been seeing a lot of auctions of artists using energy cards to draw on, getting them authenticated by PSA or something, and selling them online.
invoking nostalgia is key. using iconic art as reference or popular pokemon are chosen to depict on things like energy cards.
feels more like the realm of influencers selling mystery packs or even people like coop creating their own poke cards to sign and sell. very jason paige if that makes sense.
i’ve never heard of this artist before seeing this. to my knowledge has no connection to pokemon outside making art to sell. is this for bored investors? i personally just don’t get it.
If an actual tcg artist signed it, itd be cooler. Many of these, including the one you posted, arent drawn by tcg artists or anyone affiliated with pokemon. I dont think buyers realize this and or are just flipping these cause they know slabbed sigs with drawings do well in Pokemon.
I guess as far as grading companies go, if you have enough IG followers, anything is possible!
I dislike the custom creator cards as well, maybe even more than these signed ones. Hard to pick
Mostly stupid but some of them are professional artists, do art for other tcg’s like Lorcana, and are just working off commissions. Moduwa is famous for copying artwork from the actual cards, and is spat upon for it (deserved). What any commissioned artist or otherwise has no control over are the people who slab them up for a flip, which is where most of the disgust comes from.
There are nuances. I think the MTG artists doing Pokemon is a great example of the cross signing. Those are much more than just a tracing of stock art and it seems that they arent being slabbed and peddled on IG and ebay constantly (if at all). Moduwa is literally tracing existing cards and Sugimori stock art and charging for it.
thanks. this really isn’t about moduwa specifically, seen multiple slabbed artists selling for big bucks.
feels like money laundering at times and it doesn’t even have to be original art for that. are we really in a big boom or just an abused market kind of thing. starts to feel like vulture territory.
it is ruining a good thing. Totally cool to get a well loved artist to draw a favorite pokemon, it becomes ruined for me by those who are slabbing with the intent to sell or flip. That makes artists start assuming that anyone asking for pokemon art could have the intention to flip them and they likely will respond accordingly.
There are thousands of TCG-adjacent artists who regularly sketch and paint Pokemon on commission. Is PSA/CGC really in the business of authenticating any artist who signs trading cards? Seems like the answer is pointing to yes in 2026.
I can see why folks want sketches of their favorite Pokemon when access to official TPC artists is near impossible. However, I am less enthusiastic about the artist more-or-less ripping official illustrations. It makes perfect sense why they would do such a thing, as these original illustrations elicit a feeling of nostalgia, but from an ethics perspective, it rubs me the wrong way.
When I commission art from an artist, I expect them to fully express their creativity. Some art mediums require a level derivativeness (e.g., jazz musicians stealing licks and improvising over them; illustrating Pokemon requires the artist to borrow the character designs), but artistic plagiarism is often out of necessity of the craft and limited in scope.
The nuance here is artistic expression / originality and intent.
