I had to look again when I saw the writing on Serebii, which has been around for over two decades now. Yeah. But the thing about peel-off Ditto cards? Again, it was late when I actually read that so I had to make sure I wasn’t just delirious. And now I’ve seen video footage. It’s a real gimmick, and apparently something Magic the Gathering did before. And probably something other cards have done prior. And I know for a fact that sticker cards existed long before.
You know what else existed? Weird bootleg sticker cards. Some time long ago during school they would have these flat vending machines at random with whatever trendy stickers whoever it was stocking those things would fill them with. At some point they had bootleg Pokémon cards in the usual super holofoil glossy style that’s a pretty obvious tell, and for some reason they would sometimes be in the Japanese format, maybe with the angle of exclusive new stuff not yet translated. Seeing this official bootleg action made me remember the actual bootleg bootlegs.
Essentially they’ve made canon this bootleg style of cards where they overlay a different card on a more common one. But maybe these Ditto cards are slightly more uncommon, so maybe it’s reversed? I’m not sure. In any case, it’s opened up a lot of weird questions. Apparently unpeeled Ditto cards aren’t tournament legal, but I figure someone might be okay with casual play. Maybe part of the casual play approach is to do the reveal mid-game for someone who’s not really paying attention. I also wonder if one could put the peeled part onto another card, say a spare energy card, and get two for one in casual.
Of course, the “real” market is collectors as it seems. So now you’ve got this issue where should the cards remain unpeeled or should they be peeled for the sake of not having them age weirdly. The fact that this move effectively trolls the collector market by throwing them a curveball means it’s a good idea in some regard. But they’ll probably figure out a workaround eventually. For what I can tell as well it seems like they’re just hiding Ditto under common cards, but imagine they start doing this super inverse holo rainbow secret overlay and then it turns out it’s just Ditto. Now that would be an asshole move. And I’d probably find it hilarious. And then they’d probably end up with a bizarre Ditto-specific market of ultra-rare-holo-looking things. Which end up a bit more common than the actual non-peelable cards.
Inevitably we’re getting into the cases where people out of paranoia start peeling non-Ditto cards. Or proposing that a new generation of those bootleg sticker cards from some China direct cheap bulk sale site is somehow tournament legal. Maybe in casual. I mean in casual for all I know someone could just bring up those weird parody maker cards where it’s a stretched JPG of Pikachu named “ur mom” and it has an attack called “fart” that does 9999999 damage and the effect is “the opnonent dies and u win”.