Textured cards, Chinese/Korean

General Question
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So, from my reading on here, and a few youtube videos, I gather that Japanese textured-cards are better quality than English.

Two questions, first, what specifically makes them better?

And second, does that mean Chinese and Korean cards are also better than English (and other European languages)?

I ask because I want to pick up some full art supporters but I’d rather not pay the waifu tax. If I can get the same quality cards in Korean or French for a fraction of the cost it would be ideal.

Thank you!

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Languages printed in Japan: Chinese(traditional/Simplified), Thai and Indonesian all have Japanese Quality texturing.

Korean is printed in Korea but it seems like Korean quality has increased for Scarlet and Violet for texturing. Swsh is pretty close to ENG though for Korean texturing.

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This photo does a decent job of showing the difference in texture between Japanese and English. There are a bunch of other examples out there but I thought this one showed it pretty easily. The Japanese texture is much much finer than English. You get the dramatic ridges with English where it can look like a fingerprint.

I personally much prefer the Japanese texture.

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I misread your question and thought you were asking why they are different, but anyways haha

We don’t really know for certain, but its probably because whatever processes, texture files, and or tech Japan/TPC uses for texturing are different than the ones TPCI uses. From some videos online we saw that TPCI artists hand make the textures based on TPC textures (at least around the Ultra Prism era), but for some reason the TPCI cards are noticeably different. This could be a result of many factors and speculation. AFAIK no one has actually asked a tpci/tpc person nor has tpci/tpc ever commented on it. There are other variations between TPC and TPCI though besides texturing.

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Thank you everyone for the replies, it helps a lot going forward with certain purchases. Hopefully I can post some pictures in the recent buys thread soon.

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So European-language cards should be similar to English then if I purchase German, French, or Italian

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Yes, those are printed in the same US facility (with the exception of a few promos and one German Silver Tempest print run being made in Belgium)

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I do not own many Japanese cards but Traditional Chinese seems have the same Japanese Holofoil.
Simplified Chinese it’s brighter than Traditional Chinese.
In my opinion it looks better.

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Simplified definitely has the best foiling imo and it really does shine so well

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Here’s a couple videos that really show the noticeable difference quite well.

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Traditional Chinese, Thai and Indonesian have exactly the same quality, texture and Holo pattern as Japanese (although some non-textured cards may have non-holo/holo/rev-holo differences such as being holo in one language but not in the other).

Simplified Chinese has the same texture as the above, but have slight differences in card specs:

  • Simplified Chinese cards have watermarks
  • Simplified Chinese cards in general can have more visible straight line cuts on the surfaces of their backs
  • Simplified Chinese copies may have different Holo patterns; one example being Charizard VMAX Alt Art where only Simplified Chinese copies have the glittering holofoil seen on Rainbow Rares