I remember seeing a 1st edition base set booster pack for sale for $10 in a store when I was a kid. My thoughts at the time were wow you would have to be a sucker to buy those. Someone could just take a normal card and stamp it first edition.
Now that we are big boy grown up kids, the same thought struck me. Why don’t people just stamps first edition on stuff? Surely that would be easier than faking the entire card. Like how hard could it be to fake something like that? I’m not suggesting anyone do this, but rather just curious what people think about it.
its not that hard to do, TCA Gaming did a video where he had a fake 1st ed stamp on a card and cleaned it off. Rather see Pokemon CO reprint 1st ed shadowless with all cards this time in it.
Holy… wow that thread is something. 10 year old me is feeling vindicated while 31 year old me is frantically examining 1st ed stamps under the microscope.
It kind of ended anticlimactic. PSA provided the guarantee but several times vouched for its legitimacy. I wonder what changed their minds. Frankly, the whole thread was concerning and now I’m running to check my cards. I’m hoping quality control has improved since then
This thread is great for awareness but I’m hoping it doesn’t give scammers a fancy idea.
Stuff like this ruins collecting for some people. Not many people want to continue on after getting robbed.
@w7west Any chance you can change the threads title to something that doesn’t sound horrible. Maybe this for a title: Are fake 1st edition stamped cards out there?
The current title makes it sound like a good idea to fake stamps. We don’t want to encourage people.
Similar concerns exist in MTG re; trimmed Beta. The reality, though, is that there is always a way to authenticate mass-produced items. People authenticate Alpha by looking at the alignment of text, which consistently differs by like half a millimeter between the Alpha and Beta print runs. To the untrained eye, though, a well-trimmed Beta can look damn near identical to an Alpha.
AFAIK, no one has developed authentication methods like this for detecting 1st Ed. Pokemon cards. But if fake 1st Ed. stamps become a bigger issue in the future, people will almost assuredly develop a way to authenticate them.
I’ve always had this fear as well. Faking an entire card is hard and expensive and we see these fakes all the time. Faking a tiny black stamp seems 100x easier and cheaper. Maybe they are just so good no one can tell and half of the 1st editions are fake now?
I’ve been too busy faking ice cream popsicles for the Zarude promo, but once that well runs dry I may turn to faking 1st ed stamps for a living instead.