Many seasoned collectors can look at a card and immediately spot the common indicators that identify it as a fake. One of the most obvious tells is the size of the card. Poorly made fakes can struggle to scale themselves correctly and are printed at a different size compared to regular cards. When you overlay fakes like these onto a genuine card, you’ll easily be able to find a size difference. More sophisticated fake cards are unlikely to make this design mistake, but if you spot a noticeable size disparity between two of your cards, you can be sure that you’ve got a fake.

Colour issues are another indicator that a card is illegitimate. The colouring on counterfeits is often different to the real thing. The artwork on fake cards can appear saturated and washed out when compared to the original art. On genuine cards, borders are crisp and well defined. On fakes, they merge with the rest of the background and are not as clear cut as they should be.

You can also spot a fake by flipping the card over. If the Poké Ball on the back is dull and poorly defined, that’s the hallmark of a fake card. The ball, and the background should appear clear and distinct. If it looks like they merge into one another, you may be dealing with a counterfeit card.

The text on a card is another tool that you can use to determine whether or not it’s genuine. This can be subtle, and it’s not always easy to spot. When looking at the text on a fake card, check for consistency issues. The ‘kerning’ (the space between letters) may be varied, and some larger pieces of lettering may appear pixelated and stretched out. Use the text on a genuine cards as a reference. There can be printing mistakes and spelling errors on real Pokémon cards, as well, in fact sometimes ‘error cards’ can even be desirable finds for collectors. Fake cards with improper text aren’t valuable to anyone though.

Texture issues are another common way to spot fakes. This is especially true for modern Full Art Illustration Rare cards. These cards should be textured, with granular grooves across their face. Fakes struggle to imitate these intricacies effectively. Fake cards are smooth and reflect light. This is easy to detect when you know to look for it. The absence of texture is a clear sign that a card isn’t legitimate.

As well as texture, it’s also important to check the feel of a potentially fake card. Fake cards are often very flimsy and thin. They have a different feel to real Pokémon cards, as they are printed on lower quality card stock. Because of this, they will feel papery and light, and they will bend more easily. Genuine cards have a very defined layer of ink right through the middle, while fake cards are often just cardboard. This can be spotted by shining a torch against the card in a darkened room. Fakes are slightly translucent, while real cards are essentially opaque and will let less light through.

Hopefully this guide has been useful to you and provided some methods that you can use for spotting counterfeit cards. Although, equally, hopefully you don’t find too many fake cards tucked away in your collection. Once you know what to look for, they’re surprisingly easy to spot, particularly if they’ve been cheaply manufactured and they have multiple errors.

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