Quality of Japanese cards

[Iluvatar]

Recently I bought a collection of about 50 Japanese holo cards, all of which are from various sets from the original series. One thing that struck me when the cards arrived which I failed to notice in the Ebay photographs was how off-centre and imperfect a lot of the cards seem compared to their English counterparts.

Here's an image of one of the cards to show you what I mean by off-centred:

As you can see, the border on the left side of the card is quite a bit wider than on the right. Another thing I found peculiar was how thin the Japanese cards are compared to English ones. This is in complete contrast to a discussion I read a while back where the general consensus seemed to be that English cards look and feel cheap compared to the Japanese ones.

Perhaps someone with experience collecting Japanese cards could tell me if this is all normal, or whether I should be concerned that i've bought fakes. I don't want to start throwing accusations at the seller as he seems like a nice guy, and he's not someone who deals in Pokemon cards regularly... so if there is something fishy about them, I doubt that he was even aware.

 

[donavannj]

Recently I bought a collection of about 50 Japanese holo cards, all of which are from various sets from the original series. One thing that struck me when the cards arrived which I failed to notice in the Ebay photographs was how off-centre and imperfect a lot of the cards seem compared to their English counterparts.

Here's an image of one of the cards to show you what I mean by off-centred:

As you can see, the border on the left side of the card is quite a bit wider than on the right. Another thing I found peculiar was how thin the Japanese cards are compared to English ones. This is in complete contrast to a discussion I read a while back where the general consensus seemed to be that English cards look and feel cheap compared to the Japanese ones.

Perhaps someone with experience collecting Japanese cards could tell me if this is all normal, or whether I should be concerned that i've bought fakes. I don't want to start throwing accusations at the seller as he seems like a nice guy, and he's not someone who deals in Pokemon cards regularly... so if there is something fishy about them, I doubt that he was even aware.

Sounds like a Japanese card to me... that English cards looking and feeling cheap thing is probably in regards to more recent Japanese cards. Of the older, if my memory is serving me correctly, the Japanese stock felt a bit cheaper. From the picture you took, nothing seems off about it, other than the misalignment on the cut, which is surprisingly common on English cards, so it's not too much of a stretch to think that the Japanese cards had some miscut issues as well.