Sorry if this topic has been beaten to death before.
So this is something I’ve recently been wondering about and curious as to whether it’s currently an issue or will become an issue in the future. I’m speaking in regards to someone actually producing, for example, a gem mint base 1st edition charizard. One that would be so perfect that it would be indistinguishable to the original.
All the reasons exist. There is a demand. They go for a lot of money. The history of con artists go back to the beginning of history. Clearly people like this exist and the opportunity to profit is great. Are there any cases of people doing this? Considering purchasing some expensive cards in the future has made me start thinking about this topic.
This makes me think back to my Uncle when he was the eyewear owner for Panama Jack. He had factories in China and when designing his sunglasses his team sent competitors glasses, ie rayban oakley etc, to these factories design team to try to make their glasses better. The first examples of his glasses came back as exact copies of his competitors. The only difference was his said Panama Jack vs Oakley etc. Obviously he wasn’t trying to get sued so he had to make changes to make them more different and they had different designs they were trying to achieve. This was in the 80s’ and 90’s and his glasses sold for $9.99-$19.99 while the competitors sold for over $100. He told me that those factories had the ability to make exact replicas of the Ray-ban or Oakley where even a specialist for Ray-ban or Oakley wouldn’t know the difference. He later told me, " anything and I mean anything you want to get made in China if you know the right people and have some money you can get made." I believe him.
Having discussions with my uncle over the years and now beginning my pokemon collection journey leaves me wondering about this and the safety of the hobby in the future. Are there already graded fake cards? Ones that PSA couldn’t tell the difference? Would they be slowly acclimated into the system and not be detected?
At this point it can almost be another topic all together but those PSA cases. How impenetrable are they? How easily can they be fraudulently produced and/or manipulated? I was thinking about this as I recently purchased a base PSA pokemon card from ebay and the case had a few features on the edges of the PSA case that initially made me think that it had been tampered with. After reviewing it with my other PSA cases I don’t think any manipulation had occurred but it did make me wonder how many people look at the edges, bottom and top of their PSA graded cards? These are potential access points to scammers. While the average joe may not think these cases can be accessed easily because you would need tools etc. I’m a dentist. I work daily with tons of tiny tools and equipment for microscopic dentistry procedures and currently own a viewing 32x scope. So in my mind it’s very possible that cases can be manipulated but I have no evidence of this. In the future I might do some tests on some cheap PSA cards and hopefully it’s a super bust. Who knows?
So while many cards sub $100 might not be the target for scammers, the expensive graded cards are where ultimately scams regarding fake cards or manipulation of PSA cases can be something to be aware of.
Before making a large purchase, get clear pics and post them here on e4. You’ll get a definitive answer.
Don’t worry about PSA, SCG, or BGS cases being tampered with. If they were tampered with, you wouldn’t need to wonder;) Whatever you saw on that case was probably something like frosting which should cause you no concern.
I understand it would appear very hard but how secret was that type of information. I’d imagine many employees of that company would readily know this information. Many of them don’t work for the company any more I’d imagine. Even if you didn’t know this how much trial and error would be needed to figure it out. Plus those old machines you could probably purchase at an auction and bang them out. I might’ve watched ‘Catch me if you can’ too many times but I do believe there are people who will try this and could be successful.
If it hasn’t happened to baseball or other sports yet I don’t see it happening for Pokémon anytime soon. Even the highest end cards barely break $50k and they are very hard to move quickly. It’d be much easier to replicate and sell some old baseball cards.
For the folks that are saying it can’t be done and will never happen, PSA has been known to grade fake Yugioh cards. Not too far of a stretch to say the same could be done for Pokemon.
I also want to clarify something that I’ve been wondering for a bit now – all of the thick stamp 1st edition base set non-holo cards I’ve come across seem to have a sketchy 1st edition stamp, leading me to wonder if all thick stamp 1st editions are fake. Example image can be found below from a post on efour, in which the thin stamp wartortle seems to have a fake 1st edition stamp. Can someone confirm or negate my suspicions? There have been some thin stamps non-holos that have been graded by PSA. Example of a thin stamp is posted as well.
The only instance that was close to a successful scam was the fake pikachu snap card. They took a real psa label, and put it in a GMA case with the fake card. Someone agreed on a trade for a real trophy pikachu + cash. Luckily it never went through, thanks to this thread.
Fake cards are nowhere near the real deal. Even in the worst case hypothetical where a grading company makes a mistake, E4 can identify the issue. As we did in the thread above, and this recent thread as well.
The base of the 1 on the stamp… looks much thicker and less tapered off than the usual thin stamp base. Flair at the tip of the 1 is also more pronounced than usual, and the stem of the 1 is much thinner than usual. Letters are more smudged. I will post a zoomed in version:
(also used a 1st edition venusaur thin stamp this time just to show the consistency of the tapered off bottom of the 1. Also the E is very smudged on the left image (the thin stamp wartortle).
I am extremely skeptical anyone could ever fake a PSA card in full/from scratch. Even if you could replicate the label, which is near impossible with all the security features they have now, you would also need to replicate the card’s entry into the POP report or rely on your buyer being so incompetent they don’t check it.
What I think is more likely is someone grading a card and then reusing the label and switching out the card with a fake copy. I believe this happened when someone was trying to sell a fake Pikachu SNAP card. However this tampering was blatantly obvious and was caught right away here. You might be able to fool people very new to the hobby and PSA grading, but anyone with a slightly trained eye will see it.
As for PSA grading fake cards, I think it is unlikely but not completely out of the realm of possibility. We’ve seen them grade fake Yu Gi Oh cards as noted above and we’ve seen cards with fake 1ED stamps be graded as well. It can happen, but it’s very rare.
I acquired close to 20 thin stamp NH Base commons/trainers/energies in a large lot 7 years ago
I actually found 3 fighting energies which has various levels of excess ink and slight smudging, so I’ve pretty much caught the transition from regular stamp to thin stamp
Bottom energy you can see slight smudging to the left, ink is present on the bottom of the ‘G’ and ‘Y’
Middle energy is full of excess ink and quite distorted
Top energy is a thin stamp, might be hard to tell from the photos but in IRL its very apparent
The top one is, or is transitioning into one at the very least, its thinner than a regular stamp and from the same batch as all my other thins, but the photo is really just to show the evolution of how stamps progress from thick to thin
