Fakes, Forgeries and the Future of Card Collecting

[Collect Equity]

In the last few years I've started to seriously get back into collecting, because I loved the hobby as a kid and now have discretionary money to spend. However, I've recently become concerned that counterfeit cards will eventually ruin the hobby. I guess my concerns boil down to:

1) With printing technology improving, how can you be certain that cards aren't counterfeit. Isn't it possible to duplicate the original printing process and cardboard enough that you can't tell the difference? If it's not now, how close are we to having advanced enough printing techniques to not be able to tell the difference?

2) I know that grading companies play a large role in authenticating and helping to ensure that counterfeits don't infest the hobby. But how hard is it to counterfeit a PSA holder? Couldn't someone send PSA a real T206 Cobb and then when they get it back crack the holder and put the real tag in a new holder with a well-done counterfeit Cobb? With a thick layer of plastic between the card and a loupe it would only make it more tough to tell a good counterfeit?

3) How can I protect myself from counterfeits? Is there a top ten list of things I should look for? Does anyone have good high-res pictures that they can show to help demonstrate these tips?

Thanks everyone for sharing your experience with a relative newbie!!

[Matt]

Hi - welcome back! You will find a link on the top right of the forum titled "Detecting Card Alterations and Reprints" which you might find useful. We have some printing experts on the board who can address whether it would be possible for folks to make 100% perfect reprints nowadays, but as of yet, we don't know of any reprints that have been made on original card stock, so using a black light is a great way to tell, though 99% of reprints can be figured out without it.

[drc]

Modern printing technologies made good duplication on the naked eye level (which will fool some collectors)-- however are substantially different than the original Pre-War processes. Most home computers use ink jet and laser printing which looks nothing like the old printing under a miscroscope.

It's not unlike automobiles. Model T-s are antiquated, out moded. Modern cars are less and less like Model T-s each year, not more and more. Simply check under the hood. SImilarly, laser printing illustrates that modern commercial printing has moved far away from T206 lithography and isn't going back. Printing with lasers and dry pigment would be science fiction in 1909.

And, as an example of one technique, laser printing is easily identified under the microscope.

[Fred]

What happens if people go back to lithography and make fakes? Just kidding....

[bbcard1]

I once had a friend who knows about such things speculate that creating at t205 or t206 using the lithography process could easily cost $40 or more.

[Exhibitman]

Old cardboard also feels different. If you are a klutz like I am and have bent a prewar card or two then you know that it feels different when it bends--brittle. As for reprinting using old stock, I don't think anyone could print mechanically using 100 year old card stock and not end up with a mess on their hands from the delicate nature of the materials. They could age new stock artificially after printing but then DRC's point on printing tech detection kicks in. Bottom line, though, is that you have to learn what the issues look like and feel like so you can detect fakes firsthand.

Now, as Kevin's site shows, an artist can definitely do miracles with fakes and rebuilds (ever seen some of the Darby Chocolates rebuilds? They are beautiful), but with the hundreds of hours it takes to make a project a success, I don't think it would be economical for someone to try and make high caliber fakes from scratch other than for the elite cards, which would then be subjected to correspondingly tight scrutiny (we hope) by PSA/SGC.

Which brings us to third-party graders (TPG). It is possible to counterfeit any fabricated item like a TPG holder or flip, the question again is economics. To create a proper fake TPG holder you would have to create an injection mold to make the holders and invest in a sonic sealer to seal them. Injection molds are expensive to create and perfect--lots of capital up front. You would also have to create the flips. It could certainly be done but only as part of a concerted industrial effort, not some dude in a garage on weekends. Then you'd have to create the cards to go into them, which requires an effort of an entirely separate dimension. What is far more likely is what the A-Holes at When It Was A Game were doing. Those jerkwads were opening PSA slabs and inserting fake flips with higher grades, then resealing them and selling the cards. They got caught and pleaded guilty to mail fraud. Here is a link to an article at PSA's site on it:

http://www.psacard.com/articles/arti...id=3741&type=1

Now, does TPG catch all fakes and alterations? Hell no, as they will admit themselves in candid moments (well, at least the folks at SGC will; PSA's overlords I don't think believe in the concept of human errer [sic]). But they will give you a shot at weeding out the vast majority of amateur hacks when buying mail order.

[steve B]

A few answers that may help... or not. Also a bit long.

1) Modern printing won't exactly duplicate old printing because it works differently. So no, there won't be impossible to ID fakes coming off home laser printers anytime soon if ever.

But....As with anything manufactured it's possible to duplicate it.
The problem comes in the math of making a profit from the effort.
Old paper is a bit more brittle from both age and because it was made differently. So you'd have to locate the right materials and get as close as possible to the process used. This isn't that tough. One currency counterfeiter trimmed bills to get the right paper.

Problem 2 is the exact printing method. Lithography? Typograph? Rotogravure? Those were all used on different sets. And each leaves a clue as to which process made the printed item. Now figure that the inks readily available aren't formulated the same way. Far fewer VOCs in modern inks. Some are vegetable rather than oil based. And some of the dyes will be very hard to come by. Once industry moves on from one chemical to a better or cheaper one the old one is mostly unavailable. And with lithography there's a difference between that done with a stone or a plate.

Lots of stuff to reengineer to make it undetectable. And making it even harder are some of the methods of study that are becoming acessible. Like spectography. There's a group of stamps that were known as "china clay paper" The paper looks grayish, and the stamps are rare enough to be worth about $1000 each. Then along comes a couple of people with access to scientific gear and the paper is proven to be just a substandard batch of the normal paper. And the whole lot get delisted from the catalog.

Then there's the cutting, and that takes some equipment and knowledge.
(I'm fairly sure a card could be trimmed in a way that it would pass grading.)

So yes, it's possible to make an exact duplicate of something. But you'd have to expend a huge ammount of time effort and money to do it. Plus you'd have to avoid the simple mistakes fakers usually make like getting a font wrong or producing an impossible T206 front/back combination.

2) Making fake PSA (Or SGC or Beckett or ..) holders would be much easier. But then you'd have the problem of having a card that didn't have a serial # in the PSA database. If the card is worth enough to cover the expense of having fake holders made or of simply buying them from the supplier or one of their shipping guys, eventually a buyer will check the number and find that it's not real. Same with the above mentioned guys that put in fake flips.

3) The very best way to avoid fakes is to handle and I mean physically without slabs or sleeves or anything a bunch of whatever you want to collect. I'd want to experience a few hundred 52 topps before I bought a Mantle. Or a bunch of T206s before buying a high grade HOFer. Rare cards are a bit tougher, but handling a good number of original old cards will give you a feel for what's real or not and just how old a printed item is.

That feel for an sort of intangible "oldness" of things is very important.
Years ago, probably in 1982 or 3 a dealer I knew handed me a fantastic 1951 Mantle. Perfect centering, good color and registration, sharp corners. They just handed it to me and asked my opinion. After the initial wow that's nice, an unease set in pretty quickly. Which led to me saying I couldn't put my finger on it, but It was a very nice fake. Then I got the rest of the story. They'd bought it through the mail and also thought it was fake. so they'd shown it around to a number of dealers and collectors and everyone had the exact same reaction. The suspicions were considered confirmed when they were asked about buying a couple more 51 Mantles, both from the same person. Both also perfect. I think it was destroyed, or they still have it. Today it would be a very dangerous card if it was in a slab.

But don't worry too much, start with a few G-vg raw commons and work into things slowly. You may find that also helps appreciate the really special cards even more.

Steve B