Hi, been on and off the forum mostly reading, but recently I purchase a blastoise card (here in the UK) and it had a unique black dot at first I thought some one did this a child to mark it as their card? But I then looked in my folder and noticed I had 2! My suspicion rose and now I suspect these are some good quality fakes? I looked around the internet and found very little to no info on these cards.
I checked with other cards and noticed the black font is slightly thicker which sees to be more in line with unlimited print, but I also have base set unlimited with a thin font. At this stage I don’t know what is real or fake now.
As this community knows a lot about cards I’d appreciate any insight. I am leaning towards having some fakes in my collection, I am not even sure my PSA is even real at this point.
Thinner font cards:
Thicker font 2 with black dots (center in the gold border under blastoise)
The back of the black dot cards
My childhood blastoise which seems more toward the thicker font style
Any help or clarification would be appreciated.
Thanks
Rob
Do the cards feel similar? Fakes are usually very easy to identify because the cardboard feels off. I don’t know what is up with the black ink dot, but they do not look fake to me based on your pictures.
Hi, thanks so much for the reply, they feel real, the holos look real the age/wear looks real. All I can think is a small UK print error? The font sizes possibly US/UK print difference? It just seems odd that its not documented anywhere or anyone has any information about them unlike the red dot error print.
That is what he was referring to. But for whatever reason not all holos that came out of u.k. 1999-2000 packs had that date at the bottom. If those dots were made by a previous owner to mark their cards, they are very symmetrical. They look to be identical and placed in the same spot. If they are factory dots that’s pretty daggon sweet, I’ve never seen dots there before! Perhaps a full sheets alignment dots were off and ended up there?
Well that is the thing these 2 cards where bought Years apart, one last week and one 4 Years ago. I didn’t even notice on the one I bought 4 Years ago until today when I inspected them. The dots seem to be perfectly centered on both cards too.
Here are some more photos:
One of each card then the line up.
Someone must know something about this and have one in their collection? Be great to know any origin of these or why if a factory misprint its not documented after 20 years?
Dots on the same place for the same cards happened pretty often for the Base Set. Personally I’ve never seen the black spot in this position for Blastoise before, but I don’t see any reason why it would be fake.
Some examples of other ink drops that happened on multiple cards:
Blue dot Vulpix:
Which is also available in 1st edition:
Black dot unlimited edition Charizard, on top of the Nintendo at the bottom:
Red dot Blastoise above the Water Energy on the left:
Clefairy with a pink heart-shaped error at the top (although I’ve heard rumors someone made and spread these errors themselves):
Jungle Pinsir 1st edition with a weird spot above the 1st edition symbol:
“d” edition Jungle Butterfree (not really an ink drop error; but more a dirty printer that made these “d” errors on the same spot on every Jungle uncut sheet):
Fossil Krabby set symbol error (again, not really an ink misprint; a part is missing from the Fossil set symbol):
And I could give more examples. Anyway, it’s a pretty common occurrence. These days ink misprints are still pretty common to find, but they’re usually one-time errors from ink dropping or something. These errors above are always on the same spot for multiple individual cards, which means it was a defect in the printer itself rather than ink leakage.
Anyway, none of these are very special or worth much more than their regular version. As mentioned by Gary, ink misprints usually draw away from the appeal of a card. Although misprint collectors still like them. I also have a few Pikachus in my collection with ink drop misprints, but those are one-time errors as far as I know. I also once pulled a Delibird with yellow ink dropped on top of it. Both I’ve mentioned here.
@quuador, Thanks for the detailed response I can see that misprints are more common, I knew the red dot blastoise was well known and to some quite collectible. Either way I am happy with my cards I think it makes them unique, even if just to me. Thanks all for your help.
