Will Older Slabbed Cards Ever Carry A Premium??

[ronniehatesjazz]

Was thinking about this today when a couple of coworkers were freaking out about AI “taking everyone’s job.” I’ve been noticing that fakes are becoming more and more convincing. Could technology evolve to a point where TPG’s couldn’t distinguish the authentic cards from the fakes?

I’m not talking about a few fakes slipping through the cracks, I mean that the forgery techniques become so realistic and pervasive that it becomes near impossible to determine what’s what. It seems like there are just too many variables for this to ever come to fruition and perhaps this is just some kooky cardboard sci-fi thought, but it seems feasible short of some uncreatable paper stock or something (but couldn’t this be done with AI too?). Could there become a situation where you could only trust pre 2020 or 2025 slabbed cards as authentic? I know if the technology is available to produce undetectable fakes that surely it could also be used to recreate authentic looking slabs or make it much easier to deviously play slab games to move fakes into real holders but still it would be comforting to older collectors who bought the bulk of their collections long before this ever happened.

Perhaps I just need to lay off the Issac Asimov novels for a while but I’d love to see if anyone else has thought about this, or more broadly the impact AI could have on the hobby in general.

[bnorth]

Everything you are referring to has been available and being done for a very long time. Why it hasn't been done even more than it already has is all that amazes me.:D

[GoCubsGo32]

http://i.imgur.com/utIeVoy.gif

[Hxcmilkshake]

Youre scaring me. Stop that.

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[Leon]

Youre scaring me. Stop that.

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It's not as bad as it sounds, is it? :) As for AI, I do think we will see more technology play a role in grading in the future.

[seanofjapan]

It is certainly possible, the relevant questions are:

If the technology to create perfect forgeries is developed, will it become mass produced and the type of thing available in every home? Or will it be prohibitively expensive so using it to make forgeries won’t be the best use of it?

Will detection technologies keep pace and be able to identify perfect fakes by micro signatures that aren’t detectable by humans? And if so, will this technology be widely available or too expensive to be practical?

Of course, this type of tech will produce serious problems outside our little hobby too, so it’s use may be strictly regulated. But then you might still have parties in third countries using it...

Interesting food for thought

[bnorth]

It is certainly possible, the relevant questions are:

If the technology to create perfect forgeries is developed, will it become mass produced and the type of thing available in every home? Or will it be prohibitively expensive so using it to make forgeries won’t be the best use of it?

Will detection technologies keep pace and be able to identify perfect fakes by micro signatures that aren’t detectable by humans? And if so, will this technology be widely available or too expensive to be practical?

Of course, this type of tech will produce serious problems outside our little hobby too, so it’s use may be strictly regulated. But then you might still have parties in third countries using it...

Interesting food for thought

To the bold section. LOL, why not just use the exact same type of machine that made the originals. It boggles my mind that people think that printing a picture on a piece of paper is somehow hard to do. Nothing needs to be developed it has been here as long as the ability to make the originals. Same goes for making the plastic slabs.

The part that amazes me the most is that is has not been done more than it already has been.

[seanofjapan]

Yes, but reproducing the exact equipment and materials originally used today is expensive, hence nobody doing it. Having some cheap 3D printer that can produce them en masse cheaply is what is going to cause problems.

[steve B]

To the bold section. LOL, why not just use the exact same type of machine that made the originals. It boggles my mind that people think that printing a picture on a piece of paper is somehow hard to do. Nothing needs to be developed it has been here as long as the ability to make the originals. Same goes for making the plastic slabs.

The part that amazes me the most is that is has not been done more than it already has been.

That pretty much nails it.

The technology used on many of the popular sets is over a hundred years old. Almost exactly, the change from Litho with stones to plates started around 1910.

Making something that would slide through the current brief examination is doable, maybe even with modern technology making it less labor intensive. I'm not familiar enough with the really modern stuff to be sure, but a lot of what's done is software. If the software doesn't allow certain things, it can be modified.

Making something truly undetectable?
That's a much harder task. I believe it could be done, but to my knowledge nobody has done the technical work to know precisely what to do. Nor have they done that same work to detect it. Why? Because it's very time consuming, fairly expensive, and overall not commercially productive.

They have done that work for other things, so a metal object can be analyzed to see if the metal has the right precise composition for the supposed time period and maker. The device to check that isn't cheap, but it's a lot less expensive than it used to be.

I'm not as expert as I'd like to be, but I figure if I really wanted to I could give it a good go at making something that would be very hard to detect.
But having learned the stuff I don't know yet, and having bought the equipment and supplies and set up a shop.... I could probably make just as much money doing stuff that wouldn't get me arrested and jailed.

[bbcard1]

if you are going to make a dishonest buck, there is increasingly easier ways to do it than to go through the trouble of creating a completely undetectable counterfeit baseball card.

[conor912]

AI will end up being used for inifinitly more nefarious than faking baseball cards. I think we're safe on that front.

[WillBBC]

Totally a stretch but there's a great novella about an expert forger that certainly made me think about the trading card world.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1616960922/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The thought that a person or company could get so good at creating forgeries they start to be hired and paid legitimately to do so is fascinating. Rather than creating a fake and selling it as real--'this one is fake but is 100% indistinguishable from even the world's greatest experts'-blows my mind a little bit.

[steve B]

Before we had a single currency, each bank made their own. Which left lots of room for people to do bad things. Like get a bunch of money from a bank that had closed, travel far enough that people hadn't heard of the bank or its closure, and swap it for another banks currency usually at a discount.

One very enterprising guy would get to a town, check into the hotel, and draw by hand a banknote from a bank that never existed. Usually biggish bills like 50 or 100 Then he'd head to the saloon and lose 10-20 at cards. someone would make change, or go with him to the bank to get change. Then he'd pay the hotel with some of the change. By the time they'd sent the bill back east and found out the bank didn't exist he was long gone.
They had his paper supply and drawing set on display in the local museum where he'd finally ben caught.

It didn't end well for him.