Yeah, a lot of the stuff you said was spot on, so, for the cards that you can see that they've put a lot of effort in to forge it, they've still slipped up a few things
A creature with a counter on it is considered modified no matter what kind of counter it is or which player put it on that creature
Now that might sound like a lot of money for a small cardboard rectangle, but it's about $1,000 less than similar graded versions of the card were going for in mid-February
Early games are littered with bad cards (which to be fair was unfortunately the meta of the time) and odd systems and unlike other games that are constantly changing meta, you dont see a lot of meta changes here because the systems are so primordial
The Bottom Line Japanese booster boxes deliver a fundamentally better opening experience than English boxes guaranteed rare pulls, superior print quality, and more consistent value in every box