A thread on the most popular Pokemon forum, E4, has just uncovered what could be one of the largest scandals in the industry. Credit to user "pfm" for the in-depth research and discovery. The thread can be found here:
https://www.elitefourum.com/t/many-of-the-pokemon-playtest-cards-were-likely-printed-in-2024/52421

I will try to recap here:

A flood of "playtest" cards, claimed to have been early prototype cards used in the development of the TCG, have surfaced this past year and hit the market. Though some early articles exist showcasing them in the past, they had never been brought to market. That changed dramatically this past year, with many copies coming to auction seemingly every week, and almost always fetching in the thousands of dollars (and the record public sale being $99,000 at Fanatics Collect for a "Beta" Charizard, graded a GCG 8).

While many collectors were concerned with the undisclosed provenance of these cards, most of those concerns were put to rest when CGC started authenticating them, though notably their authentication process was not disclosed. A surprising number of copies also received either Gem Mint 10 or Pristine 10 grades.

The one thing known about the origin of these cards has been that Akabane, often credited as one of the early contributors to the development of the TCG, is involved with their surfacing. CGC has even arranged for sessions where he has signed copies of these playtest cards in the presence of a CGC representative for them to authenticate the autograph. I will note that most people suspect he is the person who has operated under the alias "Pkonno" the past decade or so, releasing after-market copies of the top tier trophy cards that have also flooded the market the past years, and regularly sell in the 5 and 6 figures (I have posted about this astonishingly overlooked fact on Mantel in the past).

The shocking discovery being discussed now is that high resolution scans with specific color settings seem to reveal metadata from the printer used to print some of these cards, specifically a version of the "Beta" playtest cards. Decoding these signatures seems to reveal a print date in the year 2024, implying that these may have been very recently printed rather than originating in or before 1996, as originally thought and advertised.

While the story is just beginning to unfold, this does seem like quite damning evidence for the Pokemon influencers who have been heavily involved in bringing these to market, possibly Akabane himself, and CGC, who have authenticated the vast majority of copies. Collectors are due an explanation, and compensation if it turns out how it looks, from the parties involved. The auction platform ALT, who has sold a number of these cards, has already issued a statement that they are aware of the problem and that CGC has assured them that they are looking into it, although CGC has not yet made any public statements at the time of this article.

My early takeaway is that lack of transparency is always a red flag with collectibles, and provenance should be given much more respect in the Pokemon space, like it is given in most mature collectibles spaces. We will see how it plays out - hopefully those that are affected are compensated appropriately, and the hobby can use this as a lesson to grow and mature.