Card Identification Forum

Hi all. Looking for any info anyone might have on 98-99 Pacific Dynagon Ice printing plates. I picked up one for my PC of Jeff Friesen, showing the front of the card in (presumably) black. I understand that the printing plates may have been backdoored when Pacific went under, or even faked. Regardless of how it was made, it's a cool addition to my collection, just looking to learn more about it and where it came from. Thanks!

Unfortunately, I assess that this is a fake plate. The player and set name, where foil would appear on the finished card, have a shine/reflection around the letters. This wouldn't appear on a printing plate, but would appear from a scanned image that's transferred to a metal medium. 

Exactly how I assess it...FAKE.  Most obvious is the player name, team, brand logo are applied with foil and wouldn't be on an ink plate.  And the black plates wouldn't have the full card image on it.  Seems like every fake plate on ebay is the black plate.

Here's a full set of authentic plates to give you an idea how plates should look:

Definitelty a fake.  In addition to the points made above, you can see where the image was stretched at the edges to make sure that none of the edge of the scan would show up on the plate after cutting.  On the right and left sides, the hexagons closest to the edge are distorted. 

-Tom

Darn. All good points, thanks for looking it over, guys. Still cool to have in the collection but makes the $30 CAD I paid for it seem a tad foolish. 

Like you, I picked up a fake Pacific plate for one of my PC's as well - I'd be willing to bet that it was the same seller, because my original price was about the same. I waited until I got a nice coupon, however, and paid a price I was more comfortable with because I was pretty sure it was fake.

Regardless, it's a unique collectible. I wish the eBay listings weren't so deceptively worded though. I'm sure there are plenty of people who have shelled out large amounts of cash for these.

You both should have reported them to the US Postal Service (or Canada Post).  We all know reporting them to ebay is pointless.

As I always will say about these, there is no provenance to these plates. That means that no one knows if they came from the Pacific bankruptcy auction, backdoored or if they are faked. In either case, they were not available at retail or from Pacific when they were in business (or documented as such) so they are not able to be put onto tcdb.

tpxcards - I agree about the lack of provenance, however your 'supporting' statements are misleading.  You are ignoring the facts that are evident on the item itself.  For all of the reasons listed above, the image on this plate could not have been used to print the cards, therefore it IS a fake press plate.  Your statement that "..no one knows ... if they are faked..." is false.  Everyone who understands the offset printing process used to manufacture trading cards (and lots of other printed material) understands that these are fake.

-Tom