Are Pokemon Card Misprints Worth Anything

What Are Pokemon Misprinted Cards?

Well, Pokemon misprinted cards are exactly what they sound like- Pokemon cards with misprints in the form of wrong spellings, text, images, or missing colors. As such, the most common Pokemon ‘error cards’ have wrong words, misprinted text, and incorrect images.

But these aren’t the only errors you may spot on your Pokemon cards. Anything from missing or incorrect information to bled (washed-out) or misaligned holo and even blank surfaces can make for misprints. 

In short, anything that makes your Pokemon cards different from the usual ones can count for errors or misprints.

Are Misprint Pokemon Cards Valuable?

The answer to this will be both yes and no.

Authentic Pokemon misprint (or error) cards are typically considered collectibles, so you may earn or spend a significant amount of money selling or buying them. In fact, many manufacturers may make mistakes while releasing the cards, and they end up making their way into official stores. 

However, the exact value of Pokemon misprints depends on different factors, which ultimately determine their final price. For example, if you find an error card with the wrong name printed below the Pokemon image, it’s a rare error that can fetch you good money. As such, some of the factors that determine the value of a misprint card include:

• Degree or extent of the particular error
• The year in which the card was released
• The rating or popularity of the Pokemon on the card

Generally, the price of a misprinted card can range anywhere between a few cents and hundreds of dollars, depending on the demand of the market at a particular time.

It’s also worth noting that a misprinted card from early sets (like the Wizards of the Coast Pokemon cards) is likely to be more valuable, as errors or misprints were largely uncommon in them. However, as the market for misprinted cards became a thing, typos and other errors have become commonplace.

What Pokemon Misprinted Cards Have The Best Value?

As we’ve already mentioned, the value of misprinted cards depends on many factors, which have likely originated from theories to determine the value of the cards.

For example, there’s a popular theory that the vintage Mewtwo cards handed out to the audience of the first film revolving around the Pokemon characters were incorrectly printed. The promo logo on these cards was placed in the lower-left corner, and they are highly valued due to their rarity. 

This is because people who watched the film as children probably didn’t store them as collectibles, and the number of Mewtwo cards available today isn’t really clear.

Apart from that, Pokemon cards inscribed with the phrase ‘For Position Only’ on the picture can fetch you thousands of dollars. Although this wasn’t a misprint per se, these cards were manufactured for printers (and not meant for sale). But they made their way into the hands of some collectors, making them some sort of ‘vintage art.’

On that note, here are some other ‘unusual’ mistakes that make Pokemon cards valuable:

Most Valuable Misprinted Cards

Based on the above features, here are some specific misprinted cards that are said to have a monetary value worth thousands of dollars.

What Makes An Error Card Less Valuable?

Now, you may be wondering, ‘why don’t all misprint Pokemon cards have any monetary value?’ Firstly, it can be difficult to detect if your misprint card is a genuine error by the manufacturer or a fake or intentional attempt to crawl into the misprint Pokemon card market. 

This is because each Pokemon card goes through different levels of checking before hitting the stores to eliminate quality or misprint issues. Hence, any error on the cards may make them feel fake. And this can cause severe instability in this particular market, reducing the value of even original misprinted cards for collectors.

It’s always recommended to buy Pokemon cards graded by PSA (Professional Sports Authenticator Service) for authenticity. Further, PSA rates these cards on a scale from 1 to 10 (based on their condition and authenticity), and a high PSA rating can fetch better value.

But even if an error is genuine on an authentic card, there are very few chances that the error will be unique to only one card. For example, if there’s a typo on the card, the mistake will likely be printed on the other cards of the deck, which will again reduce the value of the misprint or the card. 

In this case, you won’t have a rare misprint card- just a usual card available to anyone who bought the particular deck.

Apart from that, the instability in the error card market, depending on the demand for these cards, can significantly impact their value. As more cases of fake or generalized errors crop up, the demand for misprinted cards falls. So, the same card that sells for hundreds of dollars today may not fetch more than a few dollars a couple of days later.

Final Words

If you want to sell your (genuine) Pokemon misprint card, put it up for auction on a reputable site. You can do some research to determine the base price of the item, and the highest bid that your card gets will closely represent the market value of the specific type of misprint at that point.

And with that, it’s for us to wrap up today’s guide. See you next time!