I was watching Pokémon classics recent YouTube vid (go watch it if you haven’t, it’s one of his best) and it got me thinking: are there truly flawless holo copies of T17 and neo gen lugia? Or do even the gem mint copies have very minor printline issues.
If someone has a truly flawless holo of either, or has seen one in person I would love your opinion on the topic.
I’ve never seen a “perfect” copy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one doesn’t exist.
Yes, he does a great job at breaking down the differences in CGC v. PSA grading standards by looking at gem rates across WOTC sets, and how they differ between the 2 companies.
Just sparked the ongoing thought of if those Neo PSA 10s actually don’t have any printlines, and if they do, how would they decide whether it’s minuscule enough to deserve the 10
I just watched it. It’s a very good assessment with reasonable conclusions.
It highlights a the arbitrariness of the artificial scarcity in certain PSA 10 cards. If you just weigh the importance of various kinds of damage in a different way, you get a new set of very low pop 10s.
There’s an alternative timeline where silvering is way more important to PSA than printlines. Jungle and Neo Destiny are extremely hard sets to grade and Neo Genesis is not notable for being that difficult to grade.
Maybe the one of the three bgs 10s Lugia are close to perfect
Although not preferred i can live with a tiny bit of silvering on borders more than i can live with printlines.
For that reason alone i wont get any vintage cgc 10’s knowing that most were just clean psa 9’s with printlines.
Offtopic: The background music on his amazing videos is so good that it is almost distracting😅
I can live with a print line. To me it’s just part of early wotc days with a flawless card being the exception. Shows how a bit of a mess they were back in 1999/2000
They aren’t. They all three have lines.
Source: I’ve tried to buy all three at various points. Two of them shouldn’t be 10s regardless due to centering as is.
Ive seen two Lugia with 10 surface scores (not sure if they even exist as BGS cards nowadays) and they both had print lines.
Good to know, thank you
To ultimately answer your question though, I don’t know of either having flawless copies in the wild.
Maybe one exists in a sealed pack somewhere, but odds say probably not.
Probably safe to assume most, if not all PSA 10s have some sort of printline issue, it’s just minor enough to still qualify as a 10.
I’m curious as to how they define the amount of printlines that differentiates a 9 versus a 10. Maybe this is a subjective thing that varies depending on the grader.
Keep in mind that a lot of the 10s were graded in the 2010s when you could hit a 10 with some small amount of damage pretty consistently as long as you kept regrading it and it didn’t incur damage along the way. Even some of the 6 cert graded in the last couple of years have pretty brutal holos.
But the majority of them also have pretty noticeable centering issues. Most just within the 55/45 tolerance on front that PSA allows for a 10.
I did see a flawless neo discovery yanma which is quite a low pop if thats useful.
I do imagine there would be some lugias/typhlosions that are flawless when printed because there are other genesis holos that are flawless. But no guarantees that they still are post pack-pull
This is one of the reasons I don’t bother collecting max - grade Chanseys.
First of all, thanks everyone for the kind words and the discussion thread; it’s quite an honor. I’m a boomer when it comes to data collection and chart making; I manually entered every data point by hand, so to say this video took a long time to make is a MASSIVE understatement (about 20-25 hours in total).
Many of these cards are extremely difficult to find without print lines, though I have handled and currently own some of these low-population cards without noticeable print lines (perhaps they are just too subtle). Others, seem impossible. For example, I have owned or handled at least 30 1st Edition Typhlosions (T17) and never saw one without print lines. The best I have ever hoped for when sending in was a PSA 9 . . . it was obvious a Gem Mint wouldn’t happen unless the grader was asleep at the wheel.
Personally, I like condition rarity. It’s admittedly pretty trivial, but it’s kept me focused and hunting as a collector for over a decade. It’s also made certain acquisitions and grading successes immensely more fulfilling. As usual, buy the card not the grade . . . unless you enjoy the hunt and the challenge.
Oh that’s interesting! How’s your 10 lugia in terms of lines?
It has a faint one in the top right. All of the Pristines on both sides had 9.5 surface for this reason.
Have pics of the card in the new case?
The print lines in Neo Gen are horrible imo. The Lugia in my binder set looks mint until you take it out and there are 3 ugly, super-prominent horizontal print lines that always sadden me. Literally bought a graded Japanese version as an alternative because I can’t stand to look at the English copy!
