Recently I picked up an Electabuzz #2 WB promo with a silver stamp on it. You may have seen this card on eBay where the seller understood it was a rare variation and wanted quite a lot of money for it. Over time I managed to talk them down massively and have the card in my possession now. The silver stamp is on the left, the normal gold stamp is on the right.
Identifying WB promos with silver stamps is nearly impossible with photos alone. The gold foil often photographs silver. Cards that you 100% believe have to be the silver variant based on photos end up being gold in your hands. I was recently disappointed to order this seemingly silver Pikachu and receive a normal gold stamp when it arrived.
So these silver stamps are extremely annoying to buy. I would go so far as to say it is literally impossible to confidently identify one from a photo alone. Unless you have both cards in the photo and can place them side by side under the same lighting, the stamp will appear gold or silver and based entirely on mood and vibes.
But the variant DOES exist. And they DO appear every once and a while and sometimes they are properly labeled. Both W stamp promos and WB promos can have silver stamps instead of gold.
Do you have any?
Do you know which packaging they came from?
It would be nice to get some more awareness of the variant (or error, if you want to call it that). It’s very hard to gauge how many may exist because they are seemingly imperceptible on camera.
Apart from the Electabuzz you have (or maybe another one), I haven’t seen any other silver WB stamped cards.
As for silver W stamped cards: the Dark Charmeleon I’ve seen semi-often (as in 5+ copies thus far without being too interested in them). Both the golden and silver stamped W stamped Dark Charmeleon were released in Australia.
I haven’t seen any of the other W stamped cards as silver stamps yet.
And too bad your Pikachu arrived as golden stamped. Not too surprising tbh, since I’ve ordered two Pikachu before that I could have sworn were as silver as you Electabuzz on the auction pictures, but ended up being a regular golden version when they’ve arrived. Maybe we’ll both have a silver stamped WB Pikachu one day.
I do want one of those silver Charmeleon but the condition has been awful on the confirmed candidates and obviously the picture-problem is ubiquitous there as well.
Been looking around for this aswell I thought I saw a post of someone with the electabuzz saying they tried to get it graded by cgc and they didn’t recognize the error cuz it couldn’t be authenticated or something along those lines… but looked through my old binder and had a mewtwo silver sitting around it’s clearly silver can be seen right next to a gold.
Gotcha was curious if maybe with more photos of others they may take it into consideration or something since they know it’s not a 1 off / you didn’t get a blank and silver stamp it yourself or what not. Tried looking for that post again and came across this one if you don’t mind me asking how much did you get the electabuzz for?
I was looking through my binders and forgot I had a silver W stamped dark Charmeleon. When I first got it I thought it was fake since my other W stamped promos were all gold. I ended up buying a sealed gold stamped Charmeleon.
I ran into this thread and thought I’d provide some more photos just for further documentation. Clearly silver vs gold. I’ll note that the gold stamp has much more of a textured indent on the card, whereas the silver stamp appears to be just on the surface.
If I sent the silver stamp in for grading would PSA or CGC send it back without authentication? Curious. I would love to have it in a PSA case to match my other W gold stamp.
Maybe we’ll both have a silver stamped WB Pikachu one day.
if you don’t mind me asking how much did you get the electabuzz for?
