The Boot-Legacies

Hello everyone, and welcome to another installment of Pokémon Monday! Today we're going a bit more modern fake and taking a look at this Chinese knockoff of one of my favorites (notice my trend toward the mystical)—Celebi! What's Up With These Fake Chinese Trading Cards? The allure to these specific cards for me is in the fact that they look so different from the typical bootlegs you see advertised to English-speaking audiences. Most of those end up being 1:1 clones of their legitimate counterparts. These Chinese fake trading cards though, try to be something almost completely different. Instead of mimicking the real deal, they change the layout, some of the icons, and even utilize a seemingly more vibrant color palette. (Also, on a side note, those little Pokéballs on the bottom corners are so cool). Deciphering The Madness I can’t read Chinese myself, but with some help and a bit of research, I found that this fake Pokémon card speaks volumes: On the top left:  完全 is indica...

When you think about fake Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (bootlegs, sometimes known as knockoffs), what comes to mind? Have you ever considered collecting fake cards? What would drive somebody to collect these weird relics of the past? There's a plethora of reasons bootleg collectors enjoy them, and it ranges anywhere from: The Broken English (Engrish?) Cheapo firework-styled foiling Weirdly washed out images crappy (but endearing) card quality and questionable means of production? Let's go in on this for a moment, and reveal what truly makes these wonderful pieces of fake, knockoff cardboard worth your time! Let's Talk About The Fake Craziness Bootleg Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are like the wild west of the fake trading card world. They were my first and funniest exposure to bootlegs as a child.  I recall sitting at the lunch table, trying to play a quick duel with my classmates when one of them pulled out this clearly fake Yu-Gi-Oh! card. I remember staring at it in awe. It had to have been a game...

  Welcome to my first entry for Pokémon Monday, a blog series in which I plan to highlight a Pokémon bootleg from the depths of my bootleg binder. This week's entry is the Pokémon Commemorative Edition Mew & Blaziken card. At first glance, it appears to be some kind non-TCG fan card, where the artwork was probably stolen and plastered onto this odd, but surprisingly vibrant Yu-Gi-Oh!-esque backdrop. What Is The Commemorative Series? An unfortunate reality about bootleg collecting, at least as far as I have discovered so far is the lack of background on many of these cards. They just... exist. Sure, some other collectors post these on their Instagram pages, but what is the origin story? No closure. The Commemorative Series is no exception to that rule, in my online searches I had only found a couple posts here and there asking is this card a bootleg? and that's about it.  I wish I could offer you a distinct history of the series, however there is next to no easily accessibl...

I began getting back into collecting Pokémon trading cards with a quest: to collect every Mew ever. I figured it would be an undertaking of sorts, all of the Mew cards I could find, all of the strange, the official, the unofficial, the custom ones, the non-tcg cards. All of the Mews. Of course I began to attend local card shows, hoping to fulfill my Mew fantasies (which I did somewhat).  One particular vendor I had visited had a fun derpy shining mew parody card, a custom one with star-foiling, not a bootleg, but fun either way. Of course it had to go into the collection. That same vendor had a little cardboard box filled with these glittery, extremely thick and somewhat small cards - maybe not necessarily small, but I guess more square than a regular (standard size) card.  Of course I immediately began to look at all of them hoping to find my beloved Mew. Each one I browsed past, cute baby-ified pocket monsters, small, chibi, most likely stolen art, but adorable regardless - ...

It all began as a young child, I begrudgingly browsed local flea markets and farmer's markets, absolutely not impressed by much - I mean, which kids are? Fruits, veggies... lame.  Of course that was how it began, but I was remiss to find that at almost every single one of these pop up events, little treasures were buried among the lameness - tucked somewhere, usually at the end of these event lineups, in brown boxes that sat on the ground. Shining like gold in the distance. That was exactly where it started, right there in those boxes.  Cheap Beyblades Weird overly foil-y Pokémon trading card packs (including strange mixtures of characters that absolutely should not have been together) Endless Yu-Gi-Oh cards Bootleg Bakugan (those have a nice ring to them) For a kid? All these toys? I was hooked! Of course I begged for them... and I was promptly met with  "Those are chintzy, you don't want those."  Pulled away and denied. It was a true tragedy. From there of course ...