Saturday, November 25, 2023

Hmmm

I got an email from a reader after my post the other day about some recent Ebay pickups that included a BBM "Printing Plate" Masataka Yoshida.  In the email, the reader asked me if there was anything on the back of the plate and/or did the seller have any backstory about it.  (The answer to both questions is "no".)  He went on to explain that there had been an influx of apparently counterfeit "Printing Plates" from an Ebay seller a few months back and he wondered if mine was possibly fake.

Reading his email and doing a little research online made me really start wondering too.  There's several reasons now why I'm pretty much convinced the Yoshida "Printing Plate" is fake.

1. It looks terrible.  Compare the front of the Yoshida one to the 2022 Bowman NPB Hayato Ishita "Printing Plate":



The Ishita image is just as sharp as the actual card but the Yoshida image looks like he's batting in a snowstorm.  

2. There's no sticker on the back of the plate.  The Ishita one has a sticker explaining what it is.  Again, let's compare them:



It's hard to tell from the scans but the Ishita one has some marks on it - the kind of thing you might expect if it was used in the printing process.  The Yoshida one doesn't.

3. I've never seen a BBM "Printing Plate" before.  That includes seeing any references to them in BBM's websites, Sports Card Magazine, auctions sites or card shops.

4. The Ebay seller didn't have any other BBM items.  The seller I bought the Ishita card from was selling a lot of other Japanese cards including singles from the 2022 Bowman NPB set.  So it was completely believable that he could have pulled the "Printing Plate" from a pack.  On the other hand, the seller I got the "Yoshida" one from didn't have any other Japanese items.  He had a lot of other "Printing Plates" along with a bunch of what looked like AI generated celebrity art cards.

I didn't spend a whole lot on it - less than $20 - and it's probably more effort than it's worth to return it.  But it is very disappointing.

6 comments:

Nick Vossbrink said...

Whoa. Sorry missed the first post but as someone who used to work in printing shop that plate is 100% fake. First off. Only Chrome cards are mirror imaged. Regular printing will be right-reading. But the detail is sorely lacking and I can't tell what color it's supposed to be (sort of looks like it's trying to be black).

NPB Card Guy said...

Thanks! It's good to get confirmation of everything.

Sean said...

Ah, sorry to see that. I have no idea how to spot fake printing plates and could easily be taken in by one too.

Another reason to be wary of guys selling mainly AI generated celebrity art cards on Ebay....

NPB Card Guy said...

Yeah, there were a lot of warning flags on this that I just ignored.

Dan Skrezyna said...

That seller was selling Buehrle plates too but was able to catch someone saying they were fake before I bought any.

Jon said...

There have been a lot of fake plates purportedly from the 90's on eBay over the last 5-6 years, and they always sell. Knowing that, I'm not surprised to hear that there'd be more modern ones as well.