> In 2023, Wizards—which publishes Magic: The Gathering—sent the Pinkerton detective agency to the home of a YouTuber who had acquired 22 boxes of cards
Born too late to get into a gun fight with striking steel workers on behalf of two guys who ended up building libraries, born just in time to chase down ill gotten Magic cards. Goodness.
gosub100 9 minutes ago [-]
I still remember an article posted on HN about a developer/designer at Apple who left an unreleased iPhone prototype at a bar/restaurant. Apple had the entire police force at their fingertips pursuing the person who found it. I don't remember much about the details, but the person who founded may have posted to social media "whoa cool, check this thing out" or something very benign, which brought a major police presence to their house thanks to an employee's mistake. IIRC this wasn't the original iPhone, it was the 3rd or 4th gen thereabouts.
Aurornis 14 minutes ago [-]
> He referred to the cards as “thrown away” and said they were found in a dumpster as part of a security breach involving a contractor. He said it “involves 500,000 bulk cards (including high-value Caitlin Clark and [Quarter Century Rare] stock and 400+ factory uncut sheets.” The seller said that he’d “filed formal reports with Konami’s legal department regarding the contractor’s negligence.”He did not respond to follow-up questions.
Found in a dumpster in a shopping center that wasn't near the printing center, as part of a security breach involving a contractor, which the seller dutifully filed formal reports for?
And he found a second batch of these same sheets?
There are so many weird things going on in this story. Nobody has spoken up about them being counterfeit yet, other than the unclear warnings about them being in poor quality and refunding all of people's money when they complain.
Who knows, but counterfeit sheets being sold as new to collectors who want to believe they didn't just waste $1000 sounds like a real possibility.
Animats 55 minutes ago [-]
Yu-Gi-Oh cards are still a thing? That dates from 30 years ago.
I just looked at Cabbage Patch dolls on eBay. The bottom has finally fallen out of that market. Used to see asking prices over $1000. Now they're all around $25.
PunchyHamster 47 minutes ago [-]
> “The sale of uncut sheets is not allowed,” Konami, the company that owns Yu-Gi-Oh, told me in an email and did not respond to follow-up questions.
That doesn't seem like enforceable thing...
quxbar 3 hours ago [-]
About time somebody started flooding the millennial nostalgia collectibles market with fakes.
wincy 2 hours ago [-]
You can buy a very convincing Black Lotus for $6 on aliexpress. I’ve thought about getting one and mounting it on the wall in a picture frame for fun.
I played Lorcana for a bit then realized you can get cards that look identical under a jewelers loupe for 1/10 of the price and I got out of it. A few months later the market price for all the cards cratered. I wonder why?
2muchcoffeeman 1 hours ago [-]
You stopped playing because there are fakes? Was the game not fun?
HeavyStorm 1 hours ago [-]
At least someone is asking the right questions.
ZiiS 51 minutes ago [-]
For many people not paying the artists is less fun, for nearly everyone paying 10x the price is not fun. Obviously a brillian game might overcome this but it can easily cause someone to move on.
KPGv2 37 minutes ago [-]
This is a false dichotomy. You don't need to acquire the expensive cards to play the game. I enjoyed Star Wars: CCG back at the turn of the millennium even though I didn't have any Yoda, Vader, Luke, etc. cards. I think I had a Chewbacca, maybe? Yeah, I traded with a neighborhood kid for it, and later his mom called my mom to try to take back the trade.
hn773746483 2 hours ago [-]
A couple years back one of the original Pokemon TCG designers was outright printing off fakes of pre-release cards and peddling them with the help of a western company, and people only found out because they decoded printer patterns and found out they were printed with a recent printer.
rjh29 1 minutes ago [-]
And they were specifically graded as legitimate by a supposedly reputable grading company. I wonder what was the fallout from that.
I've seen Magic the Gathering fakes that are higher quality than the real cards.
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
A lot of the really expensive cards are also foils, which for the card stock they use for English cards ends up warping quite a bit over time. I knew multiple people who refused to buy foils ever because of this.
Our_Benefactors 36 minutes ago [-]
I used to be deep into the competitive MTG scene. It goes deeper than this. Everyone knew that foils caused warping, which would lead to different theories of the “best way” to foil your deck to get an edge, while also being plausibly deniable that you were essentially marking your deck with foils if someone called a judge on you.
At the high level MTG is as much about rules lawyering as it is about actual skilled play, if you’re curious to learn more about this aspect of the game go learn about the 1997 pro tour with Mike Long, who infamously took the win by mind games and causing his opponent to concede when Long had no path to victory.
hibikir 1 hours ago [-]
Happens to other collectibles too. There are some Games Workshop miniatures that are made in resin, and you can tell the clones appart because they use far better resin, which bends less. For some old plastic molds it's the same thing: You get much better cast out of bootlegs.
somat 2 hours ago [-]
My bright idea is to build a ccg using rfid bus fare cards as the base.
ianburrell 1 hours ago [-]
You can get plastic NFC cards. I bet there are companies that will print and program them.
It must be possible to have flexible paper-like cards because my city has one-time tickets with NFC. Game would be nicer with card stock and not rigid plastic.
PunchyHamster 44 minutes ago [-]
That's of zero benefit to actual game part tho.
And would have to use fancy ones as cheap ones have no security
...well unless you run official tournament and want people to stop using fakes there but that's more a thing Games Workshop would do for miniatures.
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
Fwiw, AI is going to turn everything to shit.
ge96 1 hours ago [-]
Is hardware safe? I mean the circuit has to be correct to work kind of thing. I know embedded people do use AI to reverse engineer things/go through a lot of logs. I have also heard about AI designed chips but seems you have more regulations to go through for selling the resulting hardware.
casey2 1 hours ago [-]
Stolen or counterfeit. For people that don't know Yu-Gi-Oh $1M is a ludicrous number since Konami has and has had a very aggressive reprint policy. The value here entirely comes from the fact that it's an uncut sheet, I'd be surprised if anyone would pay that much for it.
On a side note in 2003 I opened a pack and one of the cards was just a piece of cardstock probably they just ran a few sheets through in off-impression mode and forgot about them
alex1138 2 hours ago [-]
That's the card graveyard. I play Pot of Greed. It allows me to draw two cards. I've drawn Monster Reborn. It allows me to claim the stash
tekla 2 hours ago [-]
Pot of Greed is illegal, in America.
redkoala 2 hours ago [-]
“ Pot of Greed is banned in official Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament play in America (TCG) and has been since 2005. It is deemed too powerful because it allows a player to draw two cards with no cost or restrictions, providing a free advantage in any deck. ”
Reminds me of how Black Vise and Demonic Tutor were handled before the introduction of different tournament modes like Legacy.
tekla 1 hours ago [-]
Is a YuGiOh Abridged joke
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 2 hours ago [-]
>“F*** stupid f** I bet don't know you hoes getting none of this s**,” he said in another.
I trust this guy.
hn773746483 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
rsoto2 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Rendered at 23:14:13 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Born too late to get into a gun fight with striking steel workers on behalf of two guys who ended up building libraries, born just in time to chase down ill gotten Magic cards. Goodness.
Found in a dumpster in a shopping center that wasn't near the printing center, as part of a security breach involving a contractor, which the seller dutifully filed formal reports for?
And he found a second batch of these same sheets?
There are so many weird things going on in this story. Nobody has spoken up about them being counterfeit yet, other than the unclear warnings about them being in poor quality and refunding all of people's money when they complain.
Who knows, but counterfeit sheets being sold as new to collectors who want to believe they didn't just waste $1000 sounds like a real possibility.
I just looked at Cabbage Patch dolls on eBay. The bottom has finally fallen out of that market. Used to see asking prices over $1000. Now they're all around $25.
That doesn't seem like enforceable thing...
I played Lorcana for a bit then realized you can get cards that look identical under a jewelers loupe for 1/10 of the price and I got out of it. A few months later the market price for all the cards cratered. I wonder why?
At the high level MTG is as much about rules lawyering as it is about actual skilled play, if you’re curious to learn more about this aspect of the game go learn about the 1997 pro tour with Mike Long, who infamously took the win by mind games and causing his opponent to concede when Long had no path to victory.
It must be possible to have flexible paper-like cards because my city has one-time tickets with NFC. Game would be nicer with card stock and not rigid plastic.
And would have to use fancy ones as cheap ones have no security
...well unless you run official tournament and want people to stop using fakes there but that's more a thing Games Workshop would do for miniatures.
On a side note in 2003 I opened a pack and one of the cards was just a piece of cardstock probably they just ran a few sheets through in off-impression mode and forgot about them
Reminds me of how Black Vise and Demonic Tutor were handled before the introduction of different tournament modes like Legacy.
I trust this guy.