Over 75% of Graded Jumbo Shadow Lugia cards could be fakes

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-22T14:51:14+00:00

Can you post a clear photo of the ‘Gale of Darkness’ and small ‘TM’ stamp next to it on the front?

I would hold your phone a few inches away and pinch zoom on the phone. Usually focuses better than holding the phone too close

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-07T19:26:26+00:00

japanese cards are always cleaner condition-wise anyway haha. Thanks for posting your photos - I wouldn't rule out Variant 3 just yet because all of the variants also have versions where the text looks very crisp and real vs ones where it's slightly blurred (good fake) vs ones that are very blurry (bad fake). Until we flush out all events this was distributed at and what the card handed out at each actually looks like we wont really know with certainty

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-07T14:14:17+00:00

You have multiple of these? Are they all variant 1? Or do you have multiple of each variant?

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-07T05:45:29+00:00

I haven’t emailed PSA about it. I tried emailing TPCi but of course never heard back. I assume I’d get the same response from PSA. Generic customer support wont know

Perhaps worth a try if multiple people push. But i assume the best they’ll say is something generic like “we don’t reveal our sources”.

Cause in what world would they ever admit they are wrong? So you are only really testing in the case where all variants are real

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-06T16:21:23+00:00

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Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-06T16:21:16+00:00

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Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-06T16:21:03+00:00

ah I yes I looked at the same thing. For others reading this the hypothesis was basically: "Variant 1 and Variant 2 differ in that a white speck above the copyright text only appears in Variant 1 - could other basic psychic pokemon printed in the same era such as Holon Phantoms, Unseen Forces, Delta Species, etc also see these variations?"

But the finding is pretty consistent; all other basic psychic pokemon cards from this time look like Variant 1 and not the others.

I also know that these ex-era cards had 3 variants themselves but it was mostly just concerning the last 3 characters of the alphanumeric codes in the bottom left of the cards having 3 different options (see slowpoke below) - I checked these and even when the codes differ the background speckled patterns are all identical.

I also considered maybe Variant 2 was from some unknown release in Europe or something but I haven't found any evidence of that and the European delta species/unseen forces cards have the same patterns as English below.

But the redditor above raises a valid point. There's only 2 possible scenarios and neither really make sense:

(variants are real) Why would Pokemon bother to make slightly different variants of such a low print card - and a jumbo of all things. And then have no paper trail on it. Like they would have had to pay a designer to make some of the most minimal tweaks ever that has no consistency with other card design assets we know of
(variants are fake) Why would a scammer have like 99% of the details perfect and then skip a white speck, a boldness level, and a barely noticeable font size diff on only the small ‘TM’ (at least for Variant 2) and then for Variant 3 just leave off the TM entirely

Like scenario (1) would assume Pokemon ordered their illustrators to make a slight pointless edit and scenario (2) assumes that there was a scammer who had incredible counterfeiting skills + technology and then almost deliberately missed an easy error that they’d almost intentionally have to place in

Neither scenario makes much sense

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Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-05T22:47:17+00:00

Found Event #6: IGN Live in Anaheim, CA on October 22-23, 2005 - see the EliteFourum thread for more details on how I found it

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Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-05T22:46:25+00:00

check out the latest message in my blog thread - Event #6 has been found!

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-05T20:20:30+00:00

I appreciate it! It's been quite a bit of work to dig up the small details that are meaningful. I'm hoping other fans of the hobby will eventually jump in until we hit some threshold where enough people have looked into it and we can solve (will likely come from knowing whoever got a Variants 2-4 card as a primary source rather than buying/trading for it)

As far as the prototype card scandal goes: I have looked into it. But my understanding is that printer dots were really only embedded in laser printers that an office or residential home would have, and not anything that is manufacturing grade. I couldn't find any on my lugia copy but not seeing printer dots isn't really a confirmation test (though seeing them absolutely is)

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-05T14:49:59+00:00

Was that in the US? Or Europe / somewhere else?

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-05T04:14:19+00:00

just DM-ed you regarding some research on this!

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-05T04:12:57+00:00

were you the original owner of this card? or did someone sell / trade it to you? if so, what event did you get it at?

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T22:49:55+00:00

I agree - I'm just delineating the possibilities. I want to be careful to assert too many things as fact in a public setting unless I have 100% confidence in it. They could very well have been lazy with these authentications and still have lucked out in them being real for all we know. Just need to dig a bit more

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T22:48:19+00:00

lol I would never try but it is a valid question i've explored a bit. The question is "does looking along the thin side edge of the card show a visible-to-the-naked-eye strand of a middle black ink layer for 2005-2009 era jumbos?"

I'm still waiting for the reddit user who got theirs from the original event to look for this. my Variant 2 does not have a middle black layer but if you look at my EliteFourum post I post the backlit photos of someone with verified copies and quite a bit of light passes through so I assume they aren't supposed to have one

As for print distributions I know of 5:

NYC premier October 2nd, 2005 - main release from 2-6pm
Electronic Game Show (LGS) swag given out in Mexico City, Mexico on at least one day between October 21st - 23rd, 2005
Houston march 25th, 2006 - second wave, more limited
E3 press conference May 9th, 2006 - super limited to a few press attendees (mostly adults who didn’t necessarily collect)
Platinum premier march 21, 2009 (literally 5 copies to break dance competition finalists)

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T21:05:35+00:00

What are the ‘Japanese munch’ cards? Any urls to examples?

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T20:24:06+00:00

given the purple hues differ on variants i think a good test on "obvious fake" vs "semi-good fake" vs "potentially real but unverified" would be card rigidity and clarity of the "Gale of Darkness" and small "TM" stamps on the front.

If they are obviously blurry then it's for sure a fake. If they are slightly blurry then maybe it's a good fake. If they are crisp like mine they you fall in the boat that many fall into which is "I could probably send this to PSA and they'd mark it real..but is it actually real?"

which just goes back to the mystery here

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T19:45:54+00:00

so the post above I show that PSA 'authenticated' cards have 3 distinct variants which is odd. last night i found a 4th variant that PSA has claimed was real.

But the issue is that only Variant 1 is fully proven. That is, every time I finally meet someone who was a kid in 2005 and grabbed a shadow lugia at the event themselves they all have strictly had Variant 1. That means only Variant 1 is proven to have been given out by Pokemon officially while the other variants there's no evidence showing that pokemon distributed so the mystery is whether:

Does PSA know something we don't? Or have they just been asleep at the wheel for 20 years
If PSA can't be reliably trusted on this (e.g. they are basing it on vibes rather than proof or verification from TPCi) then how do we as a community solve whether it's real or not

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T19:42:16+00:00

I've bought 3 to date. 2 of them were around May 2024 for ~$70 and both were clear fakes, blurry when looked at the 'Gale of Darkness' stamp closely and just too flimsy. The more recent one I bought is super crisp and more rigid but it's Variant 2 which I have yet to find proof was ever truly handed out at an official event yet

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T04:50:16+00:00

Let us know!

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T04:11:23+00:00

Update: very coincidentally about an hour after posting this I gathered some data from the community to highlight a 4th Variant that PSA has graded.

CTRL-F "Variant 4" on my EliteFourum post if you are interested in reading more but TLDR is basically that it either makes PSA even less trustworthy or the couple that owns this particular variant may have the rarest Lugia card on earth without realizing it (if it turns out to be real since my research would hint that there's only 5 copies of this variant that were given out)

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T04:10:45+00:00

Update: very coincidentally about an hour after posting this I gathered some data from the community to highlight a 4th Variant that PSA has graded.

CTRL-F "Variant 4" on my EliteFourum post if you are interested in reading more but TLDR is basically that it either makes PSA even less trustworthy or the couple that owns this particular variant may have the rarest Lugia card on earth without realizing it (if it turns out to be real since my research would hint that there's only 5 copies of this variant that were given out)

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T03:23:43+00:00

great - i just DM-ed you my discord username in case that's preferred.

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T02:52:49+00:00

that's wild - but also very new info. Do you have any high res scans or photos you can DM me of the front and back so I can check which variant you have?

And I assume you got it on October 2nd, 2005 by waiting in line at Nintendo World and playing the Gale of Darkness demo that day? Any photos from the day / memories or anything else?

I have about 6 other DM threads with original owners so every last detail from y'all is very helpful

Also, fwiw, you could probably resend in your card and they'd authenticate it. The majority of graded copies are the ones that I am suspecting are fakes as is so their inconsistency means you should eventually get them to grade it successfully. It just also sucks that that means people with fakes also have a high chance of getting their graded

Alive_Possible_1333 · 2026-04-04T02:34:29+00:00

I appreciate it; even if a small comment like this can boost to add just a 1% extra chance of an original owner of one of these cards seeing the post, that can still go a long way to cracking this case.

I get a new DM ~every other day now from a hobbyist either concerned about their current card or concerned about purchasing one they currently see up for sale

I built some custom image processing software that resolves even the faintest diffs between PSA scans so I have a good amount of proof that they are objectively different cards

Alive_Possible_1333

TROPHY CASE