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Pokémon!
A couple of years ago, I attended a local card show in Denver with three Pokémon cards I was hoping to trade for something graded.
I found a vendor, we talked, negotiated, and agreed on a trade. We shook hands. Everyone seemed happy, and I walked away thinking I’d made a fair deal.
Less than an hour later, I had a grown man charging toward me with security behind him, yelling that I had ripped the vendor off.
Here’s the part that still bothers me.
At the time, I wasn’t an expert in Pokémon cards. If someone has a booth at a card show, I’m naturally going to assume they know far more than I do. That’s why people trust dealers. They rely on that experience.
Later I learned the cards I traded were counterfeit.
But ask yourself this: if I genuinely believed those cards were worth around $3,500 raw, and an experienced dealer traded me roughly $700 in graded cards without saying a word, who was actually taking advantage of whom?
People asked how I could not know they were fake.
Simple.
The entire face of the cards had textured foil. They looked premium. I had no reason to suspect they weren’t authentic. Come to find out no Pokémon cards have 100% foil on the face of the card.. once you confirm the color on the back of the card with other Pokémon cards you flip it over and inspect! always look for a small part that is not foil and there is your authentication!
I never intended to deceive anyone. If I had known they were counterfeit, I wouldn’t have offered them in the first place.
It was an expensive lesson, but a valuable one.
Today I authenticate everything I can, ask questions, keep learning, and encourage every collector, especially those just starting out, to do the same.
Knowledge is worth more than the rarest card in the room.
Cheers!
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