Old Judge question
 

So I picked this up for a very cheap price and its the first I've owned. How do I tell if its real or a reprint?

I did the black light test and it passed that at least. But anything else I should be looking for. Also appears to be some what of a gloss on the front of the card.

Thanks for any help, much appreciated.

Brad

The front should be glossier than the back, because it's a paper photo pasted on cardboard backing.

The fronts of all to nearly all reprints will have a printed dot pattern under strong magnification. Old Judges are actual photographs and photographs have no printed dot pattern. The images are made by exposing the photopaper to light.

Also, Old Judges sometimes have a bit a bow as your appears it might have. The bow happened as the card aged, because the type of photopaper used back then had a tendency to roll up with time. If the paper photos weren't glued to a cardboard backing, they often rolled up into a cigarette-like tube.

Last but not least, yours appears to have foxing (the brown spots) on back, which is a sign of old age.

Yeah no dot pattern under a 25x printers loop and the front is glossy and the back is just old cardboard.

Thanks for the info!!

That looks legit. Just out of curiosity, what's a "cheap price"?

$40 plus free shipping

Yup, that was cheap!

Card almost surely good

Never picked up an Old Judge for that price.

Nice pickup

Joe