These cards I bought at Walmart...

Hello everybody,

I've collected the TGC since it came out. I have over 500 cards, and basically know what I'm doing ;P However, I ran into something weird today, and I honest-to-god can't tell if the cards are pirated/fake or not. I have a lot of experience telling the difference between the two, but this idea of what I saw is so new to me.

I went to Walmart, which, as you may know (Or may not, if your country doesn't have Walmarts) is that they do sometimes sell retail stuff that factories wanted gone. I've seen it plenty of times before. Today, when I went to get a Plasma Freeze pack over by the counters (I'm trying to get Espeon! :) Four blippin' packs and I STILL haven't gotten one! But I got Umbreon and Jolteon, haha!), and I saw these Pokemon cards that just looked... weird. A little off, y'know? You could see the backs of the cards through the plastic, and as far as I could see, they looked legit. The package was green, with pictures of random Pokemon on it (Mudkip, Weaville, Jigglypuff, Torchic, Piplup, Budew, Chimchar, Turtwig, Charmander, Cyndaquil, Bulbasaur, and some other Pokemon I don't know [but I know is real]). It was only $3 and I wanted to see what was up, so I bought it.

The back reads,
"The collectible products in this package have been purchased directly from the manufacturer or purchased from the secondary markert and repackaged for retail sales by MJ Holding Company, LLC."

I didn't know it was legal to resell unused Pokemon cards in your own package... I do know it's legal to sell your own collection, but I didn't know other brands could take the cards and sell them...

To my surprise, I got 2 '09 World Championships cards, and a few other sets, the oldest being Ruby and Sapphire, and the newest being a Black and White promo (The corner reads "BW12", IIRC, and the card is Ducklett)

I'm not all too familiar with buying Pokemon cards this way, nor am I familiar with this company, or the avaliability of Pokemon cards being packaged and sold that aren't being manufactured anymore. I know it seems like I'm talking a lot, but I'm just trying to give information so you have more details to choose if they're pirated or not.

The cards don't blatantly look pirated. My Roserade C card had everything spelled right, and all the cards were real Pokemon. I haven't checked the other cards in detail yet, but I may do it tonight and do a follow-up post.

So, guys, what's your judgement? Are they pirated, or real?

Thanks for reading this far, if you did :P

Based on my own encounters, the bulk of the 3rd party sellers whose cards are sold at Target and Wal-Mart have cards that are the real deal.

What you've described certainly sounds like cards that were all printed by The Pokemon Company itself at some point in time.

Really? Thanks for the help!

I was just worried because I heard quite a few people bought Yu-Gi-Oh cards from this brand in boxes like this, and some of them were pirated...

You should certainly be wary, as this company isn't as familiar as fans are with these products, but the bulk of what they sell is probably going to be legitimate cards.

Even if the "World Championship" cards aren't play legal and essentially have no monetary value individually.

Hey I bought a pack too and thought that it looked kinda weird. Does anyone know how the company gets these? I got a promo ex, so I'm happy as long as they're legit. They seem to be ranging from 2001-2013.

nathan15458 said:

Hey I bought a pack too and thought that it looked kinda weird. Does anyone know how the company gets these? I got a promo ex, so I'm happy as long as they're legit. They seem to be ranging from 2001-2013.

Click to expand...

IIRC, they get them aftermarket and through overstock from the distributors that The Pokemon Company pays to distribute the packs to retail stores.

Anyway, just a heads up: we have a rule where threads are not supposed to be revived after 30 days unless they're a pinned/stickied thread. I'm leaving this unlocked for now since this is a topic a lot of people don't know a lot about, and because there's no point recreating a thread about this topic since it's only from late June anyway.