Post by Cinnamon on Sept 20, 2020 9:56:01 GMT
Resources for online research
Since I started with research on some of the bootleg cards, I have found some helpful tools which potentially help to increase the amount of information found. It's by far no guaranty on more information, but since information one these cards is scarce already every little bit can help.
Internet Archives
Let's start with internet archives. The one I would recommend is the Wayback Machine. On Wayback Machine you can search older versions of online websites. Via this method I found some Wizards on the Coast information which otherwise would be inaccessible. You can search via the URL, but you can also type words related to a site's home page.
On the Wayback Machine you can also find images, video's, and books. It feels a bit more 'incomplete' sometimes, but this is how I found scans from older Beckett Magazines, so it's definitely a tool to keep in mind. There is also a CD-ROM Software Collection on the Wayback Machine.
A quick search showed that they have some of the more niche/old-school kind of Pokémon CD-stuff, but I haven't taken an in-depth look yet. Wayback Machine also has some Internet Archive Projects. Once again I haven't taken an in-depth look, but maybe there are some useful sources there.
I also found GifCities, a search engine for searching (old) GIF's. Once again part of the Internet Archive. This is were I found the spinning Pokéball, which I edited using ezGIF, an online tool for editing GIF's.
Search Engines
Of course Google can always be helpful, but sometimes you've got to be creative with the search queries. For example "fake Charizard card" gives more proxy cards, while "bootleg Charizard card" already gives a couple more bootleg cards, but not as many as "Charizaro", which gave a lot of bootleg cards in the results. Using these kind of errors to your advantage can be helpful.
Google also has another useful tool, this being the Reverse Image Search. If you're on Google Images you can see a camera on the right side of the search bar. When you click it you can paste an image-URL or upload an image yourself. This can be used to track down other locations where this picture is used, or in some cases even other photo's or images of the same item.
Another tip is searching for the cards on Reddit. A good method is by pasting this site:www.reddit.com with your search query. For example "Charizaro site:www.reddit.com" gives all the Reddit posts which has the word Charizaro in it.
Asking Other Collectors
Websites like Reddit are good ways to ask people for more information. Or even contact the people who made the posts. I've also heard that Instagram is one of the places to connect with other bootleg collectors.