CGC Clarifies Stance on Sheet Sticking and Pokémon Cards

Pokémon cards are printed on massive industrial offset printers that print cards onto sheets containing up to 121 cards, depending on the layout. These printers — which are similar in size to a school bus — print cards at a blazing speed. In fact, Pokémon's printing presses can produce more than 25 million cards per day (or more than 200,000 double-sided sheets).

Once printed, these sheets are stacked on top of each other until they are ready to be cut and randomly distributed into packs. Unfortunately, if the ink or texture layers aren't fully dry, these sheets can sometimes stick to each other, causing minor cosmetic damage to cards. Oftentimes, this is because the ultra-violet (UV) light curing process does not fully dry the final print layer before the sheets are stacked, causing this damage. This is especially common on cards with texture, such as the Mewtwo below.

A Mewtwo GX with sheet sticking on the front of the card. Click images to enlarge.

Additionally, early Wizards of the Coast-era Pokémon sets featured cards with 1st Edition stamps. Occasionally, those 1st Edition stamps would not have time to fully dry before the sheets were stacked, causing some examples to stick to the back of the sheet in front of them. This would often transfer some of the ink on the 1st Edition stamp to the back of the card in front. This can be seen on the Magneton below — note the missing ink on the 1st Edition stamp.

A 1st Edition Magneton with evidence of sheet sticking, especially visible on the 1st Edition symbol. Click images to enlarge.

During the grading process, CGC's graders consider "sheet sticking" to be cosmetic damage caused by a breakdown of quality control during the printing process rather than an error. Because of this, cards submitted to CGC with evidence of sheet sticking are considered damaged, and the extent of the damage determines the effect on the card's overall grade.