How to tell if a Pokémon card is fake

Counterfeits are common, and most are caught with checks you can do in under a minute: text and font, colour and foil, edge and feel, and the plausibility of the deal itself.

The Pokémon Company acknowledges that counterfeit merchandise exists and advises buying from official retailers and reporting fakes to them and to the seller's marketplace [1]. Most fakes in circulation are not sophisticated. They fail on details you can check with the card in your hand and a genuine card beside it.

Check the text first

• ▪Spelling and grammar errors, odd punctuation, or missing accents. Genuine cards are professionally proofread.
• ▪Font weight and letter spacing that look slightly wrong compared with a genuine card of the same era.
• ▪Energy symbols and set symbols that are the wrong shape, colour or position.
• ▪Wrong HP, wrong stage, or attack text that does not exist on that card. Compare against an official card database entry.

Then the colour and foil

Fakes are usually printed on different stock with different inks. Common tells are colours that are too dark, too washed out or too blue, blurry artwork edges under close inspection, foil that covers the wrong parts of the card, and holo patterns that look like flat glitter rather than the layered pattern of the era.

Then the physical card

1. 01Feel and flex: genuine cards have a distinctive stiffness. Fakes are often too glossy, too floppy or too thick.
2. 02The light test: hold a card up to a bright light. Genuine cards contain an opaque inner layer, so very little light passes through. Many fakes are noticeably translucent. Compare against a card you know is real, since eras differ.
3. 03The edge: look at the card edge for the thin dark line of the inner layer, and for clean cutting. Rough or fibrous edges are a warning.
4. 04Back print: the back of a Pokémon card is highly consistent. Wrong blue tone, misaligned centring or a fuzzy Poké Ball are strong signals.

Judge the deal, not just the card

Almost every counterfeit story starts with a price that made no sense: a sealed box far below market, a bulk lot stuffed with chase cards, a boxed set from an unknown seller with no photographs of the actual item. If the price is impossible, treat the item as fake until proven otherwise.

If you have bought a fake

Open a dispute with the marketplace or payment provider straight away, keep all photographs and messages, and report it to The Pokémon Company through their support pages. Do not resell it — knowingly passing on counterfeits is a separate problem you do not want to own.

A video version of this guide is planned for the DeuxyDex channel.