Bought this card on Mercari for $1000 (overpaid, was just getting into the hobby) a couple months ago. Went to pre-grade it and saw it was splitting at the seam all the way around slightly, was very stiff, and was visibly much thicker than other old backs. Thought for sure it was re-backed because the front had corner whitening and the back was flawless… Might of been a PSA 7 or 8 if the fiber issue wasn’t a problem. Once I tore into it, I’m thinking maybe it was real with humidity damage?
At least I have my big noob story now.
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Don´t feel to bad, it happens haha - I was once drunk and ripped a blastoise, good times.
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I feel like in every instance of ripping I’ve ever seen the person in question has resorted to ripping far, far earlier than I ever would. I’ve watched streams and videos where someone is opening packs and suspects the card may be fake and ripping is like the second thing they try. I can’t imagine being that ready to rip a card!
Wow, that’s a no rarity, old back andno back Pika! 
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$1000? Am I missing something here or is that a normal japanese yellow cheeks???
you’re missing the missing rarity symbol
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That still seems extremely high, no? I mean maybe not for an already graded copy, but for raw
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I don’t follow the prices for No Rarity, could very well be a legit price during the NR (+Pika) hype late '20/ early '21.
Either way, it’s too expensive to simply rip it apart haha.
No rarity Pika is still more available than some “influenced” peolple think, there are usually a few available each week, but through centering and age, anything 9 & 10 condition is hard to find. I bought a few raw nm-ish around 20$ for 2 years, late last year they jumped 50x.
It’s not the first thing I did ~ I “opened it at the seam” that was starting to happen on a corner. Once I pulled it apart then I tore it just to see. Basically, either it suffered damage where the glue had become so weak to hold the card together and it came apart very easily - or it was in fact rebacked.
But yea, centering was bad and there was some corner damage visible from the front. If I graded it before I messed with it I think it would of been a 7 or 8 (Assuming the fiber/humidity/lack of glue didn’t effect the grade.)
And yes, I overpaid lol. At the time they were more expensive and elusive a couple months ago. I was just getting into the hobby. I think it’s worth like ~600 raw right now I would imagine. You can get a CGC 8 which looks very similar to mine did with better centering on Ebay right now for like $725 or something?
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You know there are better ways to tell a reback or fake than destroying it right?
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NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
For future reference, you can create a thread asking everyone if a card you have is real or not. Might save you some grief in the future.
When I first got back into collecting one of my first purchases was a collection that had a 1999-2000 Theme Deck Zapdos with the cosmos holo pattern. I wasn’t aware of the variant and thought it was a fake card so I ripped it. Live and learn.
HOW ARE YOU GUYS RIPPING 100$ PLUS CARDS SO EASILY???
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I’m honestly just as surprised as you are. They were still available for 50 bucks raw in early 2020 a.f.a.i.k. Of course that was before the market explosion, and Pikachu explosion in general, but 1k still sounds pretty high for an off-centered raw NR Pikachu tbh.
Nonetheless, I’m happy to say I have at least one in my duplicated stack. So I wouldn’t mind if it really is worth 1k. 
Back to the topic though: we all overpaid for items before, so can’t say anything about that. But even if you thought it was fake, ripping apart a card you bought for 1k USD sounds like a pretty dumb thing to do imho… I wish I had the kind of money to figuratively rip apart 1k bills… 
Certainly would make things quite a bit easier.
Also, especially with that kind of money spend, I would be hesitant to do anything rash with it. I once bought a card for 350 bucks and when it arrived I thought it was fake as well. But since the story behind it was somewhat plausible, I just put it in my binder and kinda took the loss. A few years later that plausible story became a lot more likely, and now I’m pretty sure the card I thought was fake was instead some kind of WotC test print (or joke print), so I’m kinda glad I bought it at the time (although I do wish more info could be found about them and the purpose they were made…).
Anyway, I wouldn’t destroy anything I paid over 100 bucks for tbh. I would rather just store it somewhere, even if it’s just as a reminder to myself to not accidently buy fake stuff for a lot of money. But maybe that’s just me.
Greetz,
Quuador
Not to drag this off topic, but that’s quite the tantalizing tidbit. What was the card? 
www.elitefourum.com/t/glossy-test-prints/24835/11
They come from the same source as two of the Protostoise cards. That reminds me, I still need to update my article after Tavis latest video… 
Greetz,
Quuador