Magic & Wizards Cards History & Auth Final Draft
I’ve never posted here in E4 but I wanted to share this with everyone. I’ve been working this Magic & Wizards authentication report for years now, ever since CGC reached out to me about these forgeries in 2022. TLDR, they authenticated them all and have not provided sufficient evidence to support their claims that they are indeed authentic. I conducted an in depth study considering nearly every Weekly Jump Magazine, searched every primary source image available of the cards from 1998 and purchased both the forgeries and the real copies to make this study possible. It cost me upwards of $5,000 just to do the study, not including the time. CGC refused to read anything I wrote on this and about a year d a half ago said they would reach out to Konami. Obviously Konami doesn’t want anything to do with this and doesn’t care - this is typical for Konami. I never heard back from CGC at all.
BLUF: most of them are forgeries. I am certain of this and the data (not my appeal to authority opinion) supports this. The data overwhelmingly suggests that they are forgeries. That doesn’t mean that all Magic & Wizards cards are forgeries, but that those cards that deviate from qualitative standards are. You need to know what those standards are and that’s what this study was intended to provide.
This is not a light read and you should know a bit about trading cards before reading, otherwise it might be a bit more dense than ideal.
I am of course open to discourse here and new data but the data needs to be real and not conjecture, it needs to inject significant doubt in the conclusion, and it needs to be relevant. No T-shirt suggestions or links to pieces of paper handed out long after the period in which any “tests” would have been conducted.
This is my professional opinion. You are free to buy any forgeries you want, of course.
Additional Images and Data
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Fascinating read, well researched indeed, did seem to lack a written conclusion or wrap up after all the tests and methodologies. I really liked your method of clearly physically seeing the rosette differences through replacements of test portions. From how many preproduction pokemon sheets have been released/found I think your assertions on having or not having foil is incorrect since it is entirely possible for a test sheet to be made without foil, afterall it would like be a different printing stock to run with foil.
I would also like to say im not sure if you are presenting this is academic or just in a style of an academic paper but there is a lot of opinion throughout. It is fine but does detract from the impartiality, not that its an issue for this purpose but it does come off a bit like you are pushing a goal instead of letting the result speak for itself.
Overall i found your examples and research very good. Your history summations were also good to follow through.
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Appreciate the response. Its only in an academic style. Im not sure itd make the cut on a true academic publication. Agree with much of what youve said
Not entirely sure what you mean by the holofoil part but generally I acknowledged the possibility that sheets can be made without holofoil, however, in yugioh there arent any that I have seen like that in the wild. Again, that doesnt preclude the possibility but means that it should be infrequent. The sheer number of these that were made in the batch of forgeries mentioned in the paper is way above any average you can discern. While not direct proof of forgery when considered in isolation, this departure from the norm is concerning and should concern any knowledgeable authenticator.
I put some opinion in there but nothing unbacked by data. I thought that readers would need something a bit more direct given the typical collectors understanding of the hobby. I dont think that detracts too much from any impartiality because the opinion is squarely directed at people who carelessly jumped on the train to pollute the yugioh hobby. I felt like this was beyond careless given the myriad of issues these cards exhibit. While these cards exhibited some concerining issues at first glance, i was open to the idea that they are test prints.
Again, really appreciate the response. Its clear you read it and i appreciate that.
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