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.