Les cartes Pokémon graduées pour des millions peuvent être des contrefaçons, Selon les métadonnées cachées’

The enormously popular Pokémon Trading Card Game continues to attract huge numbers of players willing to pay vast sums to catch ’em all, especially rare cards. Cependant, some detective work by PkmnFlyingMaster on EliteForum (thanks, VGC) suggests that prototype cards from the mid-’90s which first went up for auction last year could be fakes.

Première, a little background. Prior to the debut of the Pokémon Trading Card Game in Japan back in 1996, the makers printed up prototype cards during the game’s development. The rarity of these pre-release ‘playtest’ cards makes them highly sought-after and a significant cache of them went up for sale in 2024 having been verified by card grading company CGC. CGC highlighted how they worked closely with Takumi Akabane, one of the original designers of the card game, to verify the cards’ authenticity.

Cependant, upon close examination and armed with knowledge of the near-invisible ‘watermarks’ modern printers use, many of these playtest cards appear to be recently printed replicas, as detailed in PFM’s research.

PFM’s forensic analysis is based on a series of small tracking dots that are practically invisible to the naked eye but which can be better seen by tweaking the colour values of a high-res scan. This form of metadata typically gives the time and date it was printed and the serial number of the printer itself and is used by law enforcement and other agencies to track the origin of documents.

Dans ce cas, PFM has enhanced and analysed the patterns on several of the cards and they appear to contain data indicating a print date of June 2024. Bien que le “higher quality” cards show no sign of the data,” I have yet to find a low-quality beta playtest that doesn’t have a similar dot pattern,” PFM wrote in their post.

Various cards that came from Akabane’s personal collection are said to have this pattern on them, and other users have come forward showing similar markings on their cards. Parler à PokeBeach, PFM said it was a “really disheartening” la découverte.

One ‘Alpha Prototype’ Pikachu card sold by auction house Goldin fetched $24,400 in December, and with hundreds of these cards on the market, the allegations have shaken the TCG community.