No pun intended. Long story short…don’t buy Pokémon stuff from China lol
Just wanted to throw my thought out there on what we are seeing. It’s going on in other card industries as well; sports cards being the main one…FOR NOW. I’ve seen it affect several card values because of it. People get scared and hesitant.
Real quick, do any of the grading companies recognize fakes in Pokémon or do they grade them as well not even knowing? I would assume they would reject or recognize a fake when they see one no?
Fakes are going to hurt the value of some cards here real soon. The more fakes coming into the hobby the more people are gonna be hesitant on purchasing/bidding on that particular item whether it’s real or not. People aren’t gonna know the differences with what’s real and what’s fake. Kinda sucks if you ask me and I think it may affect all cards/boxes/sets/singles/ etc…
Scared people hesitating on bidding will keep cards reaching full values and the market may suffer somewhat because of it in my opinion.
I think this is only the beginning…hopefully I’m wrong.
As far as individual cards go, I think fakes are still discernable enough that anyone who has an idea of what to look for can tell them apart from real cards. It gets a little bit harder as you move on to packs and boxes, but in terms of grading cards I don’t think it’s much of an issue.
Me too brother. Not what I expected, but I still gave him the thumbs up for it.
As to answer OP’s actual question - fakes can get through PSA/BGS/CGC, but I would be willing to bet that is the extreme outlier and are very few and far between. They are generally really good at identifying fake cards. One might even call it their specialty.
The bigger “pandemic” is people buying fake raw cards on ebay. Especially the first edition base Charizard. Unless you are have a lot of expertise and are confident, I wouldn’t touch a raw base Charizard with a 10 foot pole.
As far as hurting the hobby, I think it will primarily stop many outsiders from joining the hobby because they don’t want to get scammed (and rightfully so).
For the established market and collectors, I don’t think it has a huge influence - that is, until the fakes may become so convincig that they even fool experienced collectors and grading companies. Then the shit hits the fan.
Fakes are also making the news right now because there’s so many new people coming in that don’t know what is real and what’s a fake. Like others have said, always been around but since there’s lots of newcomers it’s normal to see more people buy fakes.
If there does become a genuine “fakes” epidemic, it’ll be when graded cards aren’t trustworthy anymore. I know there’s been instances of fakes being graded but by and large they’ve been solid. That’s when provenance becomes king because there won’t be any other way to know for sure. Either way, I don’t think we’re there yet. Plus, fakes aren’t going to be common place for everything, if people fake things it’ll be trophy cards or things like a 1st ed base zard. There’s technology that can be used to authenticate things and, especially with trophies, provenance is a thing.
It’s already happening. We are seeing it on live streams left and right now it seems. They figure it out, but that’s because there’s experience in the same room, and viewers chimming in with comments as well.
If knowledgeable PokeTubers are getting fooled then imagine people who are really clueless.
While I think that more people are hesitant to buy some items I think that in the long run the market will be fine. Fakes have been around since the beginning and yes some are getting pretty good, but it is only really going to fool new people entering into the hobby. As long as they do their research or buy graded cards or packs I am sure this will settle down.
Most fakes I see are still pretty obvious and are largely of 1st ed base Zard. Anyone coming into the hobby who is willing to drop thousands in a card should have done their due diligence first and should know what to look for or will buy from a reputable source.
Knowing how to identify fakes is a major part of a lot of collectibles. Most fakes can be pretty easily determined if you have done your research and know what you’re looking for. So I wouldn’t say I’m too worried about fakes, but it is surprising seeing how much people are willing to pay for proxies of expensive cards.
