[HN Gopher] Many of the Pokemon playtest cards were likely print...
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Many of the Pokemon playtest cards were likely printed in 2024
Author : grep_it
Score : 370 points
Date : 2025-01-30 18:38 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.elitefourum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.elitefourum.com)
| chungy wrote:
| Punch card technology!
|
| At least that's what I thought of, with those dot patterns
| forming bits.
| throitallaway wrote:
| They're both forms of encoding.
| __loam wrote:
| This is something that's pretty well known in the magic the
| gathering community. Some of us who trade in older cards to play
| certain formats have jeweler's loupes to check this stuff.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Pardon the naivete: I understand the value of authenticity for
| collectors, but if it's just to play certain formats, what's
| the problem with a print?
| lumost wrote:
| You wouldn't want to pay a premium for a reproduction.
| a_t48 wrote:
| Indeed - proxy cards have their place, but everyone
| involved should know that's what they are.
| nemomarx wrote:
| I believe official tournaments don't allow any form of proxy?
|
| you don't want it causing a complication with prize money or
| etc if you try to play in a regional tournament and get dqed
| by this I assume
| josephcsible wrote:
| > I believe official tournaments don't allow any form of
| proxy?
|
| Is there a legitimate reason not to, or is it just a money
| grab?
| nemomarx wrote:
| "official" means run by wizards of the Coast, so
| essentially the money grab. I suppose it has some
| benefits in terms of not getting anyone who's swapping
| cards there overpaying for a reproduction too.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Basically two things are driving after market value. Use
| in tournaments and collectability. And after market value
| drives the demand for sealed product(one directly from
| Hasbro via distributors and then stores).
|
| I really don't understand why no legislation is targeting
| this market that is exactly like loot boxes.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| There's no reason not to allow them. You might
| legitimately prohibit them if unsleeved, but in sleeves
| there's no difference. Tournaments that aren't run by
| WotC do allow proxies, though I think Star City Games
| limits you to 5 proxies, which isn't enough to solve any
| budget problems. Again, obviously, there's no reason as
| far as gameplay goes. SCG does traffic in used cards.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| The guys who run tourneys are also often guys that
| participate in the secondary market heavily. Having an
| 'open to any proxy' tournament would screw their bottom
| line. The whole point of them running tourneys is to keep
| excitement in the game and sell more cards on the
| secondary market.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Is there a legitimate reason for collectors to value an
| authentic card more than a counterfeit card?
| nemomarx wrote:
| well if you're collecting something, it's age kinda
| matters?
|
| maybe a counterfeit that's also from the 90s would have a
| similarly interesting story, but one from last week is
| much less interesting than the possibility of a beta card
| from the first set of a game inherently, and so less
| collectible.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| Where do you think prize support for tournaments would
| come from if no one had to buy the cards?
| josephcsible wrote:
| Entry fees?
| kadoban wrote:
| And sponsorships, and vendors and etc.
|
| There's tournaments for _all kinds_ of games that don't
| require loot-box purchases to compete, it's not exactly
| an unknown problem.
| toast0 wrote:
| > I believe official tournaments don't allow any form of
| proxy?
|
| It doesn't solve the problem, but I thought I saw something
| about tournaments allowing proxies for a card that's
| present but in unplayable condition.
| delecti wrote:
| Would an example of that be something like "This is my
| pretend black lotus, and here's my actual black lotus in
| this graded plastic box"?
| toast0 wrote:
| If this is authoritative, I don't think so. It's really
| for the card got damaged _in the current tournament_ so
| it 's a marked card in a deck, or the card is valid, but
| only available as a foil which would feel different than
| other cards unless you were playing a foils only deck.
|
| https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr3-4/
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Originally the rule was specifically for cards damaged
| _during_ the tournament. If a card was in acceptable
| condition at the start of the tournament but became
| marked during play you 'd be required to substitute it
| for a proxy, and then acquire a real replacement before
| the next tournament.
| laurensr wrote:
| Imagine governments allowing money for gold that's
| present but locked away. And later for gold they don't
| have!
| toast0 wrote:
| Bridge tournaments don't require the players to bring
| their own royal court to hold. Everyone gets to use cards
| proxying the various kings, provided by the tournament.
|
| MTG tournaments become a test of playing skill, deck
| building skill, and the skill to have enough money to buy
| important limited production cards. It is what it is, but
| sometimes it feels gross.
| __loam wrote:
| There are unsanctioned events that allow proxies but it
| can put a store's wpn status at risk. For most
| competitive tournaments you need real cards, but a lot of
| competition for legacy and vintage are on mtgo (the old
| online magic client) now which is much cheaper and has
| rental services.
| doctrgiggles wrote:
| The few annual tournaments in Vintage typically do allow
| players to show up and register their deck is present,
| then put it away in a travel safe and play with proxies.
| That's for decks that can easily be worth 50-100k.
| myrmi wrote:
| I know of no tournament that is run this way - can you
| name an example?
| paulpauper wrote:
| MTG cards are among the best investments of the past 20
| years. I think it beats out everything except bitcoin.
| chungy wrote:
| Original print runs will score higher resale values,
| especially for something rare like unreleased Pokemon trading
| cards made during play testing.
|
| Reproductions can be fine, but anyone can do them on the
| cheap.
| gigaflop wrote:
| Organized Play official events require authentic cards, but
| nobody is stopping people from using a printer for kitchen-
| table style games.
|
| Personally, having used printed paper inserted over top of a
| real card, I'd rather stick with real cards. Otherwise, I'd
| just go digital in this day and age.
| doctrgiggles wrote:
| You can buy mid-quality proxies on Chinese sites for about
| $0.30/card that feel accurate and typically are only
| distinguishable from real ones on fairly close inspection.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| That is not true. Try playing a $0.30 Underground Sea at
| Eternal Weekend and see how many rounds it takes before
| you get caught. Old cards have specific hues,
| imperfections, etc, that are not replicable in modern
| proxies. I have some Legacy proxies for local events that
| are proxy-friendly, and literally the first game I played
| someone noticed as soon as I put the card down that it
| was fake because it was printed way too well.
| RandomBacon wrote:
| Your example doesn't invalidate the comment you were
| replying to.
|
| (And I can also vouch at the quality of proxies that I
| bought for dirt cheap, so that I could keep my real cards
| at home. I bought from a few different companies, and
| some are very good, some not so much.)
| tedunangst wrote:
| Are judges at tournaments pulling out loupes and inspecting
| cards?
| strstr wrote:
| When it comes to playing the game between friends outside
| official tournaments, you are basically correct (though some
| use cost as a power level limiter).
|
| When it comes to trading, you don't want to accidentally pay
| a premium for something you won't be able to resell. Lots of
| players view trading as, more or less, leasing cards.
| Valuable cards typically have fairly stable prices (though
| there are notable exceptions). Buy for a dollar sell for
| somewhere between 0.75 and 1.25.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Basically none in practice, but there are some hybrid
| collector-players who like the idea of building decks from
| their collection as opposed from all decks, and bristle at
| the idea of someone else not doing that. (And of course the
| collectors and WoTC themselves like to push for it because it
| makes them money: WoTC officially pretends that the secondary
| market doesn't exist but their actions make no sense if they
| aren't crafting their ~~loot boxes~~ booster sets with the
| idea of rare and valuable cards driving a lot of the demand).
|
| (I personally think that if you want to force everyone to pay
| for product, play sealed or draft. Then everyone's on an even
| playing field budget wise, and it's more interesting than
| just net-decking. I'm sympathetic to the fact that WoTC needs
| to make money, I'm not sympathetic to their approach of
| chasing whales and making large chunks of the game basically
| inaccessible by their definition of 'legitimate play')
| beAbU wrote:
| Isn't mtg basically pay to win because of this?
| rcxdude wrote:
| If you're playing constructed tournaments, yeah. Depends
| on the format, but the price of entry can range from $$$
| to $$$$$$.
| talldayo wrote:
| Looks like we hugged them too hard: https://archive.ph/hKXoK
| salgernon wrote:
| I always thought that a near learning project would be training
| an ML on "real" cards and then detecting fakes. I don't play the
| games but I was always thrown by how much effort went into
| counterfeits, but I guess there's enough profit for someone.
| There's usually something wrong with the registration or colors.
| strstr wrote:
| If you are willing to pull out a loupe you don't really need
| ML. You can just look at the rosette patterns.
|
| For Mtg cards, the green dot test is very easy to learn, and
| I'm not familiar with any fakes that pass it.
|
| (Edit: arguably you have to worry about rebacking with the
| green dot test, but rebacking is typically pretty fishy
| looking.)
| nilamo wrote:
| Pulling out a loupe and manually inspecting a card is a slow
| process if you have a few thousand cards (avg player).
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| Avg player doesn't buy a few thousand cards at a time. If
| you buy a high value card from a random seller you should
| always check it unless you trust them from references.
| krisoft wrote:
| > There's usually something wrong with the registration or
| colors.
|
| That can be selection bias too.
|
| Maybe the counterfeits where there is nothing wrong with the
| registration of colours are just not recognised as
| counterfeits.
|
| Similarly how seemingly every hacker you can hear about in the
| news are bad at opsec. Because you wouldn't hear about them if
| they weren't.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| What is missing in the context here is that the cards mentioned
| in this article are not actually real. They never existed, and
| therefore they are not "counterfeits" of a real one, they are
| just made up. Someone just claimed to know someone that had
| playtest cards from back in the day. They are not a commercial
| product.
|
| See here for a bit more background:
| https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/13347/
| HanClinto wrote:
| I built one of these several years ago for MtG cards. Trained a
| neural network with a binary classifier on a cheap $20 USB
| microscope looking at examples of the backs of real cards vs.
| fake cards.
|
| https://youtu.be/6_kKR7YgPF4
|
| Sadly never got around to shipping it, because it worked really
| well. Ported it to the web, but never figured out the billing
| issue, and so it died during the delivery phase. From time-to-
| time, I still wonder if I should resurrect this project,
| because I think it could help a lot of people.
| sbarre wrote:
| I find it interesting that this research seems to be (at a glance
| from reading that first page of the thread) coming from someone
| who owns some of these fraudulent cards (and could have just re-
| sold them and kept their mouth shut).
| hatingisok wrote:
| What a homie. Judging from their profile picture they are also
| a fan of "The Untalkative Bunny". What a nice person.
| Lerc wrote:
| I remember reading a story about a painter who was forging
| works in the style of an artist that had been dead for 40
| years.
|
| The police found it very difficult to investigate because no-
| one wanted to have paintings they had spent money on to be
| discovered to be fakes.
|
| The forger was given community service, changed his name to
| match the artist and served his sentence by painting and
| signing a mural.
| echoangle wrote:
| I was pretty sure you meant this guy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Beltracchi
|
| But he didn't change his name.
| heffer wrote:
| That's who I thought as well, but I think it's more likely
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Sim
| Lerc wrote:
| That was the one, but I find it strangely pleasing that
| there are several near matches for the scenario
| described.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I remember a case where a man was accused of forging a will.
| They figured out it was a forge because it used the Calibri
| font, Microsoft only added Calibri in 2007 and the document
| was supposed to be from a few years before.
| almostnormal wrote:
| In some parts of the world a will must be written by hand
| or needs an attesting notary.
| phaker wrote:
| Surprisingly many forgeries were exposed due to Calibri,
| Wikipedia has a short list:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calibri#In_crime_and_politics
|
| I feel like I remember the topic having its own list
| article but can't find any trace of it.
| spullara wrote:
| Reminds me of this:
|
| https://javarants.com/cbs-bush-memos-fake-42187bacf095
| mormegil wrote:
| Not the same person but see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Han_van_Meegeren#M._Jean_Decoe...
| stewarts wrote:
| Similarly, there's also Rudy Kurniawan, who was a wine
| counterfitter. Went to Federal prison, deported, and now is
| in demand to produce wine again in Asia because of how good
| he was at it.
| harimau777 wrote:
| I had a friend whose home was full of movie memorabilia. The
| boxing shorts from Rocky, the journal from Raiders of the
| Lost Ark, props from Star Wars, etc. all professionally
| displayed in shadowboxes along with autographs and photos.
|
| The only thing is that they were all fake. My friend's hobby
| wasn't collecting memorabilia, it was making fakes. He was
| quite open about the fact that none of it was real and would
| happily describe how he created each piece.
| davidt84 wrote:
| If you're not trying to pass them off as authentic, I think
| they're just called replicas, not fakes.
| sen wrote:
| That's an entire hobby, making replicas. It's only "fake"
| if you're trying to convince people they're real.
| dfltr wrote:
| There's a whole fun additional layer of ethical replica
| hobbyists figuring out how to make replicas that are
| satisfyingly accurate to the original, but difficult for
| an unscrupulous third party to pass off as real.
|
| One of my favorite examples is Gibson replica guitars
| with period-accurate serial numbers, but the serials are
| intentionally stamped during the wrong step in the
| painting & finishing process to signal that they weren't
| assembled at a Gibson factory.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >He was quite open about the fact that none of it was real
| and would happily describe how he created each piece.
|
| His heirs probably won't be so forthcoming.
| xoxxala wrote:
| There is a film essay by Orson Welles called "F for Fake"
| about art forgery, an artist that creates forged works that
| gain value by being works of art in their own right, that
| then takes a sudden turn. I don't want to spoil it, but it's
| a fascinating look at art, truth and lies.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_for_Fake
| philipov wrote:
| > changed his name to match the artist and served his
| sentence by painting and signing a mural
|
| If you kill Santa Claus, you must _become_ Santa Claus!
| quirino wrote:
| The poster acknowledges this: "I will lose thousands".
|
| https://www.elitefourum.com/t/many-of-the-pokemon-playtest-c...
| kabes wrote:
| From what I understand in the topic the original Pokemon card
| inventor is involved in this as is a renowned card grading
| company (knowingly or not I leave out of the question).
|
| So if this stirs up a large controversy, it might actually make
| the fakes, especially the signed ones, collectibles as well.
| Probably never the value they first had, but I hope the wistle
| blower can recover some of his losses.
| unreal37 wrote:
| Yes imagine if Andy Warhol were alive and involved in selling
| forgeries of his own work... is it still a forgery then?
| bink wrote:
| If he said he painted them in the 70's, yes.
| fredoralive wrote:
| Well, it works for Damien Hirst (allegedly).
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You can tell they're fakes because they're the Facebook
| logo in different colours.
| Salgat wrote:
| The whole point is that they were supposed to be genuine
| prototypes from the 90s.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| If you're spending thousands of dollars on collectible pokemon
| cards, you probably aren't strapped for cash.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| Reminds of the fake "sealed" authentic NES cartridges going for
| thousands of dollars or more on Ebay. It is a very lucrative
| business for scammers.
| thih9 wrote:
| Reminds me of a friend that was selling "signed" comic books in
| high school. He did it for pocket money, infrequently and never
| exceeding $50 profit.
|
| And there were many before him. Wikipedia writes that "in 2016,
| a relic of True Cross held by Waterford Cathedral in Ireland,
| was radiocarbon dated to the 11th century by Oxford
| University."[1]
|
| Authentic collectibles are a timeless scam.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Lol, it is a running joke that there are enough fragments of
| the "true" cross to build a forest.
| NateEag wrote:
| I prefer the version that says "There are enough pieces of
| the true cross to build Noah's Ark."
| kadoban wrote:
| Even funnier to me, there are relics of real people around,
| it used to be a big thing historically. So there's some
| saints or whatever where there's 3 or more "arm of X"
| floating around, multiple heads for the same person, all
| kinds of fun stuff.
| Suppafly wrote:
| It's cool that printers have this technology, but the flip side
| is that it actually makes the printers worse at being printers
| for doing prints.
| therein wrote:
| Surprised there is no researcher dumping the SPI flash,
| patching some conditional jumps and doing a write-up.
| bitwize wrote:
| It'd probably get them visited by men in black suits and
| sunglasses if they tried.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Not if they print the write-up.
| astrange wrote:
| Brother printers don't do it iirc, and they're the only good
| brand anyway.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'd say "the least bad brand" rather than "the only good
| brand" because of this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
| SahAssar wrote:
| Are you sure? the only two on the EFF site say they do:
| https://www.eff.org/pages/list-printers-which-do-or-do-
| not-d... and it also says that basically all commercial
| printers do have tracking dots (last updated in 2017).
| kuschku wrote:
| Brother B/W laser don't, Brother CMYK Laser/LED do.
|
| Brother CMYK printers only skip printing the MIC if they
| think they're printing an internal test page in maintenance
| mode.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Yes, it's very cool that I can print some protest leaflets or
| political posters, and have the police at my door the next day
| because "my" printer betrayed me thanks to a literal corporate-
| state conspiracy.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| FYI, these yellow dots are part of a Secret Service program to
| fight counterfeit currency. It was big news a couple decades ago
| and is well understood in art/printing circles. There are host of
| similar programs to protect printed money.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
| illwrks wrote:
| Seconded. The counterfeiters are idiots.
| jsheard wrote:
| Maybe they are, but some of these fakes were authenticated by
| a third party whose entire job is to serve as a trusted
| authority for collectors, so they're even bigger idiots for
| not noticing such a well known tell. This throws everything
| they've ever graded into doubt.
| snet0 wrote:
| Precisely this! This seems like a hard thing to spot from a
| layperson's perspective, but this is literally the purpose
| of their company, and these printer identification dots
| seem to be quite well-known in art and printing circles!
| This should never happen and the fact it did definitely
| should bring some reputational harm to CGC.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Are they? They passed off all these cards and will likely get
| away with it. The people left holding these cards are the
| ones who got 'screwed'. Though collecting, and paying high
| premiums, for pieces of cardboard backed by barely anything
| at all probably means they were screwing themselves to begin
| with. (IE A game of pokemon with 100% proxies is just as fun
| as a game of pokemon with no proxies)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Art forgery is a crime. The original creators could,
| theoretically, be jailed for this.
| debugnik wrote:
| Is it still art forgery if the originals didn't exist? I
| think it's unclear whether these prototype designs were
| ever real or part of the scam.
| sophacles wrote:
| Yes. There have been cases of a "lost work" being
| discovered and then later it's found out that the work
| was a forgery. Here's an article with some examdples:
| https://magazine.artland.com/the-art-of-forgery-art-
| forgers-...
| kmeisthax wrote:
| EURion is a funny[1] kind of DRM, what caught the fake Pokemon
| cards is Xerox DocuColor[0], a watermarking technology.
|
| The difference is that DRM is designed to prevent you from
| copying something, while watermarking is designed to make you
| dox yourself if you copy something. I've yet to see evidence
| that EURion et. all actually stop counterfeiting, but
| watermarking has been very effective at finding counterfeiters.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
|
| [1] Most DRM is intended to enforce copyright; but the state is
| not asserting copyright over the image of a banknote. There are
| cases where it is legal and moral to completely reproduce a
| faithful image of a banknote, and those cases are much broader
| than the various exceptions to copyright that exist.
| jsheard wrote:
| > but watermarking has been very effective at finding
| counterfeiters.
|
| Whistleblowers, too. That's believed to be how they got
| Reality Winner, because the documents published by The
| Intercept contained those tracking dots.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Eurion is part of a series of programs that stop some high-
| end scanner, printers and editing software from handling
| currency. Try scanning/editing/printing a eurion note and you
| will run into roadblocks. That makes it a type of DRM.
| skyyler wrote:
| >watermarking is designed to make you dox yourself if you
| copy something
|
| Is that a legal requirement on paper somewhere?
|
| It seems like an expensive feature to add if not required.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| In case anyone ever wonders why their printer wont print a black
| and white document when its out of yellow? This.
| thih9 wrote:
| One of the many reasons to buy a brother monochrome laser
| printer. I mean the convenience about not needing yellow, not
| necessarily extra privacy - that is still uncertain.
|
| > Other methods of identification are not as easily
| recognizable as yellow dots. For example, a modulation of laser
| intensity and a variation of shades of grey in texts are
| feasible. As of 2006, it was unknown whether manufacturers were
| also using these techniques.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots#Comparab...
| hinkley wrote:
| Is anyone producing HP LaserJet 4 reproductions? It was a
| ridiculously long time before anyone beat that printer.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Laserjet 4000 series outperforms them, is just as
| secure, and is the last line developed before HP quality
| plummeted under Carly. The problem is the cartridges are
| out of production and the NOS ones have a rubber toner seal
| that crumbles when the sealing strip is removed. You do get
| 10k pages on a base cartridge which blows away modern laser
| printers.
| hinkley wrote:
| I recall that for a decade or more there were third
| parties selling remanufactured LJ4 cartridges. I had
| someone explain to me we don't throw away the empties
| because we get a deposit on them.
|
| No such thing with the 4k?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They exist. Quality may be suspect.
| pphysch wrote:
| Yes, I would be stunned if a major mfg like Brother didn't
| have their own method of fingerprinting.
| hatingisok wrote:
| No wonder the yellow in my printer is always empty!
| croisillon wrote:
| especially the yellow in your b&w printer!
| aaroninsf wrote:
| The way humans construct "authenticity" and negotiate the ship of
| Theseus is going to provide so much fodder for the AIs to
| entertain themselves.
|
| Like my father-in-law interrogating me about being vegetarian at
| the dinner table, the sardonic Socratic dialog really writes
| itself...
|
| "OK; but now what if I were to selectively replace the molecules
| of one and only one pigment with a visually identical analog that
| is slightly modified to be more stable over time and with respect
| to UV exposure--could THAT still be an original card?"
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| No, it will be detected as fake due to colorimetry. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorimetry
| krisoft wrote:
| > No, it will be detected as fake due to colorimetry.
|
| That is a different question. You are answering if the usual
| methods would authenticate it as an original. I believe you
| are right that they wouldn't. Thus it would probably be
| worthless.
|
| But that makes sense. There are many modifications you can do
| with a card which will render them useless and no longer
| recognised as an original.
|
| For example you can burn the card to ash. They would not be
| even detected as a pokemon card, but they are still an
| original pokemon card (if they were ever) which got burned
| into ash.
| nemomarx wrote:
| Some people in the magic community alter cards (painting
| over them to expand the artwork or such) and take some
| pride in doing this only with original authentic cards.
| It's interesting, since it won't even clearly resemble the
| original card at the end.
| krisoft wrote:
| Yes it would be an original card modified by you. Was this
| supposed to be a hard question?
| pjc50 wrote:
| But what happens when we ship of Theseus the AIs themselves,
| which as information are infinitely copyable and arguably have
| no "true" identity?
| wxw wrote:
| TIL printer dots! Also curious if someone more familiar with this
| space/community could provide more backstory here. Reading some
| of the comments in the forum, it seems like 1) these "beta cards"
| surfaced a while ago and have been a contentious topic since, 2)
| a card authenticator business is involved. What's the scale of
| this scheme? What's the impact going forward/how much money is
| tied into this?
| niwtsol wrote:
| It looks like CGC - one of the big card graders - has touted
| their ability to grade some very early Pokemon The Card Game
| playing cards (even alpha test cards printed in very low
| numbers). Here is their grading scale on their site
| https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/13347/
|
| People have purchased these CGC cards on ebay assuming they
| were legit based on the above certifications. It looks like
| total cards is something like 6 test decks of 26 cards of the
| alpha prototype - so the rarest example is fairly small, but I
| think it goes up as they got to later pre-release versions.
| Furthermore, there are some cards that were signed by Akabane
| (a co-creator of the game) and those have the presence of the
| yellow dots - meaning those are most likely not legit pre-
| production cards. One of those signed cards was sold for $200k
| I believe - https://www.cgccards.uk/news/article/13661/
|
| So total financial impact of this directly in low millions?
|
| This reddit thread has more reddit style conversation about it
| w/ some data mixed in
| https://www.reddit.com/r/PokeInvesting/comments/1ibjlch/poke...
| wxw wrote:
| Thank you! Looks like CGC is in a tough spot. The grading
| guide struck me as quite vague.
|
| > CGC Cards utilized all the tools at our disposal to help
| document and authenticate these cards, compiling vast
| resources for comparison with future submissions. A very
| thorough process is in place for the authentication and
| grading of these cards using ones verified by Mr. Akabane.
|
| In an ideal world, it seems like there should be publicly
| shared, repeatable methods/standards for authenticating cards
| to avoid issues (whether complicit or an honest mistake) like
| this from a single central authority.
| matsemann wrote:
| > _TIL printer dots!_
|
| Are these dots why some printers refuse to print b&w when you
| have no yellow left?
| marcodiego wrote:
| I want to buy a printer but I want it to simply print what I tell
| it to (which indeed is exactly how it should behave). What can I
| do?
| wayvey wrote:
| I wonder if a pen plotter could replace a BW printer, probably
| adequate only for certain types of documents.
| leshenka wrote:
| We got open source 3d printers you can build at home __before__
| open source regular printers that you can build at home
|
| How come?
| ndileas wrote:
| 2-d printing is a hard, boring problem and many people
| increasingly print very little, especially hackers.
| bragr wrote:
| While most of the printer is pretty simple mechanically and
| electronically, inkjet heads and laser drums are going to be
| beyond the ability of most home hobbyists. Even dot matrix
| heads would be pretty complicated to fabricate with lots of
| tiny precise parts.
| craftkiller wrote:
| I don't think this is the reason because someone could
| harvest the heads from an existing printer and make
| everything else open source.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It genuinely seems that a 3D printer is easier to build; the
| precision and resolution required is significantly less than
| for photo-quality (or even document-quality) printing, right?
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Previous discussions on hackernews (see this comment [0])
| claim that the paper handling hardware is part of the
| problem. It's apparently quite difficult to do reliably
| (thus all the 90s jokes about paper jams) and all the known
| solutions are locked up under patent
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37007815
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I wonder if part of that problem could be solved by going
| back in time, and printing on something like the
| accordion-folded paper favored by dot-matrix printers, or
| even a full roll of 8.5 inch wide paper that then gets
| _sliced_ into 11 inch long chunks after the ink is
| applied?
|
| Then we just have to solve all the other problems :)
| VOIPThrowaway wrote:
| Truly high-speed printers do that.
|
| Think of the printer that prints out all the Chase credit
| card statements for millions of customers. It uses a
| "roll to cut sheet system"
|
| Example: https://offtechne.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2012/12/Roll_to_Cut...
| Ekaros wrote:
| I kinda don't buy patents at this point. There were very
| decent printers in 90s and those have any patent expired
| already.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because people aren't okay with manual feeding, print times
| in minutes to hours, and 0.4mm resolutions on printed text.
|
| open source plotters that fulfill these requirements _do_
| exist. Commercial solutions are just far more mature and
| accessible for printed text.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The commercial printers are fine for all normal uses and
| absurdly cheap. Ink, less so.
|
| Whereas 3D printers are a niche tech for tinkerers; playing
| with building the printer is as much a part of the fun as
| actual usable output.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Buy Fuji Dimatix print heads and build your own.
| bityard wrote:
| Monochrome laser printers don't have tracking dots.
|
| (* That I have seen evidence of.)
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Good luck with your currency counterfeiting.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| I'm curious how long it has been since an even half-way
| convincing fake could be printed on a home printer (even if
| it were totally unlocked). My guess is quite a while. Maybe
| you could do it for small denominations that don't have color
| shifting inks, but I'm pretty sure that paper that even sort
| of approximates the feel would make it not economically
| viable, even on a home printer.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The reason most of it gets detected is that it doesn't
| succeed at being half convincing.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Yeah, that was my point: these rules aren't really
| preventing counterfeiting, because even if you were
| allowed to print currency on a home printer, it wouldn't
| work, because it would be trivially obvious as fakes. It
| sounds like you are saying that making trivially obvious
| counterfeit bills is still possible, which seems like it
| even further supports the fact that these rules aren't
| very useful.
| sophacles wrote:
| There's only like ~55 billion us banknotes in circulation
| (according to uscurency.gov). It wouldn't surprise me to
| find out that banks' counting machines scan each of them,
| and put the serial number and location into a database,
| and that database flags bad serial numbers and things
| like "this serial number is also claimed to be in a vault
| 1000 miles away" - causing the bill to be flagged, set
| aside, and turned over to the secret service.
|
| The working set of data needed for this type of thing
| could probably be stored in a couple TB - small enough to
| be in a single (beefy) server's RAM.
| marcodiego wrote:
| If, in our current world, the only reason you see for privacy
| is to commit a crime, then the shame is on you.
| Ekaros wrote:
| It makes one really wonder why this is not absolute basic step in
| the "authentication" process. You could pretty much automate this
| as part of documentation process.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I guess if the cards are easily rejected then the
| counterfeiters will improve their process.
| MrJagil wrote:
| If you're interested in this kind of thing, Tavis King is one of
| the more knowledgable people with regards to mtg. Here's him
| mapping a booster to print sheet, to see how many Lotus' are
| still out there, possible to be opened:
| https://youtu.be/nnYe8FWTu_o?feature=shared&t=184
|
| edit: If you want the very technical version, here's a video from
| his own channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwnYLvWdNd8
| eieio wrote:
| I remember reading a story about a (now) well-known MTG player.
| It was about their experience at one of their first
| tournaments, and had this detail about how during the tourney
| he got some pointers from Kai Budde (I think) on drafting - and
| in particular on print sheets.
|
| My memory is fuzzy, but it was something like "Kai looked at a
| few of the boosters in a practice draft, and then was able to
| tell us (something) about the cards that should be in the
| remaining packs just by reasoning about print sheets."
|
| I'm sure I'm getting the details wrong here - I'm not positive
| that it was Kai, and I don't have a good enough mental model of
| print sheets to know what was possible back then. And I _think_
| these skills aren 't relevant today (?)
|
| But I thought it was a fascinating detail. It's always fun to
| hear about the wrinkles that serious players of a game pick up
| on in order to find an edge.
|
| (I've searched for the story a few times and haven't been able
| to find it; I just don't remember enough about it now)
|
| edit: some discussion below, but I think the story here is
| approximately "Kai memorized all possible print runs, which was
| feasible to do back then, and was therefore able to back out
| which cards had probably been drafted and who was probably
| holding them" or something like that. Nothing about reasoning
| about runs across boosters!
| zos_kia wrote:
| There is a woman who found a way to game casino black jack
| and made millions out of it before getting caught. It's
| nearly impossible to replicate but it involved spotting
| imperfections in the way print sheets are cut up into
| individual cards.
|
| I don't remember her name but she was an associate of poker
| legend Phil Ivey, and there's a whole documentary on YouTube
| about it. It's pretty fascinating what greed and a ridiculous
| level of risk tolerance can achieve.
| Fuzzwah wrote:
| Cheung Yin 'Kelly' Sun. The tactic is called edge sorting
| [1], they played Baccarat and had the dealers turn certain
| cards 180 degrees "for luck".
|
| Here's a great doco about it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEkl2yAdoHw
|
| Lots of coverage around the gambling news sites too:
|
| https://highstakesdb.com/news/high-stakes-reports/phil-
| ivey-...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_sorting
| kbenson wrote:
| I thought this sounded familiar, and yeah it was covered
| here in the past
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13226725 and
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7631091
| mohaine wrote:
| They were actually changing the deck in way that survives
| shuffling, not just looking at the differences.
|
| They were using the offset on the printing as a way to tell
| orientation of the card. Since auto shufflers never rotate
| the cards, any rotation they added would persist allowing a
| way to tell good from bad cards in future hands.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >It's pretty fascinating what greed and a ridiculous level
| of risk tolerance can achieve.
|
| I feel like it's less greed when they're gaming back
| casinos that already have a house edge.
|
| Counting cards ,being able recognize cards, it seems like
| anything where a person might use their brain to deduce
| what's next is "cheating"
| Y_Y wrote:
| Greed and cheating needn't be realted. The players are
| following this strategy to make money, presumably more
| than they should want. Whether they're taking it from
| moral or immoral sources should be a separate issue,
| imho.
| bredren wrote:
| Reminds me of Michael Larson's breaking of Press Your Luck.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Your_Luck_scandal
| thom wrote:
| I thought it was less that you could predict across packs and
| more that you could infer what card had been taken given what
| was left. That meant you had a better chance of not getting
| cut during the draft.
| eieio wrote:
| Yeah I'm sure I've fumbled some details here (sorry!) - I'm
| searching for this story again and haven't found it, but
| have found a few things about draft techniques that use
| print sheets[1] that focus on what you describe - reasoning
| about the original pack based on the current contents. The
| technique is pretty interesting!
|
| [1] https://imgur.com/a/how-to-use-print-runs-to-gain-
| advantage-...
| oflannabhra wrote:
| Most of MtG's secondary market value is protected by how
| difficult it is (or how costly it is) for cheap printers to
| match Cartamundi's (and other global printers) offset printing
| processes. The number of counterfeit tests (green dot, black
| layer, Deckmaster, etc) that are simple and useful for basic
| users to determine counterfeits all trace back to the printing
| processes WotC uses.
|
| I am amazed by how much value is protected by such a small
| technological detail
| nyczomg wrote:
| Printer dots also led to the arrest of Reality Winner who leaked
| an internal NSA document to The Intercept which published it
| unredacted.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_Winner
| perihelions wrote:
| The KGB caught some Soviet dissidents the same way. They had a
| (mandatory) register of the unique imprint pattern of every
| mechanical typewriter.
|
| - _" Nightmare for the KGB: The Advent of Photocopy Machines"_
|
| - _" In the early 1960s the Soviet ruling elite--in this case,
| the KGB's Fifth Directorate, responsible for ideology and
| counter-subversion, and the Agitprop Department, the party's
| main watchdog over "ideological" matters --imposed special
| procedures for introducing newly invented photocopying
| machines. The procedures were designed to prevent the use of
| photocopying machines for producing copies of materials viewed
| as undesirable by the authorities."_
|
| - _" Decades earlier, a similar approach was used for
| typewriters. Proprietors of offices and stores had to provide
| local KGB branches with sheets of paper showing examples of the
| font of every typewriter they had. These sheets enabled the
| KGB, using technical procedures, to determine the origin of any
| typed text."_
|
| - _" In one case that occurred at my present place of
| employment--the Institute of World Economy and International
| Relations--the KGB traced an "illegal" social-democratic-
| oriented journal advocating "socialism with a human face" to a
| typewriter belonging to the secretary of the Institute's
| director. Only a few dozen copies of the journal had been
| produced, but this proved to be enough to put five or six young
| people in jail for a year. The Institute's director fired his
| secretary, who had permitted her son-in- law to use her
| typewriter to produce the illegal copies."_
|
| - _" The only typewriter I knew of that could not be traced by
| the KGB was one I had in my home. It had been presented as a
| gift to my father, Soviet statesman Anastas Mikoyan, when he
| made an official trip to East Germany and visited a factory
| there that produced typewriters."_
|
| https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Eroding-the-Soviet-...
| ( _" Eroding the Soviet "Culture of Secrecy"_, Sergo A. Mikoyan
| (2001))
| kuschku wrote:
| This was a plot point in the oscar-winning movie "Das Leben
| der Anderen"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lives_of_Others)
| astrange wrote:
| Ideally she would be pardoned but only if she agrees to go by
| Leigh so we can stop pretending it's normal for someone to be
| named "Reality Winner".
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I remember trying to print out fake magic cards in the late 90s
| (I picked a non-valuable card). I used two passes: a dye-sub
| printer with a laser for the black text. It looked great to the
| naked-eye, but trivial to see the difference due to differing
| print technology under a microscope. I'm slightly surprised that
| examination of the CMY pattern in the color wouldn't have been
| sufficient to identify a fake.
|
| [edit]
|
| Just re-read the post and realized these were identified as fake
| just from the picture posted online. That makes a lot more sense.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I remember my son really wanting a copy of _The Nightmare
| before Christmas_ which Disney wasn 't selling at the time
| because, at least then, they regularly let movies go out of
| print.
|
| I found a "used" copy on AMZN which was obviously a fake with
| inkjet printing on the box and the disc, metadata on the disc
| indicating it was a DVD+R, etc.
|
| Served Disney right.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I've gotten new movies on DVD-Rs from Amazon before. Also
| clearly pirated since they just played the movie when you put
| it in rather than a forced showing of the FBI warnings &c.
| hinkley wrote:
| In a game where there are rules about deck content, but
| scarcity around the existence of cards, I don't see the ethical
| problem with counterfeiting a card for personal use.
|
| If you add a fifth ace to a deck in the middle of a poker game,
| that's cheating. If poker decks were printed without aces but
| aces were allowed, then why should anyone care how you got
| these four aces, as long as they were shuffled fairly into the
| deck? Just play the damn game.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| Because part of playing the game for "bring your own deck"
| competitions is the time/effort/money that went into
| acquiring the cards. It's as much about "making the best deck
| you can with the cards you can get your hands on" as it is
| about just making the best deck you can.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| But that effectively just makes it a game about measuring
| how much disposable income you have.
|
| To put it another way, any 15 year old kid can put in the
| time and effort to assemble a great deck, but may not have
| the money. Should that kid not be allowed to compete on
| that basis alone?
| hinkley wrote:
| Someone else made a subtle assertion that the sponsors of
| the event expect commerce to occur at the event. I don't
| have any reason to doubt that's the case.
| derefr wrote:
| My understanding is that the inherent rarity of some cards is
| actually part of the game's balancing. If everyone can have
| every card (or worse, _multiples_ of every card), then some
| vaguely game-breaking cards, or combinations of cards -- that
| normally don 't matter / aren't theory-crafted, because of
| their rarity -- would suddenly be everywhere, in every
| tournament deck, creating a "dominant strategy" for the game,
| in turn necessitating those cards be banned. Even though
| those cards/combos would have been perfectly fine and fun and
| not-broken, had they stayed rare.
|
| (Or at least, that's how MtG was _originally_ designed to be
| balanced; I think this _may_ have changed with MtG Online.)
| Ekaros wrote:
| And then it was discovered that it is effective tactic to
| make money. You could sell all cards in the set for 50 or
| alternatively you could sell bunch of packs mostly filled
| with filler for 150 and get people buy quite lot of them to
| chase the limited set of strong and competitive cards.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| That's usually balanced more by banning or restricting a
| card than by rarity. It may have been part of Garfield's
| early design to use card rarity to limit the meta but it
| simply doesn't work (instead of limiting the cards it would
| limit the competitive players to those who can afford the
| cards). Instead there are multiple formats with different
| sets of permissible cards, from the most permissible
| (vintage, which gives access to any card that has ever been
| printed and is not banned or restricted to 1 copy per deck)
| to the least (standard, which only gives access to cards
| from the most recently-printed sets). The deeper the card
| pool, the more expensive the format as those cards are not
| reprinted due to their gamebreaking power.
| eqvinox wrote:
| I thought this is governed by point-buy systems where you
| have a certain number of points to spend on your deck, and
| powerful cards just cost more points. Not an MtG player
| though, and I assume this also varies from play to play.
| robrtsql wrote:
| There are indeed formats which work this way
| (https://canadianhighlander.ca/points-list/), but
| unfortunately the most-played formats (Commander,
| Standard, Modern..) don't have any such restrictions
| which means the investment required for competitive play
| is prohibitively high.
|
| On the other hand, the ridiculous costs mean it's very
| easy to find like-minded people to play casually with
| using bootleg cards.
| hinkley wrote:
| Now that people are having this discussion, I am
| remembering I have a family member that plays 40k, and
| they have both point buy systems and proxies, since the
| models are so damned expensive and change every four
| years.
| derefr wrote:
| Speaking of 40k, I'm curious if anyone has created a FOSS
| 40k-alike game, where every unit has a standard
| 3D-printable model that is _itself_ a FOSS asset.
|
| Not that that'd be too interesting on its own; but it'd
| almost certainly spawn a community of people creating
| _and sharing_ derivative works of those standard models.
| Could be entire apps / package repositories / "character
| customization engines" built on snapping together
| standardized unit components like LEGOs and then printing
| the result.
| ultimafan wrote:
| Not sure about mainline 40k. But for Horus Heresy
| (official 40k spinoff of an earlier edition) there was an
| absurd amount of free or borderline free (think 5$ for a
| set of files to print an equivalent unit box that would
| have cost you $60 from GW, but you can print as many
| boxes as you want) community created content for resin
| printers. Not just units or vehicle models but also mix
| and match bits similar to what you're talking about
| (helmets, arms, legs, torsos, weapons, to customize both
| official and unofficial models). I remember being blown
| away by how many of the models were on par with or even
| better than what GW was offering for a fraction of the
| price. If you had or knew someone with a resin printer
| you could print 400-500$ armies for 20-30$ of resin. Most
| of the group I played with had at least half of their
| army printed out. And in a lot of ways it's "truer" from
| a hobbyist point of view because instead of buying a box
| of generic troops from GW and painting them according to
| their faction you could wildly customize beyond what the
| official troop boxes came with with printed bits and
| greebles. Some people came up with really creative and
| impressive stuff.
| hinkley wrote:
| I always figured Lego was the way to go here. But Hasbro
| would never be dumb enough to license those properties.
|
| It would be cool however if someone took a standard Lego
| set and rearranged the pieces into a number of units. So
| everyone knew if you wanted a DingleHopper you would buy
| this kit and get one DingleHopper and three Jiggamadoos,
| and trade those to your friend for a pair of Whatsits.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| > I don't see the ethical problem with counterfeiting a card
| for personal use.
|
| Neither does most of the community. We call it proxying. Of
| course it's not allowed in sanctioned play because the
| purpose of sanctioned play is to sell cards, but I've never
| been around a table in someone's basement who cared that the
| sol ring I just played is actually a mountain with "sol ring"
| scribbled on it in sharpie as long as there was no way of
| telling it from the other cards in the deck, it would be
| legal for a real sol ring to be in that deck and I played it
| according to the rules governing sol ring. There are
| different formats to magic and the one with the most
| extensive, and therefore expensive, list of permissible cards
| has competitive decks that run into the tens of thousands of
| dollars invested
| (https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/vintage#paper). If you
| had to buy all of that every time you felt like playtesting a
| new deck people simply wouldn't do it.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| I never played anywhere that allowed fakes but most players
| were ok with you taking a otherwise worthless card (hello
| Lapras my old friend) and marking the face to count as
| something else in Pokemon or otherwise.
|
| Actual fakes were problematic as you can tell the back of
| the card apart generally.
| matsemann wrote:
| What we used to do when I was a kid (before online stores
| were common to use, and had ~4 hours to the closest store
| selling magic cards so only got a new pack once a
| fortnight) was to use plastic sleeves for the whole deck.
| Then you can't really ser from the back if it's a
| printout or a real card.
| Etheryte wrote:
| Yeah I can't really imagine not using sleeves, any cards
| left unsleeved got worn out incredibly quickly.
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Card sleeves are now generally required, at least in
| Magic the Gathering, because of double sided cards.
|
| I have a (casual, goofy) deck with some proxies and I
| earnestly cannot tell the difference when they're
| sleeved.
| mattnewton wrote:
| you're going to sleeve it anyways, unsleeved card backs
| are too easy to mark. I've never played against or with
| an unsleeved deck in a magic tournament, even a draft.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I know that MtG scene in my city plays basically 100% on
| nicely done proxies ;)
|
| Nobody has an issue with it. The courtesy is that it'd be
| nice for you to work towards a real deck if you play with
| it much, but it's not a hard rule or anything.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm actually working on an open source digital card game
| with this in mind.
|
| My favorite digital card games feel half way like scams in
| that if you really need a rare card for a deck, you can
| easily spend 50 or 60$ on packs and come up short. It's
| impossible to just pay 10$ and get the single card I need.
|
| I don't think I'll be able to match the production values
| of MTG( the cards don't even have art, which is a both a
| stylistic choice and my own limitations), but I want
| something self hostable anyone can play.
| Y_Y wrote:
| You may be interested in the excellent rules engine and
| frontend to MtG. All FOSS and with real cards and art. I
| can't imagine the "official" games ever being as good.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Outstanding!
|
| I played with the Android build for a bit. Still not
| ideal since it's ultimately uses someone else's IP, but
| it's very cool.
|
| I hope to get my own prototype up by this summer. The
| logic is all server side ( to prevent cheating), so you
| could even roll your own client.
|
| I'm getting ahead of myself, but I imagine a bunch of
| related projects. Want to play from a Rust cli app, go
| ahead!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > In a game where there are rules about deck content, but
| scarcity around the existence of cards, I don't see the
| ethical problem with counterfeiting a card for personal use.
|
| Where there are high prices of cards, any convincing
| counterfeit would be poor optics. Game play with non-
| convincing counterfeits is accepted in many places (i.e.
| proxies).
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| Yep this. We should be fighting 'pay to win' systems like
| this. Afterall the wealthy person who can afford these rare
| cards will have a natural advantage.
|
| Imagine if dnd was sold in a way that only a few player's
| handbooks had fireball and if you had it, you could cast it.
|
| Its a shame these systems caught on instead of more ethical
| systems. I hope Gen Z ends up burying this consumerist junk.
| mcphage wrote:
| Pokemon is significantly better at this than other trading
| card games (like Magic):
|
| - The rarest cards in every set are usually just alternate
| art versions of other, more common cards from the set.
|
| - They release products with more powerful cards that have
| become popular recently, to increase the supply.
|
| - They release good decks based on what is popular in
| tournaments at a good price ($25-$40, iirc).
|
| - They release copies of tournament winning decks at a
| really good price (like, $15 for the whole deck). These are
| proxy cards--they have a different back, they, don't have
| foil, the printing isn't as high quality. But if you wanted
| to try out a good deck, they're incredibly cheap.
|
| TCGs are inherently predatory, but Pokemon seems to realize
| it's played mostly by kids.
| hinkley wrote:
| Not just wealthy, but also the charismatic. The couple of
| weeks when I knew about baseball cards and they were still
| something anyone cared about, I realized that one of the
| kids I knew was trying to sweet-talk everyone into trading
| them one card we had for a few cards he had.
|
| I had no idea what the meaning of the trade was, I just
| knew that I was probably being tricked, based on the vibes
| he was putting out. And that was the last time I was
| interested in loot boxes.
| wolrah wrote:
| > I'm slightly surprised that examination of the CMY pattern in
| the color wouldn't have been sufficient to identify a fake.
|
| If I'm understanding the post correctly, these counterfeit
| cards were claimed to be from an early playtest which would in
| fact have been printed on normal consumer/office grade printers
| and not using a commercial large scale printing process. Some
| of the fakes are noted to actually have two sets of dots, one
| set from the original printer and another from whatever was
| used to make the fakes.
| eqvinox wrote:
| It would be incredibly funny if these cards are actually genuine
| and someone just didn't bother to set the clock (year) correctly
| on their printer.
|
| (But I don't believe this is the case and am not sure if
| available printers back in 1996 would even emit these patterns in
| this form. Just noting in this case the device's knowledge of
| date and time is also a factor of uncertainty.)
| tart-lemonade wrote:
| One way to check could be to insert the serial number into
| various printer manufacturer's warranty check pages to see if
| anything pops up. Some companies (like Lexmark) require a model
| number first (which was not present for the example), but
| others (like Brother) will accept just a serial.
| jldugger wrote:
| It seems unlikely the printer would choose 2024 if set
| incorrectly though.
| kristianp wrote:
| What personal info is printed in these yellow dots? Are they
| present if I print from Linux? Brother colour laser owner here.
|
| Edit, from [1] posted in this thread it looks like date printed
| and printer serial number are printed. And if it's done by the
| printer firmware it wouldnt help to use OS drivers.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots#Compar...
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Not sure but I'd expect it's handled at the printer firmware
| level and not controllable from the OS. It would be pretty
| weird to let the user modify such a "feature" without even
| having to disassemble their printer.
| Y_Y wrote:
| You could add decoy dots or areas of negative yellow
| kuschku wrote:
| That's exactly what uni dresden developed:
| https://github.com/dfd-tud/deda
| alliao wrote:
| I don't get why yellow isn't subsidised for all the printers I'm
| running out of yellow despite hardly ever printing any colour or
| is this printer manufacturer's subtle protest
| HanayamaTriplet wrote:
| The fact that a large grading company would not check such a
| basic type of forgery makes it seem like they're in on the scam.
| This sounds similar to what happened with video game grading
| company Wata, who were alleged to have fraudulently inflated the
| value of games they were grading:
|
| https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/grading-firm-wata-i...
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I mean grading is a scam all its own so them teaming up with
| other scammers wouldn't surprise me at all.
| nimish wrote:
| Yeah imagine paying top dollar for a Pokemon card that has
| zero market liquidity.
| treypitt wrote:
| PSA is a scam company?
| Ekaros wrote:
| From stories of same exact card being graded for different
| ratings at different times. Would indicate that they are
| less perfect in their service than they might market.
| Difference in grade can change the value.
|
| So as whole the process is quite questionable at times.
|
| Not to even talk about some things slipping through or
| being questionable in documenting.
| mrsilencedogood wrote:
| Difference in grade basically DETERMINES the value. Even
| small steps down from perfect greatly diminish a card's
| value. Basically IGN review scale levels of drop-off.
| TylerE wrote:
| The issue is people have done careful tests where the
| send the EXACT SAME card multiples times and get
| different grades.
| mesh wrote:
| Something can be subjective, without being a scam.
|
| Are you suggesting they are deliberately misleading people,
| or are you saying grading is not consistent and is
| subjective based on circumstance around when the item is
| graded.
| zakki wrote:
| I guess the scam is more like current cryptocurrency.
| devmor wrote:
| I'm not a collector, but my understanding was that the
| point of grading a card was to have a verified, objective
| rating of the card's condition.
|
| If grading is subjective, then I don't see the value of
| the process and would consider it a scam, personally.
| danpalmer wrote:
| The service being sold is the objectivity of the grading
| process, otherwise anyone could just decide they have a
| high grade item.
|
| This sort of thing happens all the time in grading - a
| later reveal shows that earlier gradings were obviously
| incorrect in the mind of any collector. That means that
| they have such a poor objective process as to be no
| better than subjective analysis.
|
| Graders ultimately sell reputation. Like currency,
| grading only works if you believe in it. Don't believe
| the grader? Then their word isn't worth anything. This
| means as more and more of these issues happen, graders
| will struggle to retain that trust, and when it
| disappears it disappears rapidly.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| IDK about PSA specifically, but I've collected comics,
| video games, toys, etc and the one commonality between all
| of them is that there are these big "grading" companies
| that charge money to seal your stuff in a plastic box with
| a label at the top that indicates its "grade" and there is
| _always_ a scam of some sort. Sometimes they 're not
| actually investigating the goods with any real scrutiny,
| sometimes they have a conflict-of-interest involving a
| well-stocked seller, sometimes they're directly
| manipulating the market. There's always something with
| these guys.
|
| Also a lot of their income comes from convincing people who
| aren't educated on the market to grade extremely common
| items that will never be worth any significant amount of
| money no matter what "grade" they get; not actually a scam
| in that case but it shows you what their real priorities
| are.
|
| I've also seen them set up booths at sci-fi conventions
| where you can pay to have them "authenticate" things you
| got signed by celebrities. In this case the authentication
| is entirely separate from the signature so there's nobody
| who can actually testify that they witnessed William
| Shatner signing your crap, only that they know your crap
| and William Shatner were in the same convention center at
| the same time.
| serviceberry wrote:
| I don't think it's an over scam, but let's put it this way:
| as with auction houses, there is a disconnect between the
| service the company is providing and what buyers _think_
| they 're getting. And the companies have no special
| interest in correcting that.
|
| For grading companies and for auction houses, the goal is
| to move the highest possible volume of goods at the highest
| possible valuation. They're not going out of their way to
| root out fraud. They operate with the assumption that 99%
| of the traffic they're handling is legitimate, and of the
| 1% that's forged, only a small fraction of the buyers will
| ever find out in time. On the rare occasion it blows up,
| they can apologize and settle for an amount much less than
| what it would take to investigate every specimen with great
| zeal.
| unreal37 wrote:
| It sounds like they suspect someone who helped design the
| original Pokemon trading card game - Takumi Akabane. A
| prominent investor claims to have gotten the cards directly
| from him and doesn't care if they're fake as a result.
|
| Maybe the original designer wants to make a few more dollars.
| HanayamaTriplet wrote:
| Akabane or the buyer could be the original source of the
| fakes, but the grading company CGC was responsible for
| "verifying" that they were authentic before they were sold at
| auction:
|
| https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/13347/
| tivert wrote:
| So, knowing nothing about Pokemon, it was lost on me if 2024 was
| legitimate or not (I suspected not, but it seems the article kind
| of assumes you know when the cards _should_ have been made).
|
| This article seems to give a clearer picture:
|
| https://www.pokebeach.com/2025/01/millions-of-dollars-of-pro...
|
| > Millions of Dollars of Prototype Pokemon Cards May Be
| Forgeries, Retired Creatures Employee Involved
|
| > The authenticity of the Pokemon TCG's famous "prototype cards"
| are now being called into question.
|
| > Last year, hundreds of prototype Pokemon cards began to sell in
| collecting circles from the personal collection of Takumi
| Akabane, one of the original creators of the Pokemon TCG. He
| worked at Creatures until 2008. He recently attended events to
| sign some of the cards. Grading company CGC worked closely with
| Akabane to verify the cards' authenticity.
|
| > The prototype cards represent the earliest days of the TCG,
| produced in 1996 before Base Set released in Japan. They show the
| progression of Pokemon cards from their "proof of concept" stage
| where they used their Red & Green sprites to their beta designs
| that used their final artwork from Mitsuhiro Arita and Ken
| Sugimori.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I've asked chatgpt to explain to me the pokemon card craze, and
| it gives a long answer, but I still don't understand the videos
| of people shoving shopping carts full of big boxes of Pokemon
| cards...
| daedrdev wrote:
| The answer is they are gambling they can sell them for more
| later
| browningstreet wrote:
| Oh this is a long game? I thought there was an immediate
| trade/return/game involved. I didn't realize Pokemon had
| legs like these... so out of the (game) loop.
| Salgat wrote:
| In 2020 during COVID influencers like Logan Paul got into it
| and made it a fad again.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The article doesn't explain what playtest cards are nor what is
| being caught by their detective work.
|
| It doesn't even mention the word counterfeit.
|
| I can guess what's happening here, but I'd like to know more
| concrete info about the scale and impact of this, how much people
| were paying for these cards, etc.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Yeah this is sorely lacking in context, even the title seems to
| expect the audience to already be familiar with whatever this
| is.
| ziddoap wrote:
| It seems to be a really niche Pokemon forum, so I'm not
| surprised that the post isn't written for a general audience.
| m348e912 wrote:
| My theory:
|
| If you ever wondered why color printers with a separate black ink
| tank won't print a black and white document when it's low on
| color -- it's because they have to print the secret yellow dots
| for fingerprinting purposes and need the color ink to do so.
| Reason077 wrote:
| Solution/hack: buy one of those ink cartridge refill kits, but
| put black ink in the yellow cartridge. That way when you want
| to see the dots they should come up nice and clear?
|
| Obviously this is not going to work out well if you actually
| print in colour.
| WJW wrote:
| Wouldn't that just ruin the document you were trying to
| print?
| Reason077 wrote:
| Well, yes. But the OP was suggesting/suspecting his printer
| prints security dots even when printing in B&W. This could
| be a good way to reveal them for analysis purposes.
| lima wrote:
| That would permanently destroy the yellow ink path.
| chinathrow wrote:
| > they have to
|
| Is this a federal (US) mandate or a law in any other country?
| hyperhopper wrote:
| It is in the US
| 15155 wrote:
| Which statute mandates this?
| ljf wrote:
| There is no law, but is it assumed there is a secret
| agreement with the government https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/Printer_tracking_dots#:~:tex...
| snoman wrote:
| Strictly speaking, no such law exists. My understanding
| is that it's a request from the secret service that all
| of the printer manufacturers have agreed to comply with
| for counterfeiting reasons.
| Clamchop wrote:
| I've looked into it before and I didn't find anything
| suggesting that it's a law. It appears to be willful
| collaboration with the feds and other nation states, possibly
| to avoid the attention of regulators, but it's all done in
| secret so there's not a ton of info.
|
| Along similar lines, scanners and commercial software
| packages like Photoshop attempt to detect EURion dots and the
| digital watermarking that replaced it in currency. Obviously
| open source software has no such thing because it would be
| pointless, and it's not illegal that it doesn't.
|
| For whatever reason, these antifeatures seem to also be
| missing from commercial digital cameras.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is this a federal (US) mandate or a law in any other
| country?
|
| No, its a backdoor regulation in the US (probably using the
| threat of actual regulation premised on controlling
| counterfeiting to get firms onboard) via agreements from
| manufacturers to act without regulation.
| lima wrote:
| For most modern inkjet printers, there's a simple reason: there
| must be ink inside the printhead at all times[1] or some of the
| nozzles will dry out and clog.
|
| [1]: https://superuser.com/questions/409473/how-to-print-in-
| black...
| Rendello wrote:
| This was in the hacker Zeitgeist a few years ago, when "Secret
| Dots from Printer Outed NSA Leaker", though it's unclear whether
| the dots were used or if it was one of the other opsec failures.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14494818
| tzs wrote:
| OT: I've wondered about printed forgeries, but in the context of
| comic books rather than cards.
|
| Suppose someone in the 1960's had bought a printing press of the
| same make/model as what was being used to print Marvel comics.
| Suppose they also bought a large supply of the same ink and the
| same paper and the same staples. They then wait.
|
| Then decades later they can see which 1960's Marvel comics have
| become valuable collectables. The early '60s was when Marvel
| introduced Spider-Man, Thor, the Fantastic Four, Doctor Strange,
| Iron Man, the Avengers, the Hulk, the Black Widow, and the X-Men
| for example, many of which went on to fetch hundreds of thousands
| or even millions for mint condition copies.
|
| They they use their vintage press, ink, paper, and staples to
| print mint condition forgeries.
|
| What would their chances of fooling people be?
| whatevermang wrote:
| I suppose it'd be easier for someone to buy one of each of the
| comics, rather than an industrial size printing press used to
| print comics and hold onto it for 70 years.
|
| I dont think ink, on it's own, has a 70 year shelf life either.
|
| And, aside from having the setup to print stuff with, you still
| need the source material (presumably printing plates or
| whatever) which is where the actual forging comes in. Assuming
| it was printing plates lets say, you'd need to copy them to a
| microscopic level along with every dot on a matching comic
| book.
|
| That's probably quite hard.
| bombcar wrote:
| It depends on if they get too greedy. One or two would probably
| slip in.
|
| But once you get too many, something would be noticed.
| Everything would match, but the ink wouldn't have been on paper
| long enough, that kind of thing.
|
| And the space and requirements to keep everything in wait -
| would be more hassle and expense than just stockpiling copies
| of every comic ever made.
| anyfoo wrote:
| The one factor that might be hard for them to control is
| "aging". Sure, the paper will likely have aged the same, but
| maybe the ink ages differently on paper than on a bottle. (In
| both potential ways: The ink in the bottle may go bad, or it
| may age less than on paper.) I am really not qualified to even
| speculate.
|
| But one thing I want to note is that this scenario does not
| strike me as too different from "what if I had bought or mined
| 100 bitcoin while they were still cents each", which would
| actually have required significantly less effort and even
| foresight.
|
| I don't think anyone originally thought that comic books for
| kids sold at newspaper stands would ever become collector's
| items with such a massive value, so it would probably have been
| rather bizarre for someone to do what you suggested, especially
| since the many factors that you mentioned alone mean that some
| explicit planning for this scenario is likely required for
| things to actually fall into place that way. I'm eager to be
| proven wrong, of course.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I think the problem is that people didn't know comics would be
| valuable. If you knew that, then just buy a bunch of the comics
| and store them safely. It's probably a lot less work, won't get
| stuck with fakes if you can't sell them, and it's 100% legal.
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