There is a post I made on E4 sharing all of the documentation and the paper I wrote up but I will provide a succinct timeline here.
In 2023 CGC reached out to me to ask me about a pile of “Magic and Wizards” cards they had received. They wanted to know if they were real. I never responded to them because I consult with PSA on yugioh and it was a ton of work. I knew very little at the time, so I didn’t email them back. I didn’t think much would come of it.
Months later more than 50 very high end versions popped up. Most of them were from the email I received. They all had very concerning issues worthy of suspicion and I was surprised they were authenticated. I spent months asking the owners questions and they provided some real data but mostly conjecture on this stuff.
I ended up buying two real copies that I could rely on as controls and started buying an example of every release from the period. I bought a forgery and cracked it live. I scanned everything in 1200 DPI (all of the data is available in that post I mentioned).
The preliminary analysis showed that the preponderance of the cards were forgeries. I messaged TCA Gaming about the Blue Eyes he had purchased and he was concerned and connected me with Matt Quinn.
Matt was uninterested in the research I had conducted and despite offering it to his team for review, he never messaged me back. I expressed doubts about a “test printing” since absolutely no literature in yugioh shows tests or discusses a test. He was resolute that his team had visited factories and knew what they were doing. Still, he did not provide any evidence that any tests had occurred and to date I have not found any data on that.
I finished up the paper and information this month before my move because I wanted to get out a final draft, which was published on Medium. To date I have not heard back on this and I don’t think TCA was able to get them to honor their “authenticity guarantee.”