With the rising amount of fake cards, I have been thinking about the future of 1st ed non-holos. I have several complete 1st non-holo WOTC sets and I was thinking that the 1st ed does not seem to be that difficult to replicate on the unlimited card.
That makes me a bit worried that the 1st ed stamp might stop being relevant at some point, as it will be really tough to tell the difference between the legit and the fake one (as long as it’s not PSA graded but we all know the stories with graded fake cards, so…).
Plus I guess you don’t really want to risk damaging the card by trying to wash the stamp off.
What do you think, may the 1st ed stamp lose it’s value at some point due to the fact that you can just simply stamp the unlimited card? Another example would be the smudged 1st ed stamps in the Team Rocket set where it looks kinda fake but is actually a real legitimate factory stamp (example on Dark Gyarados).
I still love the artwork, can look at the cards all day but talking about the value, I just think that the 1st ed stamp will become less relevant in time and we might end up having more 1st ed cards than unlimited in circulation.
Saying its gonna happen versus it actually happening are two different things. Obviously there would be a ton of money made in fake 1st ed stamps yet it isn’t a problem that I know of rn. So if it hasn’t happened already, whose to say it will ever happen. Like I said, lets see some examples first.
If anything this raises the value of graded 1st ed cards in question. But I’m with Krill. It is NOT easy to replicate in any way whatsoever. Never seen a believable example. Why? Because they are unbelievably hard to replicate. It is like a specialized prop designer for a period piece. You’d need the exact stamp, the exact ink, but moreover, it would need to withstand scrutiny under magnification, which is easy to do. Anyone with a DSLR can take a quick snap and see how the ink interacts with the texture of the card. See your own avatar? Genuine ink has a specific interaction with the unique look of the WOTC cards.
I think it’s unlikely that a fake stamp will become passable in all aspects. But for arguments sake let’s say this does happen. How will the community respond? Well, we do have a lot of fakes already. Fake booster boxes, fake autographs. How did the community respond? The price of boxes continues to climb and the price of autos such as sugimori’s remain high. It’s because when faced with fakes, typically the goal is to reduce the probability of it being fake rather than changing the goal entirely. This means people start to value provenance - what is the story behind the signature, where did it come from, do other people recognize it as real? was the box from a case? were their other boxes from this source that proved to be legitimate?
The same thing would happen with stamps. At this moment, if you were to blindly buy any graded 1st ed base card, the probability of getting a fake stamp is extraordinarily low and if you did, it’s very easy to detect. If suddenly someone decided to make stamps that were near identical to the WOTC ones and people found out and they started pumping them out people would start valuing provenance - the graded card label. People would just buy and value older labels
Recently I was duped by this seller. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t looked at his other items for sale and seen 1st stamps on shadowed base cards. A closer look at this seller’s 1st stamps you can tell they don’t look right, but now I’m paranoid about better fake 1st stamp jobs and will be going through my collection noting different print variants (thick/thick print etc). Does anyone have suggestions on magnification devises for this sort of thing, or any other auditing techniques?
I mean, stamping regular unlimited cards is something that clearly stands out to anyone who isn’t new in this hobby and knows their stuff.
Of course, it might catch newer or unsuspecting buyers off guard.
Even if stamping cards can be done convincingly, they would still need Shadowless cards to stamp for it to be believable.
@millenniumnostalgia that’s actually quite scary! The Chansey is obvious, but on the other cards listed by the seller I actually had to look closely to spot something isn’t right about those stamps. It shows that it’s something people already do, just not perfectly yet. Or maybe they do, and we just don’t know it? It’s an interesting and scary thought.
It doesn’t give me high hopes it’s something PSA would pick up on if people figure out how to convincingly fake stamps though. I collect PSA 9s (primarily) and own around 400 graded cards. My counter of missgraded cards I’ve encountered in those 400 is at exactly 10 (not counting weak grades, I’m talking missgrades. Extreme holo scratches, missed dents or bends, etc.). 2.5% in my sample size isn’t much of course, but it’s in my opinion still too much, and I do believe if convincing fake stamps come around, it’s possible they wouldn’t always be caught, unless they have certain techniques to spot it of course, who knows!
They all look off to me. If you look at the feedback you can see recent sales of 1st base Alakazam, 1st base Magneton, 1st base Gyarados, and others all of which are shadowed. Those cards sold at auction for about 1/2 market price which means people are only being fooled so much, but 1st stamps on shadowed cards are obviously fake. That said, he has a 1st shadowless Chansey at auction right now that is priced more appropriately for a true 1st edition Chansey, and it appears the 1st stamp has the same exact font as the 1st stamp on the 1st shadowed cards which screams to me that this was a non-1st shadowless Chansey with a fake 1st stamp. We’ll see how bad it goes as the auction ends in less than an hour.
The Shadowless Chansey’s Stamp looked alright to me, but maybe there’s I missed. Below the stamps on his Shadowless Chansey, Shadowed Chansey and Jungle Pinsir.
The bottom part of the one is very wide on the stamps on the Shadowed Chansey and the Pinsir. This isn’t present on the Shadowless Chansey. Still… I wouldn’t touch any card handled by that seller.
A few months back I saw a 1st base shadowed Electrode selling for $15 and I immediately sniped it because I wanted to have an example of a fake 1st stamp I could have for auditing purposes. Unfortunately when I got my hands on it it was an entirely counterfeit card. Kinda odd the counterfeiter would go through all the trouble and not make it shadowless ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Does anyone have a true unlimited shadowed base card with a 1st stamp they can comment on?
Nearly every 1st edition card he has for sale is counterfeit, but is there anyone whose actually them in hand whose been fooled by them? I don’t think so.
I try not to give fake stamps much more attention than they deserve. There are fakes in every market. By buying smart (trusted sources, clear photos, graded, etc.) you can avoid 99.9% of them.
as a shadowless collector I thought about this a lot.
shadowless cards can be bought and then stamped with first edition. I wouldn’t be surprised if psa graded a Shadowless stamped card to be honest.
for that reason, I have concluded shadowless is the ultimate collection for me. they can’t be faked as easily as 1st ed, and will have inherit demand from all the scam stampers as 1st ed rises. their supply will also diminish as they are turned into fakes.
