First week back into the hobby after collecting since early 2000’s and I wanted to start out with Crown Zenith due to the hit rates and a lot of the cards I liked in this set. Unfortunately, I might be regretting the decision if these turn out to be fake. Now let me explain:

I purchased two 5 pack Galarian bird tins from reputable sellers on Amazon. I’m talking thousands of good reviews for both sellers. I bought one Moltres and one Articuno. 

Packing: packing from both of these tins looked to not have been tampered with and there were no signs of these being resealed. (Keep in mind I’m new to the hobby and don’t know all of the scams these days)

Packs: Upon opening I noticed a few large differences with the packs out of the Articuno tin were deeper in color and had an extra thick or maybe double crimp (look at 2nd photo where the red mark to fallout location) where the excess card foil would be shown as the right pack. Not sure if this is a manufacturing thing. The packs out of the Moltres looked lighter shown of the left in the photo. 

Also the back of the packs were interesting with where the extra overlay of the pack foil ended. Again might just be a manufacturing difference.

Opening: I kept one pack each sealed for the Amazon claim if one of which seems to be fake and have left the open cards in order in the pack wrappers. Upon opening four of each, I noticed the right packs that were darker in color were tighter packed and seemed to not rip open as clean as the lighter left packs. Cards were all in the correct opening order. 

Hits: oddly enough both packs had decent hits:

The right packs had a radiant Charizard and a mew V (we will get to this later) and a bidoof illustration.

The left packs had a Rayquaza VMax, full art trainer and a Manaphy full art card. 

Mew V: this is where I started feeling a little funny - not sure if this is a bad print line or what but the card does have texture to it. Let me know your thoughts.

Are these both real? Or just one them fake. Thank you in advance to everyone who reads this. Have a very nice day!

Crown Zenith: Real or Fake