Analysis of Mike Wheat T3 Reproductions

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Posted By: warshawlaw 

I got my card today and went over it with a magnifier. Here is what I observed:

In person, the cards will fool no one who knows anything about the issue. The cards look like they were made with a high quality scan and a color laser printer. They are a sandwich of two printed card stocks (I am guessing 100 pt). The seam can be seen on the edges, which are very white. On magnifying the card, the matrix pattern of ink dots is clearly visible, especially on the back, where the computer interpreted the coarse texture of the original cards as a matrix of visible red and blue dots. The card's texture is smooth, unlike the genuine article, and because of the manufacturing, it feels less rigid than a real T3. And the card backs do have a slightly different color starburst at each lower corner of the frame. The card front image is pretty darned nice, obviously made from a top grade T3 with good equipment. Up close, within a foot of it, you can see that the camera interpreted the coarse paper of the original, which gives the reproduction a slightly muddy look, but from 2' away, the card looks really good.

Now for the bad news: The card does not say "reprint" or "reproduction" anywhere. On typical muddy ebay scan, it would be impossible to see the telltale signs of the computer interpolations or the texture or edge color that are dead giveways. And, if you had not seen and handled a T3 before, you would easily be misled into believing it is authentic. My advice, therefore, is to be very careful of these cards online. Ask the sellers for back scans. If they are honest and are simply clueless owners of these reprints, the starbursts at the bottoms of the back frames will give it away. If they are cheats, however, you will get burned.

I have to say, I am seriously pissed off at Wheat for creating such a tempting fraud vehicle. He is going to clobber the market for T3 cards with this crap. That said, I think I'll frame mine...it is awfully nice looking.

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Really a very, very nice reprint--yes, there's a tiny bit of edge chipping, and the basic board is snow white. Texture makes no attempt to duplicate original. The litho reproduction seems outstading to me, and I'm thinking of writing a note on the back that it's a reproduction. In spite of its "not being able to fool anyone familiar with the set." I don't know if it could have fooled me or not--I suppose not, because of the texture of the picture. I have 8 real ones.



Here's a real one, not (unfortunately) mine. The scan is not the greatest, but it's apparently a wonderful card. There seems to be a slightly false tint to the reproduction, but the lines and colors of the people and crowd seem to me to be outstanding.

[edited to reduce scan size]

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Posted By: Bill Cornell

Got my own yesterday; the real vs. repro scans are below (both taken at 200dpi). These T3's are the best reproductions I've seen, by a long shot. They're not nearly good enough to fool someone seeing them close up for the reasons Adam and Julie gave, but trying to tell from a scan would be very difficult.