Why are my cards darkened?

[Quuador]

Color variations are pretty normal. It’s more common with English cards, but happens in any language.

Here some examples:

@Quuador

Orange-ish vs yellow Reverse Holo Pikachus:

@Quuador

Base Set also had a lot of variants across the different print runs and languages. Here an example of the Latin American (©1999) vs European (©1999-2000) Spanish Pikachu cards, where you can see a pretty clear difference in the saturation of yellow:

@Quuador

Here also an image I saved for an example of Japanese color variations:

These above are from Vending Series 1, but the Vending Series 3 is actually known for having both a dark and light print run. Here the Ooyama’s Pikachu from both print runs, where you can see a pretty clear difference:

@Quuador

Top two are two minor purple color variants. Bottom two are the Blue and Maroon misprints (technically also ‘just’ a color variant, though ).

Greetz,
Quuador