Genuine Pokemon cards will have excellent centering… the border around the card will be uniform on all sides.
Really bad counterfeit cards won’t bother re-mastering the text and instead will scan the card and “cut out” the text… making the text really thin and blurry, a dead giveaway it’s a fake. Also make sure the font weight is the same… usually the fake card will have letters that are a bit bolder, or lighter, than a genuine card. Examine the text from a known genuine card and make sure the shape of each letter is the same. If you’ve got a good eye for typography you’ll notice this right away. If the numbers are unrealistically high, it’s probably a fake.ĭo the fonts match genuine Pokemon cards? The counterfeit cards will often pick a font that is similar but not an exact match. For example, a real card will always have the accent symbol like “Pokémon”… but a counterfeit might have “Pokemon” without the accent symbol.Īre the HP and Attack numbers the same? Fake cards will often inflate these numbers in an attempt to make them more powerful. TextĬompare your card to a genuine version (look it up on mavin.io)… is the text an exact match? I’ve seen fakes with misspelling, different wording, incorrect line breaks, even missing punctuation. It’s simply too hard for them to reproduce with the same quality as a genuine card. If they do attempt a holographic effect it often won’t shine and shimmer to the same degree a genuine card will. Often times the counterfeiter won’t even bother trying to recreate the shiny/shimmering holographic effect and print off a non-holographic version of the card, making it look blurry. Holographic effects are hard to counterfeit. Try looking at the back of the Pokemon card and compare the color shading to a genuine card… the genuine card will have more color variations in the shading than a fake Pokemon card. The fake cards will look a bit blurry and have more or less vibrant colors than genuine cards. The process for printing Pokemon cards is a closely kept secret… counterfeiters don’t use the same sophisticated printing process resulting in a card that looks like it was scanned into a graphics program and printed on an inkjet printer. You can often feel the difference just by rubbing your finger across the surface… compare this to a genuine card and you’ll realize the card stock they used isn’t the same as a genuine card. It’s tough for the counterfeiter to get just the right amount of gloss. You’ll notice counterfeit cards won’t have the same glossiness as a genuine card… or they’ll be too glossy. Go easy on the cards… it would be a shame to crease a genuine card by doing an overly aggressive bend test.Īnother thing to check for is the coating on the card. Genuine Pokemon cards won’t crease when they’re bent… fake ones often will. Hold the Pokemon card with two fingers, one at the top and one at the bottom and bend the card over. Or you can tear the card in half to see the middle layer… but take my word unless you want to destroy the card to find out!Īnother simple test you can perform is “The Bend Test”. Counterfeiters don’t go through the trouble, making them slightly more translucent. Genuine Pokemon cards are made by sandwiching a layer of semi-opaque paper/plastic in the middle of the card. The light will be much brighter when you shine it through a fake Pokemon card compared to a genuine one. An easy way to see the difference is to hold the card up to a bright light (I use a flashlight). If you found some cards on Mavin that are similar to yours, the next step is to take a close look at the following details:Ĭounterfeiters don’t go through the trouble of using the same quality card stock used in genuine Pokemon cards.
#Fake pokemon cards how to
Are they identical to yours? Keep reading to learn how to spot the differences between fake and genuine Pokemon cards. If Mavin does return results, click on the card images to take a closer look. No results means nobody has sold the card online… that’s a bad sign.
If it doesn’t return any results, it’s probably a counterfeit card. If you type in the card name and number on mavin.io it’ll return results for cards just like yours. This guide will help you identify fake Pokemon cards. Or maybe you have a valuable Pokemon card but it just seems “off” in some way. If you search mavin.io for your card and don’t find any results… it could be a fake. We get a lot of comments from people asking us to identify cards that they can’t find on Cardmavin.
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