I’d like to understand what people here think of this.
Shizzle found out recently that the '97 No.2 Trainer for sale by Pkonno shares the exact same holo pattern with one in the Silver Bible. I have seen two of the exact same set cards from the same set with the exact same holo pattern before but that is because there are thousands of these holos printed compared to the 4-6 '97 Trophy cards ever printed (including archival copies). There is little doubt that the copy Pkonno was selling is the one that was used in the Silver Bible as holo patterns are 99.9% of the time, unique.
This raises the question, 'are all cards sold by Pkonno extras, or archival copies that are not meant to be sold to the public, or is he some mega collector who has sold (is selling) 4 Trophy Kangs, 15+ Snaps, a lot of 1st ed Base Boosters, 9th Lucky Stadiums and now a ‘97 Trainer, and does it affect the general collecting community?’
Personally, I don’t care whether they are extras as most of them cannot be differentiated from one another, except the No.2 and the No Name Trainer. I’d even say its great that it gives collectors who want some of these phantom cards a chance to own them. The problem arises when a significant number of these cards appear on the market as 1-3 extra cards of a supposedly 100-card release won’t affect it as much as 10-20 extra cards of a supposedly 20-card release.
What will be the grading companies’ stance on cards that were printed in the factory, but has one too many total number in existence. Like grading six total copies of a 5/5 sports card rookie.
Frankly, there is no way to prove what is going on with Pkonno until they say something. A couple extra copies are negligible in most cases as you said. Personally, if the cards are the same, I wouldn’t care if the card I bought was “archival” or distributed normally. They were more than likely produced in the same batch on the same sheet and cut the same. It would be different if they were distinguishable from distributed cards but they appear not to be.
The No.2 is the only card that is pretty much proven to be a file copy from Pkonno the Great, the snap promos are still under the 20 awarded that have surfaced so not definitive. At most I think he has only listed 4 of a particular snap. There is still a chance Pkonno the Illustrious traded to get the snaps but given other circumstantial evidence and his background as a Pokemon OG they might be ones he stashed for his retirement.
It does make you wonder if other employees like Pkonno the Merciful got similar cards given to them so I would be very wary saying that there are only certain numbers of cards out there. Also Pkonno the Brave was not a super high ranking employee either we know he did the typesetting for the original rulebook.
I truly think there are no Pokemon cards in existence with less than 10 copies, in saying that though it does not mean they will ever surface as some employees will never sell or they are locked away as a final prize to whomever defeats Pkonno in one to one combat.
It’d be daggon tough to know how many base set unlimited machops exist, plus how many extras of it were made, and how to tell which is an extra and which isnt!
I’ve never heard of or thought about this “extra” card concept before. So are all cards that are determined to have x amount of copies made always made with additional extras? That’s a pretty cool concept!
And who is pkonno? From the little bit of text here he sounds pretty gnarly!
@mikejofthecoast, set cards (moreso the unlimited variants especially) almost by definition cannot have “extra” copies. An exception to this rule would be the gold star dog hoard that is speculated to have been printed without authorization and left the factory directly, not in boosters as they should. I’ve not heard of any bonus 1st edition cards from the WOTC area finding their way out of the factory, but again given the high print run of cards such as base 1st charizard, how much would it really matter if someone made say 100 bonus copies on a card with likely 5 figure plus print run? “Extra” copies just aren’t a thing with set cards.
Scott did a video here addressing the concept of “extra” copies. They refer to something like Art Academy where it had an intended and fully disclosed/advertised print run of 100 that went to the winner. Some winners still have sealed bricks of their 100 cards yet singles of those cards recently sold through collector’s cache by an employee who had extra copies.
Same thing can and may apply to cards such as the new full art pika trophies. Look at 2019 #1-#4 specifically. 3 age groups and TCG/VGC so you’d come up with 6 of each palcement/year combination. There is speculation with cards such as these that extra copies are made though it is unknown how many that is, and it is also unknown what effect if any it would have on the market if a card had a few extra copies that never sold. Likely very little if the copies are never sold or if the amount of extras is very low, but obviously a card with an intended print run of 6 vs. 100 would behave differently to a fixed amount of extras like 4 where for one it increases the run by 66% and the other by 4%.
There’s no way to consistently distinguish a “real” copy of a card from an extra. Therefore, your options as a collector is to either lose interest in these cards or not worry about extra copies. People will choose the latter.
PSA does not care enough to look at their pop report and compare to reported release numbers of a card. Even if they did, there’s no way to account for cracking
I think collectors are overly concerned with print numbers. In general, the more important variable is availability.
I thought I might have accidentally repeated something Scott has said in his patreon videos. I’m only in his $1.02 tier so I don’t have access to that high end stuff
It’s easy to get a bit frustrated looking over statistics. At the end of the day, statistics aren’t what make cards collectable, nor are they what make cards valuable. Sure, for these cards with less than 50 copies to have new cards introduced to the market is a big shift, but I don’t think that drip-feeding these cards in in the way Pkonno does is going to have any impact on the collectability or value of the cards they’re pushing.
A good example of why I think statistics like this has very little bearing on the overall collectability and value of certain cards can be found if we look at magazine-distributed promo cards: Back in the early to mid 2000s, popular Japanese magazines which frequently included Pokémon cards had print numbers exceeding 1 million. We can use that to assume that for every Pokémon released alongside these magazines, there are more copies of that promo card out there than there are uncommon and maybe even common set cards. Does this make them less collectable or less valuable? Not at all.
To illustrate this, in 2001 the average monthly CoroCoro Comic distribution was 1.26 million. Guessing that at least 75% of the magazines which included Pokémon inserts did end up having those included with the distribution, we can make a further guess that around 945,000 cards were released in each magazine. May 2001 saw Shining Mew released in this way, yet that’s a card which has seen even PSA 8 copies sell for $100 and PSA 10 copies - of which there are currently 227 - sell recently for as much as $500.
Collectability and value comes from desirability more so than the number of how many copies of the card are in circulation. In introducing a new copy of the card onto the market, Pkonno is giving one extra person a chance to own the card for themselves, and I believe the drive for that collector to own the card will outweigh any speculation surrounding it.
I’m hoping Pkonno will put up some reasonably-priced 2009 Design Contest Pichus at some point just so I can get my hands on those.
@pichufan Great insight. Pfm puts it perfectly when he said, ‘I think collectors are overly concerned with print numbers. In general, the more important variable is availability’.
Pkonno has yet to list a New Back card since his Snap listings in 2017 so I believe chances are, he left Pokemon after they introduced e-series so he couldn’t get the drafts for the newer cards for his printer
I hope Pkonno lists the No.3 SSB and the No.1 & No.2 TMB cards, so that i can finally complete my set I don’t care if the cards are extras! I just need them!!!
I’m not in the market for any of these cards and I understand the arguments brought up in this thread but how does this compare to the guy with the gold star binder? Do we know for certain that the gold stars were stolen goods and are therefore less desirable because of ethical reasons? Would it affect the collectibility of pkonno’s cards if we knew they’re stolen? Or is there a difference because of the sheer amount? Just curious.
@slippingjimmy, Ultimately no one really cared about that situation either. That one is more of an issue as the supply was so large. Those cards will always be valued significantly lower than all other gold stars because of the large inorganic quantity.
With cards that are already god tier rarity, an extra couple copies won’t even be noticeable. More specifically, they won’t have a real affect on value. In fact all of pkonno’s extra copy sales were higher than the previous price.
And just for fun, another example I accidentally stumbled upon today relating to this: the Masaki promo cards from 1999 had published distribution figures at the time: Gengar had 39,000 copies, Alakazam 36,000, Machamp 29,000, Golem 22,000 and Omastar 21,000. There are only 7 Omastar cards for every 13 Gengar cards in existence, yet Gengar tends to sell for 60% (PSA 9 and 10) way up to to 280% (PSA 8) more at auction.
I don’t care if the cards are extras! I just need them!!! 