DIY Matchprint cards

[pichufan]

Matchprint cards are now breaking 4 digit values and with replica cards being a hot topic on E4 this week, I figured it’d be worth sharing this here. Today I posted up a blog post about why I’m no longer interested in picking up a Matchprint Pichu for my collection: pichu.blog/matchprint-proofing-prints. I figured it was worthy of sharing here as well, but I appreciate that this is a very risky thread - so please moderators do feel free to remove this if deemed too sensitive for E4.

2 weeks ago a Matchprint Pichu finally appeared on eBay and I sent the seller over an initial offer which got rejected. I was expecting this to happen as its BIN price is 10 times higher than what I offered. Before going back to them with a higher offer I decided I’d do some research into how the Matchprint ‘cards’ came to be, and unfortunately I effectively stumbled upon the recipe for how anyone can just make these from home with the right equipment.

Imation Matchprint™ is the first product jointly launched by Xerox and Imation back in 2001 following a ‘strategic alliance’ between the two companies the year beforehand. It specifically combines Xerox hardware with Imation software to create high quality digital halftone proofing prints.

If any other halftone proofing solution had been used it would have likely been very difficult to replicate the real Matchprint Pokémon cards, but unfortunately where WotC used Imation Matchprint to print these it’s possible to identically reproduce the prints with hardware readily available on eBay right now.

All you need is the following:

1. A Xerox DocuColor™ 12 Copier/Printer;
2. A pack of Xerox Commercial White Color Laser Proofing Paper;
3. Any high res Pokémon card scan.

The first two are available right now online for under $500 and the latter is provided for free by Pokémon’s own card database.
Note: Before anyone cries bloody murder, some technical aptitude would be required in order to accurately set the printer up to identically match the colours. Just having those three ingredients does not mean you will be able to accurately print a new card. This is not a how to thread.

What this means is that anyone with a relatively small budget can turn any Pokémon card from any set they like into a legitimate-looking Matchprint card that they can quite literally print from home. Because of this, I’ve now removed the Matchprint Pichu card from my buylist and from my collection spreadsheet.

I’m tempted to petition to Beckett to stop grading these without at least some form of paper trail leading back to TCA’s original leak - but even then if you’re prepared to fake something like this it wouldn’t be too difficult to fake something like that either. I’m not trying to devalue or belittle these cards, I just think that from what I’ve learned in the past 24 hours they’re a very risky product to buy into.

I guess I should end by saying that right now I do not believe anyone will have actually faked any of these cards and that all of the ones up on eBay, Instagram and wherever else are genuinely from TCA’s original leak. Going forward, however, things are quite susceptible to change.

[gottaketchumall]

A professional grading company should have never touched these IMO. Props to PSA for not (I think). FPO either. As you mentioned I don’t doubt Rusty’s story either, they just are the “saved from the shredder” type thing and not something that I think a grading company should be getting behind “authenticating”.

[casual]

Nice work! While unfortunate that it destroys the value of the existing cards, it had to be done to prevent further potential damage

[raycollect]

It seems this post is derived from your realization that you could not obtain a certain card, so you now attempt to devalue the series it stems from, in order to justify its gap in your collection. Where some collectors have been trying to get a Matchprint variant card for some time.

Good quality post, but quite comical. This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.

That’s unfortunately not how things work when it comes to a printing process, let alone individually legitimizing a subdivision of unreleased test cards. Rusty would never back something that has no legitimacy behind it, though I realize you’re not directly stating that, you indirectly infer it from your post.

You don’t realize how difficult it is to properly print a trading card with accurate coloring and quality, let alone have a market accept their existence and not reject it as illegitimate (flashbacks to certain “collectors stamped” edition cards).

This thread is a bit unfortunate, as its a sign of a collector’s grief, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.

[jkanly]

I get the concern. But you’re kinda telling people how to do it at a, “How to fake Matchprints, for dummies” level, which makes me worry for others who don’t have access or haven’t yet accessed the information.

If you were to mention instead that you simply know of a process to replicate them, that message could be passed along more sensitively. This thread might not get the traction needed to inform potential parties at risk of a scam —There’s lots of information that’s best not shared until the right time.

That said I applaud your effort and research, which clearly took some time. Extremely well written.

[casual]

@raycollect

Good quality post, but quite comical. This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.

Well, yeah. If these can be duplicated, (no reason to assume they can’t), all copies lose value unless they have provenance

[papafrankgod]

@raycollect

It seems this post is derived from your realization that you could not obtain a certain card, so you now attempt to devalue the series it stems from, in order to justify its gap in your collection. Where some collectors have been trying to get a Matchprint variant card for some time.

Good quality post, but quite comical. This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.

That’s unfortunately not how things work when it comes to a printing process, let alone individually legitimizing a subdivision of unreleased test cards. Rusty would never back something that has no legitimacy behind it, though I realize you’re not directly stating that, you indirectly infer it from your post.

You don’t realize how difficult it is to properly print a trading card with accurate coloring and quality, let alone have a market accept their existence and not reject it as illegitimate (flashbacks to certain “collectors stamped” edition cards).

This thread is a bit unfortunate, as its a sign of a collector’s grief, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.

I doubt his intention is to devaluate these cards cos he can’t get one. He just realized some interesting info that should be studied and prooved to avoid you getting a fake crap, so why the salt?

[pichufan]

@raycollect

It seems this post is derived from your realization that you could not obtain a certain card, so you now attempt to devalue the series it stems from, in order to justify its gap in your collection. Where some collectors have been trying to get a Matchprint variant card for some time.

Good quality post, but quite comical. This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.

That’s unfortunately not how things work when it comes to a printing process, let alone individually legitimizing a subdivision of unreleased test cards. Rusty would never back something that has no legitimacy behind it, though I realize you’re not directly stating that, you indirectly infer it from your post.

You don’t realize how difficult it is to properly print a trading card with accurate coloring and quality, let alone have a market accept their existence and not reject it as illegitimate (flashbacks to certain “collectors stamped” edition cards).

This thread is a bit unfortunate, as its a sign of a collector’s grief, but the effort is appreciated nonetheless.

I completely understand your point of view and expected I’d get some reaction like this. I’m sure I’m coming across as a sore loser with this, but the reality is that I’d never put any time into researching what these really were until the Pichu listing appeared.

For some transparency I’ve wanted a Matchprint Pichu ever since I first learned about their existence back in 2017 or so. I offered the seller $1,500 which I was expecting to have rejected due to the item’s BIN price of $15,000 and was planning on increasing my offer up to $2,500 or maybe $3,000 at a push, but before parting with such an amount for a single card I figured it made sense to do some research. Unfortunately this morning I was faced with a dilemma as I’d essentially found out that it appears pretty straightforward to create practically identical prints with tools available for less than the individual prints are selling for.

I’m not trying to devalue the cards in any way. I do value them as a collectable with historic significance and I feel like burning bridges like this was not at all in my best interest, however I felt that I had to share this knowledge with the community before it ended up in the hands of the wrong people. This will definitely come across as a bit of a dick move for anyone who owns or is trying to sell a Matchprint Pokémon card and I guess I won’t be very popular with some of those for a while because of this, but this was something I felt compelled to share.

You’re totally correct about how difficult it’ll be to accurately print cards like this, but unlike regular TCG cards which have both a front and back and rounded corners with a specific thickness and feel to them, these are at the lowest level square cut quality prints on a specific type of paper which is readily available. A single pack of Xerox Commercial White Color Laser Proofing Paper contains 100 12″ by 18″ Matchprint sheets which if my maths is correct would be enough to print 2,000 cards on (assuming the sheets can be fed back into the printer multiple times, that is) - I’m sure that’s enough attempts for anyone to perfect the printing configuration.

The fact also stands that thanks to Pokémon digitally imaging the majority of their cards in an online database, relatively high resolution images are readily available to anyone who wants them. Fortunately for older WotC sets these are just high DPI scans, but when scaled down to Pokémon card size I’m sure the majority of people would not know the difference. Here is the Pichu scan from the Pokémon TCG Developers website, for example:

I’m pretty sure if TCA’s original leak involved Pokémon card images printed on regular printer paper it would have never gone anywhere. I think the reason these stood out was specifically because they were printed on special Imation Matchprint paper which isn’t something anyone is likely to just have laying about in their house.

Ignoring the ink cost (as I don’t know what that would be), the money I was prepared to part with without increasing my initial offer on the Pichu card would be enough for me to pick up the printer and 3,000 of those 12″ by 18″ Matchprint sheets - enough to potentially print 60,000 Pokémon card images onto, and that scared me enough to immediately back away.

I would absolutely love for there to be some redeeming feature which these cards have that would make them much harder to forge, but honestly for me the risk is just too high.

@jkanly

I get the concern. But you’re kinda telling people how to do it at a, “How to fake Matchprints, for dummies” level, which makes me worry for others who don’t have access or haven’t yet accessed the information.

If you were to mention instead that you simply know of a process to replicate them, that message could be passed along more sensitively. This thread might not get the traction needed to inform potential parties at risk of a scam —There’s lots of information that’s best not shared until the right time.

I’m a little worried about this too and I was hesitant to share this in the first place. I had considered a less factual approach but figured if I did that I’d just end up being dismissed with statements like @raycollect gave above: “This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.”

On the flip side of that, however, Matchprint cards are still very niche - I don’t think any of TCA’s videos which have been up on YouTube for over 6 and a half years have had more than 3,000 views, which when you consider he now has almost 50,000 subscribers and has videos with over 1 million views that’s almost a negligible amount. I’d like to imagine that the majority of people even remotely interested in these cards would likely know about this forum or be in relatively active discussion with someone who does frequent this place.

[jkanly]

@pichufan It’s taken very seriously by me. It’s up to you, but I’d protect the specific methods for now, for the sake of the uninformed legitimate collectors.

@thecharizardauthorty you should see this, if you haven’t already.

[justinator]

Posting here for the longevity of information;

I purchased the entire Pikachu family of match prints from @fritz who purchased from Rusty (TCA) on eBay.

[thymeee]

didnt @quuador buy the matchprint pikachu from tca gaming when he started his pikachu collection? or was that the sample card?

[quuador]

@thymeee

didnt @quuador buy the matchprint pikachu from tca gaming when he started his pikachu collection? or was that the sample card?

It’s not when I started (since I started mid-2015 and bought the Matchprint for 1k mid-2017), but I indeed bought the second Pikachu from TCA. And as Justin above mentioned, he has the other Pikachu.

---

I’ve already discussed this with PichuFan in private on Discord, where I mentioned the following:

Np, you can use the picture. I don’t mind. I personally don’t think it’s as easy as you make it out to be regarding the front of the card based on some hi-res scans, since we would probably see more convincing fakes in general in that case. But you are indeed correct the materials are available and it’s theoretically possible.

Btw, don’t take this personally, but I have the feeling you’ve mainly removed it from your checklist since you know you’ll probably won’t be able to acquire it based on the two available copies and price-points. Nothing wrong with that of course. I personally spit my checklist into official and unofficial/errors. So cards like the Japanese Sample Pikachu cards, Matchprint, Inverted WB stamp, Ishihara & Pikachu GX birthday present, etc. are all unofficial, and just nice extras for my collection (I do of course want all of them). But I primarily want all the officially released Pikachu cards, of which the SNAP is of course the main bottleneck, and Art Academy Pikachu cards to some extend. Anyway, just my 2c. Great article regardless. And all pictures I post online can be used if you’d want, although I appreciate stating it’s my copy as you did in your blog.

I understand your reasoning, and I respect it and can understand it. But I also kinda agree with both @raycollect and @jkanly :

This is essentially stating that if you have the right elements to create gold, gold should be worthless.

You don’t realize how difficult it is to properly print a trading card with accurate coloring and quality, let alone have a market accept their existence and not reject it as illegitimate.

and

But you’re kinda telling people how to do it at a, “How to fake Matchprints, for dummies” level, which makes me worry for others who don’t have access or haven’t yet accessed the information.

If you were to mention instead that you simply know of a process to replicate them, that message could be passed along more sensitively. This thread might not get the traction needed to inform potential parties at risk of a scam —There’s lots of information that’s best not shared until the right time.

That said I applaud your effort and research, which clearly took some time. Extremely well written.

Ah well, for me personally it doesn’t matter much, since I already own my copy and don’t intend to sell it. And they’re also pretty niche and a lot of people don’t know about them, as you’ve mentioned.

PS: Didn’t knew you had the Pichu, Pikachu, and Raichu @justinator (if that’s what you mean by entire family?). I thought you only had the Pikachu. Well, now we know where that second Pichu is. Better late than never I guess, haha.

Greetz,
Quuador

[pichufan]

I think as long as people have a pedigree linking back to TCA Gaming they will always be fine, and I strongly imagine anyone who owns one of these right now will be able to link their card back to him (even if that may involve a few conversations with former sellers).

If it wasn’t for the only printers and packs of paper being available in the US, I’d like to be able to get my hands on these to prove myself wrong - I’d love to be proven wrong in this case - however a big part of me feels that the only challenge with these will be correctly calibrating the printer to accurately match the colours and sizes, and whilst that would require patience, it certainly isn’t impossible.

The printer in question is very likely what the Pokémon company would have used to print these in the first place. It isn’t some run of the mill home printer; it would have likely cost several thousands when it was new and it comes with specific software built-in to aid in printing on Imation Matchprint sheets, which I don’t believe can be said for any other printer that has ever existed.

Not only that, but it supports a technology called “Spectrocam” which from what I gather is basically a colour picker for real-world objects (like Pokémon cards), making calibration a lot easier than it otherwise would have been.

The history behind these cards and how TCA Gaming acquired them is fantastic and that isn’t something which can ever be taken away. If you’re a collector who owns a Matchprint card which can be linked back to the original release then you’ve got nothing to worry about as you can be 100% certain that that’s where your card came from. If you’re like me and were wanting to acquire a Matchprint card, however, you have every right to be concerned about where it may have originated.

There were 3 paths I could have gone down here yesterday:

• I could have remained ignorant and chosen to ignore what I’d learned;
• I could have been malicious and actively acted upon what I’d learned to scam collectors out of a lot of money;
• I could have gone public with what I’d learned.

I chose the 3rd path as in my mind both the first and second lead to the same end result - someone else would have found out about this and they may have chosen to act maliciously.

I can only apologise to anyone who this may have negatively affected.

[two]

@pichufan First I want to say great write up on your blog and thanks for sharing, tons of great information. While I’m not as well versed in this exact type of print, I am very familiar with other professional (and government level) printing facilities. I’ve handled many “proof” type examples of coins, paper money and MTG cards during my years collecting.

I’d like to challenge your post (respectfully of course). I guess my first question/argument would be this. Are you sure these “official Matchprint” cards weren’t actually printed using the same printing technique fully issued, normal Pokemon cards used? For example MTG card Proofs were made using the same exact printing process. Maybe Proof =/= Matchprint but from how you’re describing them its the same thing.

A grading company wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, touch these unless they had a simple way to distinguish between authentic and fake examples. XRF machines are used by some local Pawn or Jewelry shops to differentiate chemical compounds in metals. This machine can be used for anything, and if I recall hearing CGC Cards is using this type of technology to help determine authenticity of collectibles that come through their door.

I digress. I can 100% understand why you’re stepping away from Matchprint cards (this is truthfully the first time I’ve heard about them) but if they’re printed using the same technology Pokemon cards use, I don’t see why you can’t easily differentiate the two. You have the argument that you can just buy a Xerox machine and the right paper. If you take 10x magnification to the print between a Xerox Pokemon card and a genuine Pokemon card and study them, there will be a noticeable difference.

Now this goes without saying that if WOTC employees were using a Xerox machine to print these, then yes I’d run far far away from these. But again… if said employees obtained these copies through the same printers WOTC printed real Pokemon cards through… you SHOULD be able to tell the difference.

I’d love to continue to back my point here as I feel strongly about it. And no, I’m not hoarding a whole bunch of these Matchprint cards. I just don’t want there to be an echo chamber of potentially false information about a potentially valuable collectible for the hobby.

[pichufan]

@two I’m not going to pretend to know anything about how the TCG cards are printed and it is quite possible that they fed the Imation Matchprint sheets through the same printer used to mass-produce the cards from the TCG. However I’d imagine that this print run was completely separate from that process.

Halftone proofs require specific hardware and I would doubt that the machinery used to print TCG cards would have that technology built into it - why would it need it? But again, I’m not going to pretend to know anything about how the TCG cards are printed. It could be that the industrial printer used to print the TCG cards does come with all the bells and whistles required to make halftone proofs.

I’m assuming as well that these Matchprint cards are actually halftone proofs and not just something they printed on the proofing paper. It could well be that the Matchprint cards are in fact regular prints and not proofs. That’s something that somebody with a Matchprint card and a microscope would need to confirm (somehow).

I’d imagine that these were printed by a (team of) designer(s) in an office separate from the main printing facility.

PS: I’m intentionally trying to avoid claiming that this was WotC as all of the copyrights are attributed to Nintendo. Whilst TCA Gaming may have obtained these from a WotC Designer, I’m not sure why the copyright on these would point to Nintendo when the copyright on the FPO cards point to Wizards (see www.elitefourum.com/t/random-pokemon-related-til-moments/21493/35) - did Nintendo completely take over one of Wizards’ US facilities?

[two]

@pichufan

@two I’m not going to pretend to know anything about how the TCG cards are printed and it is quite possible that they fed the Imation Matchprint sheets through the same printer used to mass-produce the cards from the TCG. However I’d imagine that this print run was completely separate from that process.

Halftone proofs require specific hardware and I would doubt that the machinery used to print TCG cards would have that technology built into it - why would it need it? But again, I’m not going to pretend to know anything about how the TCG cards are printed. It could be that the industrial printer used to print the TCG cards does come with all the bells and whistles required to make halftone proofs.

I’m assuming as well that these Matchprint cards are actually halftone proofs and not just something they printed on the proofing paper. It could well be that the Matchprint cards are in fact regular prints and not proofs. That’s something that somebody with a Matchprint card and a microscope would need to confirm (somehow).

I’d imagine that these were printed by a (team of) designer(s) in an office separate from the main printing facility.

PS: I’m intentionally trying to avoid claiming that this was WotC as all of the copyrights are attributed to Nintendo. Whilst TCA Gaming may have obtained these from a WotC Designer, I’m not sure why the copyright on these would point to Nintendo when the copyright on the FPO cards point to Wizards (see www.elitefourum.com/t/random-pokemon-related-til-moments/21493/35) - did Nintendo completely take over one of Wizards’ US facilities?

Did you say you’ve owned a card from TCA gaming? Were they printed on similar cardstock as regular issued Pokemon cards? IE do these Matchprint cards feel and look the same type of cardstock used for regular Pokemon.

Typically these “proof” cards are used to determine if the artist or team likes the design of the print and/or if the colors are up to the standard they want. Sometimes colors will strike paper or cardboard differently than if you’re looking at it elsewhere.

I’d love to get an example of one of these and compare. Or have someone run them through an XRF machine to see their chemical compositions comparatively to ones that have been printed on a Xerox machine.

One simply cannot grab a bunch of colors from a local store, or buy a printer and hope the inks are identical to those used at a professional printing facility like Nintendo, WOTC, or whoever printed these things. The only way these would be sketchy to own is if the employees used a Xerox machine.

But the fact that there’s no 3rd party authentication company willing to grade them, yet, makes them uneasy to drop 15k for something that people don’t know if its “real” or “fake”

[pichufan]

@two

Did you say you’ve owned a card from TCA gaming? Were they printed on similar cardstock as regular issued Pokemon cards? IE do these Matchprint cards feel and look the same type of cardstock used for regular Pokemon.

I’ve not owned one of these, nope, but you can see what they look like from pictures TCA Gaming shared around the time on his PhotoBucket page (s1260.photobucket.com/user/The-Charizard-Authority/library):

They’re not printed on regular cardstock, they’re printed on the paper I mentioned in my original thread: Xerox Commercial White Color Laser Proofing Paper. Here is an example of an Imation Matchprint Spiderman theatre poster from 2002 on eBay which is printed on the same paper:

You can just barely make out the Matchprint watermark at the top of the image:

As per my blog post, the full watermark repeats:

`DIGITAL HALFTONE

IMATION MATCHPRINT
COMMERCIAL BASE`

@two

But the fact that there’s no 3rd party authentication company willing to grade them, yet, makes them uneasy to drop 15k for something that people don’t know if its “real” or “fake”

Unfortunately Beckett do grade these. I’m aware of around 10 which Beckett have graded. Here are two TCA Gaming had graded himself:

https://instagram.com/p/B5Ds8FulpQ\_

[two]

@pichufan being printed on “Xerox Commercial White Color Laser Proofing Paper” which is obtainable through the public is problematic and worrisome most definitely.

I’ll still stand behind my point of ink colors and the chemical compounds of the ink. If a grading company was able to get their hands on a machine like an XRF along with a true genuine example of a Matchprint card, they’d be able to compare the genuine examples ink elements to any card that came through the door.

On top of the a weaker point would be print quality. The Proof paper will be identical to copies, but the ink patterns should be relatively hard to replicate vs an original genuine example card printed.

Hope I’ve been some help and my point hasn’t been completely nullified.

[justinator]

@quuador

PS: Didn’t know you had the Pichu, Pikachu, and Raichu @justinator (if that’s what you mean by entire family?). I thought you only had the Pikachu. Well, now we know where that second Pichu is. Better late than never I guess, haha.

Greetz,
Quuador

Yes, I purchased all 3.

[pfm]