Is it my eyes playing tricks on me or is the ‘WB presents Pokémon…’ stamp closer to the edge on the Japanese version? Shifted ever so slightly to the right
Wait, so it’s not the Mewtwo card pfm posted? The fact that there are some Japanese releases of English cards that are literally still in English make figuring these things out even more difficult lol. Is it glossy? Is the whole silver and gold stamp variation related to this, or am I thinking of something else? I know there’s a few other instances of this with the Christopher Rush Mewtwo and the OG Pika/Jiggly, but at least those two got gray stars.
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It’s not glossy, but rather the Japanese regular card stock (as opposed to the English release stock).
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I’ll cut right through the confusion for you.
This is a Japan-only release of an English card. This card was included in the final limited VHS release of Mewtwo Strikes Back. This version of the movie, known as the Kanzenban, serves as the basis for international releases. But in Japan, it was a special release marketed as an extended edition.
To tie into the international element of that version of the movie, it includes a Japanese print of the English Black Star Promo #3. This card uses the same design file as the original card, but has distinctly different ink coloration and a slightly different finish. It’s also on Japanese card stock. It is not glossy, nor does it have any big obvious differences, but is sort of like an uncanny version of the regular card. It looks the same, but it’s different, even if those differences aren’t apparent without close scrutiny.
It was packaged in this clear envelope with tape on the back, which makes unopened ones easier to identify.
It’s definitely comparable to other Japanese English releases which are ever so slightly deviated from their regular English counterparts.
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Happy to collaborate here! I was planning on writing up an article for each movie and all the associated promos so this would be an excellent piece of that given how similar it is to the more widely-known English release.
If you have a scanner and can scan them in side-by-side I can also take the raw image from there and use Photoshop to magnify the differences in saturation between the Japanese print and English ones.
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Cut right through my confusion with poise 
Your knowledge is a gold mine in this hobby! Thanks for clearing it up for me.
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Haha I’m out of the market for it now. Think I used all my luck getting the copy I did, but won’t mention the final price the auction went for though 
You truly are a treasure to this community though!
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Wow, thanks for doing this @stagecoach. Really very generous, which will benefit this community on the whole. Appreciate your enthusiasm for doing this. Man of science indeed.
Cheers!
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