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The story
A post on 5ch’s livestream discussion board claims a card shop failed to notice that a high-value trading card had been altered before buying it. Based on the photos, the card appears to be a first-edition (“old back”) Holographic Charizard, bought for ¥7 million — and it’s suspected the edges were trimmed to make a worn card look mint. The thread is split on whether this amounts to fraud, or whether it’s simply the shop’s own negligence for missing it during appraisal.
What people said
If it's a different size from the rest of the cards, you can feel it out while shuffling and bring it right back to the top of the deck.
Isn't it meant to be used in a sleeve?
I figured it wouldn't matter if it was trimmed subtly enough that you couldn't tell just by looking — but that's the reason, huh. I guess that makes it a fraudulent, altered card.
Ah, I see lol
Probably not. Even if it's clearly a forgery made with intent to defraud, it'd be hard to prove the person who brought it in actually had that intent.
A botched appraisal on a secondhand buy… I wonder if the police would really move on this.
Officers: "…?"
You shouldn't underestimate this.
Sounds like the type to bash welfare recipients.
Proving the person who brought it in is the one who did it is probably impossible.
This card itself is way too old to begin with. If they just say "it was already like this when I got it from somewhere years ago," that's pretty much game over.
What's with the idiots who fall for stuff like this, or LINE sign-up scams?
Sounds like Mercari lol (Japan's big secondhand marketplace app)
There's a chance that exchange never even happened in the first place.
Holographic Charizard
First-edition "old back" print
Buy price: ¥7,000,000
According to Dr. Google, the buy price is ¥7 million.
There's no such obligation lol
Re: #172 is talking about a case where the person who brought it in knew it had been cut. If it's a one-owner item, there's no way they wouldn't have known (or rather, they're the one who cut it). But if it changed hands as a used resale, proving that would be next to impossible.
Uh, the shop is the one who did the appraisal lol
It's not like it was in an "accident" — it's more like they just buffed the whole thing with polishing compound.
If they'd pretended to be an amateur and listed it on Mercari, it probably would've sold. The buyers there are resellers too, so there's no way they'd catch it.
Their head's probably full of "I'm the victim here!! Mommy, help!!"
Yeah, but how are you gonna prove whether the seller deliberately shaved a few millimeters off the card's edge, or just resold it without noticing lol? It's the shop's own fault for failing to catch it during appraisal lol
I ran your argument through an AI — it says you win, though while criminal charges are a stretch, pursuing a refund and return through civil court is possible, it says.
You're right that the bar for pursuing this as a criminal matter (filing fraud charges) is, in reality, quite high.
For investigators (police/prosecutors) to pursue and indict this as a criminal case, they need proof that goes beyond a "suspicious" level — proof beyond reasonable doubt that the person absolutely intended to lie and deceive.
The main reasons criminal charges are difficult, and the line at which police would actually act, are as follows:
Why criminal charges (fraud) are difficult
The barrier of proving "intent" (proving what's in someone's mind): If the seller keeps insisting "I genuinely didn't notice" or "I figured it was fine since a professional appraiser accepted it," it's difficult for police to prove that claim is a lie.
Lol. Yeah, even taking this to civil court would just turn into a he-said-she-said.
Hmm, true — if they just claim "it got shaved down after the shop bought it, that's on the shop," there doesn't seem to be any way to win.
Card shops take photos at the time of purchase to document the condition, so whether it happened before or after the buyback isn't actually an issue.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s used-card shops (kaitori) are a huge secondhand economy — the same chains that buy back electronics, brand goods, and books also run dedicated Pokémon card counters, because a single “old back” (1996-97 first-print) Holographic Charizard in near-mint condition can fetch six or seven figures in yen. Trimming — shaving a few millimeters off a worn card’s edges to fake a sharper, higher grade — is a known scam in the trading-card world globally, not just in Japan; it’s why professional graders (PSA, BGS) measure card dimensions against factory spec before certifying condition. A shop paying out ¥7 million (roughly $47,000) implies staff either graded it as near-mint or didn’t check dimensions carefully, which is the appraisal failure the thread is mocking.
The split isn’t over whether the card was altered — everyone assumes it was — but over who’s liable: is trimming-to-deceive fraud on the part of whoever sold it, or is it entirely on the shop for not catching an alteration that’s supposedly checkable during appraisal? Posters converge on the same practical answer: intent is nearly impossible to prove, especially with a card decades old that may have changed hands many times, so criminal fraud charges are unlikely even if a civil refund claim might work.
What the thread doesn’t dwell on is the one fact that actually matters for any dispute: reputable buyback shops photograph an item’s condition at the moment of purchase specifically to prevent “it got damaged after you bought it” claims — which one poster notes near the end, but only in passing, even though it’s the detail that would decide any real dispute.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Livegalileo/Anything Goes) thread “[Breaking] Card Shop Buys Altered High-Value Card Without Noticing, Ends Up Utterly Humiliated LMAOOOOOOOOOO“.
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