PichuCollector

Hey @KaileeS CS @MattM CS, I've spoken to the submitter of the 6 Neo Genesis cards you've graded and they told me that the evidence they provided was from someone who claimed to be awarded these cards as a promotional gift. However they're not wanting to share any further details with me as that person apparently has more square-cut cards which they're planning on buying from them in future - this effectively means they have monopoly over square-cut cards that you'll be grading because they have this connection, which strikes me as completely bias. I feel like there's a lot of strong evidence I've provided here which you're ignoring because I don't have a friend on the inside. This situation is really putting me off submitting any cards to you guys as it feels incredibly unfair that anyone with such a connection gets a free pass whilst genuine collectors like myself who only want cards graded for the sake of encapsulation have to struggle to prove our cards' worth. So as one last-ditch effort to try to convince you to grade a card that I never plan on selling and was hoping I could house in a CGC case: There is no evidence to suggest my Pichu card was hand-cut from a sheet outside of a factory, because... No Neo Genesis holofoil sheets have ever surfaced (see https://pokemuseum.weebly.com/uncut-sheets.html); No other square-cut Neo Genesis Pichu cards have ever surfaced; No duplicates of any of the holofoil Neo Genesis cards have ever surfaced. If you're firm on your stance that you cannot grade this card I'll stop posting and take my business elsewhere.

Hey @MattM CS, any update on this? I've just seen the news about your UK office accepting CGC submissions, and as I'm in the UK I'd love to take this opportunity to send this card and several others your way if I can.

CGC have now graded 7 square cut unlimited Neo Genesis cards: a Lugia, Typhlosion, Azumarill, Jumpluff, Bellossom, Kingdra and Togetic. The only other known square cut Neo Genesis card aside from my Pichu pictured earlier in the thread is a Steelix which sold on eBay back in 2020. Notice that none of the cards here are duplicates. I don't know what WotC provenance this guy had on these (as I'm fairly certain they were bought from a guy on Reddit back in June last year), but I'm confident my Pichu and the above Steelix originated from the same seller as these now-graded cards. Can I now send my Pichu card in for encapsulation with you guys?

Hey Mike, is there any update on this?

In October last year I asked if I could grade one of the grail pieces of my collection: a square cut holofoil Neo Genesis Pichu card. Nobody in the hobby that I've spoken to has ever heard of a Neo Genesis holofoil sheet making its way out into the public, and it's one of only 6 holofoil Neo Genesis square cut cards to have surfaced. The reason I want it encapsulated with CGC is both for protection and so I can store it alongside my other graded Pichu cards. I was told that you no longer grade Wizards of the Coast Pokémon unless it can be proven that it was cut in the factory. Less than two weeks ago you graded the "extremely rare" test print Charizard (https://www.cgccards.com/news/article/10283/test-print-charizard/). This is a card which is known to have been cut from a holofoil test sheet some time between 2008 and 2012 - the owner of the cut up sheet made no attempt to cut the cards in a neat way, and the cards (including a few other Charizard cards) were all sold off individually for between $30 and $50. This square cut Charizard is a Wizards of the Coast Pokémon which is known to have been cut up from a sheet by someone outside of the factory and unrelated to Wizards of the Coast. Yet despite being actively against grading Wizards and Media Factory square cut cards, you happily graded this one. This card has already appeared for sale on eBay, less than 2 weeks after your article was written, with a reserve in the tens of thousands, using your article as a selling point. It wasn't graded for protection or so the owner could cherish it in their collection or proudly display it in its new CGC case - it was instead graded to make a quick buck, and your article has only served to inflate its value. Meanwhile owners of other square cut Wizards of the Coast cards who want them encapsulated to keep in their collections are unable to submit those cards to you because of reasons like "likely NFC". This has left a bit of a sour taste for those of us with older Pokémon cards that we want encapsulated, and I figure now is probably the best time to open up a new discussion about the matter. I don't know if my square cut Pichu card was cut by a Wizards employee, at the Wizards factory or in some guy's basement with his toenail scissors, but what I do know is that it's one of fewer known examples to exist than this Charizard card and on top of that is cut a lot cleaner. Your grading of this card goes against your unwillingness to grade other older square cut Pokémon cards, and presents a strange bias. I'm not like the submitter of the Charizard card - I'm not wanting to grade my card for a quick flip. I'm instead wanting to protect my card and proudly display it in a CGC case alongside the other cards in my collection. Will CGC be more open to grading older square cut Pokémon cards now that the scissor-cut test Charizard has been graded? Edit: I did some digging and it looks like one guy back in 2009 had not 1, not 2, but 10 of these test sheets: https://pokegym.net/community/index.php?threads/pokemon-test-sheet-older-than-1998-1st-edtion-cards.106023/. That's at least 60 of these Charizard cards if all 10 were cut up. Yet not a single Neo Genesis holofoil sheet is known to exist. Edit 2: Here's that PokéGym thread with working images: https://web.archive.org/web/20090802160943/http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?t=106023 This picture is a different sheet to the one your news story shared as it's missing the color bar down the side. This is a square cut card which originates from a sheet which had multiple copies leaked out to the public. My Pichu is the only known example of its kind and we've never seen a Neo Genesis holofoil sheet surface. By all accounts this would make my Pichu card here rarer than this Charizard - so why should this Charizard get preferential treatment? Sorry if this has turned into a bit of a rant, I just feel a bit let down by CGC.

It's sad to see that this PWCC shill bidding rhetoric is still circulating. I've used PWCC to both buy and sell hundreds of graded Pokémon since early 2018 and I've never experienced any shill bidding first hand. When they operated on eBay their higher-end auctions used to get frequently targeted by fake bidders (as did a lot of higher-end Pokémon auctions), but since their partnership with eBay has ended this doesn't appear to be happening anywhere near as often. I believe that eBay's story about PWCC shill bidding came about after eBay learned of PWCC's plans to make their own TCG marketplace, and eBay fabricated the story to lessen the impact of people moving over to there - after all there was no reason for eBay to ever make that news public, let alone email it to everyone who had ever bought trading cards on eBay's platform. I think eBay has shaped this negative public perception of PWCC as a publicity stunt, and it's sad to see that this is still causing PWCC grief. Finally in CGC's defence they've graded over 50,000 Pokémon since their pop report went live just over 3 weeks ago, so I don't think it can be said that these are desperate measures or that people aren't submitting to CGC any more - if anything CGC is doing very well. I don't think CGC is devoid of things to complain about, but this partnership with PWCC certainly isn't one of them. I think this will benefit CGC more than it benefits PWCC.

Fantastic, thanks for fixing the issue so quickly!

Thanks Mike! I appreciate the quick response.

Hey CGC. For the past couple of years I've been running a completely free Pokémon grade metrics website which collates various pop report data on a weekly basis and gives users statistics and a historic overview of how Pokémon grades are changing over time. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to directly link to it here, so instead what I can do is show how I've been able to make use of your pop report data so far, which you may have already seen in the form of infographics on my personal Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/CcBdGjqrKmL and https://www.instagram.com/p/CcS3MCwI0KW. This morning I turned my attention to your Pokémon pop report once again as I did last Wednesday and the Wednesday before, only to discover that nothing has actually publicly changed since last week. Upon doing some more digging, I found that a dateModified field your pop report exposes reveals that the pop report data gets updated at seemingly random times (7th March, 17th March, 1st April, 4th, 5th and 6th April, with no additional updates having been made public since). My long-term plan for the website I run is to hopefully freely work with you to help make your pop report as accessible as possible to the Pokémon community. Where your pop report has only recently gone live I'm not in a position to put across my use case to you just yet, but I figure it'd help if I was transparent from the get go. I wanted to reach out to you to ask a couple of questions about the data you have: Is the plan for your pop report data to update on a more regular basis going forward? Are there any plans for developers like myself to be able to subscribe to updates or more directly access the data you have? Many thanks, James

Hey guys. I wanted to start by thanking you for releasing the population report - I'm really happy to finally be able to have a look through all the weird and wonderful cards you've graded, and I'm genuinely impressed by the quantity of Pokémon you've graded in such a short time. Pokémon Japan's HeartGold & SoulSilver set was split into two parts: HeartGold Collection (with a red L1 set label) and SoulSilver Collection (with a blue L1 set label). Both sets were only released in full in 1st edition, and the only unlimited cards to have been released in those sets that we're aware of are: HeartGold Collection's 015/070 and 016/070 Ho-Oh LEGEND cards; SoulSilver Collection's 028/070 and 029/070 Lugia LEGEND cards; HeartGold Collection's 022/070 Totodile; SoulSilver Collection's 006/070 Chikorita; SoulSilver Collection's 014/070 Cyndaquil. The Ho-Oh and Lugia LEGEND cards were released as part of a "Legendary Pokémon Present Campaign", and so far we're unaware of how the 3 starter Pokémon were distributed - we only know that those exist. I was surprised today to check your population report to find some additional cards from the SoulSilver Collection set are listed on your pop report as having been graded without being denoted as 1st edition: A CGC 9 009/070 Meganium (link); A CGC 8 017/070 Typhlosion (link); A CGC 6.5 031/070 Pichu (link); A CGC 9 032/070 reverse Pikachu (link). For my own sanity as a Pichu collector I was able to track down the CGC 6.5 Pichu and found that this one is mislabelled (the 1st Edition symbol on these sets is located in the lower left corner): https://www.cgccards.com/certlookup/3759120396. I'm assuming the other three cards are also mislabelled, but I wasn't able to find those online. If these aren't mislabelled, could you kindly share a picture of them? This would be a new discovery for most of us in the Pokémon community who care about this set. Many thanks!

I'm excited to see the CGC pop report but I think it's fair to be somewhat critical at this point - it's not like the CGC pop report is something they're developing from scratch. The CSG pop report launched over a month and a half ago and aside from requiring a different set of images the CGC version should be otherwise identical. As for the fastest, I believe HGA had their pop report up and running after just a few months. It's somewhat irrelevant though as both companies have the data available to them, it's just a case of exposing that data for public consumption. CGC haven't been hugely open about why it's taking them so long, but I can only assume there have been a lot of unforeseen infrastructure issues along the way.

That's great to hear. There are a lot of exciting new TCGs being released with a collectible focus at the moment and I'm sure there would be a lot of interest in being able to get those cards graded through CGC.

In CGC's recent announcement about grading 11 new TCGs you mention: This already reads as though it was written before Nostalgix launched on Kickstarter (which already happened last month), but that aside I'm curious to know why CGC has chosen Nostalgix over the dozens of other trading card games which have already been funded and launched through Kickstarter (like Polywog) or are currently doing better than Nostalgix on Kickstarter (like Grand Archive TCG). There are no posts on the forum mentioning Nostalgix which predate the announcement, so I'm guessing this was a deal worked out between CGC and the creators of Nostalgix rather than something which came about from customer interest in the TCG? Are there any plans for CGC to grade other Kickstarter-funded TCGs like those I mentioned above?

Thanks for your response. I don't believe that this was just some guy grading cards from their extensive collection, as you put it. I believe I have the most extensive Pichu card collection in the world, but I can't imagine CGC would have any interest in collaborating with me to allow me to have my own custom label design and pedigree. If the cards CGC had graded for him were unique, rare or vintage I would completely buy into the "submitted from his collection" statement, but the reality is that you've graded over 200 cards with this custom label which are almost entirely valueless modern main set cards consisting of a lot of duplicates. (Case in point: two reverse holofoil Champion's Path Kakuna cards (https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/3905790148 and https://www.cgccomics.com/certlookup/3905790149 - two cards which are readily available on the market in mint condition for less than $0.25). Aoki's Cardhouse is more akin to a brand than a collection, advertising for companies like MetaZoo, promoting NFTs and - most relevant to CGC - using his PSA "Aoki's Collection" pedigree label to fetch higher prices on PSA-graded cards which he frequently grades and auctions off on Instagram and through his eBay page, or worse, act as bait in his questionable charity drives. My concern here is that you've unintentionally given him extra fuel to deceive people out of their money. Not only does he have a PSA pedigree to use and abuse, but now he also has a fancy CGC label that regular submitters have no access to. Even if CGC is not directly associated with the Aoki Foundation, you've collaborated (CGC's own words) with the foundation's frontman and these cards will very likely feature in sales disguised as charity drives in future. This is irrespective of whether you did this in partnership with him, as some sort of favouritism towards him or simply because you believe that he does have some extensive and noteworthy Pokémon collection consisting of a handful of quite literally worthless modern cards. CGC has done a fantastic job building trust and respectability in the TCG community, but acts like this leave a sour taste in a lot of people's mouths. Until the Aoki Foundation publishes their financial information I will continue to believe that Steve Aoki is a fraud who is abusing the trust of the Pokémon TCG community for financial gain - regardless of it being a direct association between CGC and the Aoki Foundation, there is now a direct association between CGC and Steve Aoki. tl;dr: All I'm trying to do here is prevent people from being unknowingly scammed. The Aoki Foundation currently has all the hallmarks of being a fraudulent organisation, and if anyone here is seriously considering donating I insist you please do some due diligence and put your money to better use. I personally only donate to charities which put at least 80% of their donations towards the cause(s) they support, and at present I have no reason to believe Aoki's Foundation even hits 5%. Steve Aoki is not somebody CGC should have any interest in doing business with.

Yesterday CGC posted on Instagram about a collaboration between CGC and Steve Aoki's Cardhouse (link). Today I left a comment on the post, but figured Instagram wasn't the best place for any sort of discussion to occur, so I've come here to make a more detailed thread. This is not a thread I want to be writing, but I can't sit idly by whilst someone CGC is now associated with is potentially committing fraud. Before I begin, this is the response I left on Instagram in full: Steve Aoki began dealings with the Pokémon community in a charity drive in late 2019 in partnership with PSA. People were required to donate money to Aoki's Aoki Foundation and in turn would receive PSA-graded Pokémon cards autographed by Steve Aoki. During this event it became clear that the Aoki Foundation wasn't at all transparent, so a few of us set out to get the foundation to publicise their financial information so that we could be sure the money being donated would go to the causes they claimed they were supporting. Our calls were ignored, and as such bodies like Charity Navigator still nearly 2 years on have no accountability information for the Aoki Foundation (link). At the start of 2020 the Aoki Foundation's 2018 IRS 990PF tax form was made available publicly (link), revealing that of $202,000 raised in donations, only $10,000 went towards charity (as a donation to the American Red Cross, specifically). No other IRS 990PF forms have been made publicly available, and as such it is currently unknown how much money the Aoki Foundation has received and what percentage of that money has benefited the charities it claims to support. Since 2019 the Aoki Foundation has been involved in several other charitable events aimed at the Pokémon community, including the most recent "Pokémon Saves The World" box break in partnership with Goldin Auctions. I made a writeup on E4 revealing that the majority of money the charity foundations this auction benefited had either no financial accountability or saw less than 55% of proceeds raised having any impact on the cause they support - one of which, the Collaboration Center Foundation, sees over half of the donations they receive going towards salaries paid to the founder and the treasurer. These charitable organisations were hand-picked by the Aoki Foundation (link). It's now almost 2022 and the Aoki Foundation has failed to answer calls to provide financial transparency, which is something legitimate charitable organisations would provide without hesitation. It is believed by a lot of people in the Pokémon community that the Aoki Foundation is nothing more than a tax haven which has deceived thousands of people out of millions of dollars. The PSA signing event was supposed to be a one-off, but Steve Aoki still personally autographs his own cards and gets them graded by PSA to sell on the Aoki Foundation's eBay page in listings which make no claims that the money benefits the foundation in any way. He also frequently uses and misuses Pokémon's IP to advertise his collection and his foundation. Steve Aoki now can and no doubt will use his new found collaboration with CGC to grade cards with CGC in the same way. Dear CGC, please either stop all dealing with Steve Aoki, or use your new found partnership with him to pressure him into doing what's right and letting us all know exactly where our donations to his charity foundation end up, because right now a lot of us believe those donations are doing nothing more than lining his own pocket and the pockets of those associated with him.

I just got my first submission back. Very happy with the quality of the slabs and the customer service in general - many thanks to @PaulS. especially for the speedy replies. 💯

I'm afraid to say that this is a "fake". I put that in quotes because it's actually a real card but what is displayed on the front is not original - it's had the real design printed over. The real card as you can probably imagine is part of Bandai's officially licensed Pokémon Anime Collection which ran from early 1998 to late 2000. These cards depicted scenes from the anime and on the back it repeats the image which should be displayed on the front and gives a brief overview of what was going on in the scene. This particular card is number 103 and would have likely been part of the 2nd or 3rd release (mid-late 1998). These fakes I believe almost all originate from China and are almost as old as the original cards themselves - these were distributed to the US and were commonly available in unofficial Pokémon-branded vending machines which also awarded a whole assortment of other fake cards. You see all sorts of different fake versions of these cards, from non-holofoil cards given holofoil treatment (which other companies have blindly graded in the past) to weird and wonderful complete design replacements like on your card here. I've attached an image of what the front of this card should look like - they've printed over the front of it with imagery which I believe is from one of the early Pikachu Records CDs overlaid on a very bizarre holofoil effect.

For the most part sub-grades only really matter for grades above 8.5 as they give an indication of how close it may have otherwise been to a 10. On top of that it's often cheaper to buy a graded near mint card than it is to buy a raw "near mint" card, so a lot of people buy graded cards to crack out of their cases to stick in their binder collections. You don't really need sub-grades for that at all - just a quick glance at the card to make sure it's what you're expecting. If it's a not too hard to find grade 8.5 or higher card that I'm buying for the sake of adding to my collection I most certainly would prefer sub-grades. If it's a very rare card or has a lower grade the sub-grades make little difference to me.

CGC has followed PSA and BGS to attribute the year 1999 to Japan's Neo 1 (Gold, Silver, to a New World...) set. On 10th December 1999 the Neo Premium File 1 was released in Japan, introducing the 9 cards which made up the generation 2 starter Pokémon evolution set (Chikorita through to Feraligatr), however the remainder of the set wasn't released until 4th February 2000 (this can be verified at https://www.pokemon-card.com/products/neo/). I've attached a picture of a CGC-graded Pichu card from the set which I've cropped from an eBay listing. Pichu here was not part of Neo Premium File 1 and did not appear until the main set release in 2000. Has 1999 been attributed to all cards from the set for ease of cataloguing or is this an oversight?