Ed base, its going to have a bias.
With that said, I don’t want to rain on the parade. It would be cool to do a deep dive and get a better understanding. We probably have the thickest data pool. Even if the chances are thin it would still be nice to see the results!
Of 64 documented PSA 10 Charizards, 55% are thin stamp and 45% thick stamp. I have 20 more but can’t tell what stamps they are. Not great data but every little helps.
From my years of observation I never noticed a significant difference to be honest. When I was looking to buy all of my holo’s in thin stamps I had no trouble finding them and encountered just as many thick stamps I could have bought. Also to add to the quirks that Scott alludes to, people who knew more than me at the time always told me that PSA 10 Blastoise was comparably extremely difficult to find in a thin stamp, however I’m not sure if this is just in PSA 10 or if Blastoise is different in some way - perhaps a good one for you to track!
Edit: It’s only anecdotal but it seems the vast majority of box breaks seen in the last 5 years have been thick stamps too. Let’s say I’ve watched about 8 box breaks, I’d say at least 6 had thick stamp holos - maybe all of them I don’t even recall seeing thin stamps come out of a box.
I will say that 100% of the propaganda belongs to one of them, thanks to a sustained one man propaganda operation. Thankfully the mission has been completed and we no longer have to suffer it
Thank you everyone for all of the insight, I will continue for now adding cards to my database and if there is interest I will release some of the results in the near future. If anyone would like to contribute you can DM me your cards Grade, Cert# and whether it is thick or thin stamped. It will be interesting to see how each character varies thick vs. thin and also on a grade level.
The non-holo base set thin stamps might not even be “1st ed holo thin stamps” as they’re still slightly thicker than the traditional thin stamps and the lettering in e ition gets the raised 3D appearance.
As for the shadowless base set machamp it can be found in both formats and I believe the shadowed version has both too.
Edit: You may need to open image in new tab to see the full size difference.
Some of my Charizard pictures are actually fairly clear but it can still sometimes be hard to tell. Sometimes I wonder if it’s not a binary thick/thin but if there is a spectrum. Some are just so hard to call one way or the other!
I’m pretty sure these are all misprints. I’ve personally seen less than 15 of them thus far, and although they were clearly thin stamps, most weren’t as thin as the Holofoil Rare thin stamps or the thin stamps of later sets. And about halve of those non-Holo thin stamps I’ve seen were also partially smudged.
The non-Holo thin stamps of the English Base Set are kinda in between thick and thin. Here for example my thin stamp Pikachu:
As for the question of this thread, whether there are more thin or thick Holofoil Rare 1st edition stamps, I’m honestly not sure. I’ve actually heard both ends before. One stating thick vs thin was 75% to 25% and on stating thick vs thin was 40% to 60%. I don’t collect the 1st edition Holofoil Rares, so I honestly haven’t researched it myself, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s roughly 50/50 tbh.
I do know thick stamps are more desirable to people who know about the stamp differences, because all non-Holos are thick stamps as well and it’s nicer to have a consistent set of all thick stamps. My personal preference goes to thin stamps however. They just look cleaner imho, not sure why.
Yes, sorry, what I was suggesting was that this is why I was confident thin stamps were printed towards the end of the run. Because if they’re in the Shadowless decks they had to have come out late enough for that to happen. While the thick stamps could also come out of the Shadowless decks I’m more inclined to believe the presence of thin stamps from that point and thereafter supports the hypothesis that thin stamps were the tail end revision.
As for thick stamp on an unlimited Machamp, I’ve never seen that before. I would like to see that if that actually exists. That would be a big surprise to me because that would be a example of the thick stamp being used at a point definitively beyond the window of time that’s commonly expected.
I’ve been scouring for an unlimited thick stamp machamp but they do look to be all thin stamps. BGS has a bunch labeled as thick and a bunch labeled as thin but all they all appear to be thin stamps.
I always hesitate to say something definitely does not exist because there’s always a chance something unexpected exists out there, but in this case I would be truly shocked if there were unlimited thick stamps.
The only explanation I can think of is if perhaps there was an alternate language version that used thick stamps universally and someone only saw the card in passing and didn’t realize it wasn’t English. But all of the international 1st editions I am familiar with use thin stamps (again supporting the thesis that thin stamps were the revised later printing).
Right now, unless I see evidence to the contrary, I believe thick stamps reached a point where they were completely phased out and thin stamps were used from then on. I do not believe unlimited thick stamp exists, but I would love to be wrong and end up with something else to hunt!
Having opened and collected tons (and paid attention) thick’s were only about 20% of the pop. Now could that be because most of mine came from west coast releases? It may but not sure.
