Fake or real?
 

Hi all - today I received these 3 cards from an eBay seller.

I'm 99% sure the '68 is a fake - the focus isn't sharp, and under magnification the print pattern is blurred and barely visible rather than sharp. Red flag #2 is the back, which has faint print dots where a blank cardboard background should be, behind the name/info at the top and the cartoon at the bottom. And then when I went to take a photo with my iPad for this post, the telltale cracking effect became visible. It doesn't really show up in the version below because of file size limits, but it's definitely there.

I'm therefore suspicious of the '64 and the '65, of course, but I can't seem to find any obvious signs, even under magnification. The print patterns look like others in my collection, and the backs are blank where they should be. No cracking effect in the iPad photos, and the dot pattern on the surface looks similar to others. Are there other signs I'm missing, or maybe there are fakes that are better done than the '68?

The Mays does have some offset in the printing that is visible in the white outside the lines of the W and M in his name on the back, and under magnification, each letter in his name/position has a pink outline under it and a blue one above it.

Any input is appreciated, as always.

The 68 Mantle is unquestionably fake; aside from your comments, the front "circle" text is blurred, and the red "Mantle" has bled, both should be crisp even if his photo is kind of blurry or slightly out of focus, which is pretty common.

The 65 Mays and 64 Mantle, I can't tell from afar. If fake, and I assume they are, they are well done. Eveything looks pretty much right from the photos. The key is the backs and what they feel like. Should feel like old cardboard with printing on it. Not smooth, and no gloss.

The Mays doesn't have much border, be sure to measure it.

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Straightened the pics out...

Attachment 433001Attachment 433002

Card is super narrow, so if it measures 2.5" wide, you know it's a counterfeit that was printed with the wrong resolution.

68 is definitely fake, but if the other 2 are I can't tell from the photos and are well done

Which card do you mean? The '68 Mantle is indeed just a tiny bit narrow, but the other two are dead on with other cards from my collection. I don't see any distortions in the images on those that would result from "resizing."

The backs of the Mays and the '64 Mantle feel fine to me - no glossiness or unnatural smoothness as far as I can tell, but I don't have any experience in these things. The '68 Mantle maybe does feel a little oddly smooth by comparison, but that could very well be just the power of suggestion.

If the card measures short, then what I'm saying won't work. But if it measured as full, you would know it's counterfeit because there isn't enough border for a 2.5" wide card.

Which card(s) are you referring to? The Mays and the 64 Mantle don't look like they have too little border space to me (in person, maybe the photos above look different). The Mantle is off center, of course, but not suspiciously so. Are you seeing something I'm missing?

Don't overthink it. Simply measure the Mantle card and post it here. If it comes out as 2.5" wide, then it's a fraud (because a real card that is 2.5" wide would have more 'burlap' on the sides than the Mick does). If it's shorter than 2.5" (and possibly trimmed) then the jury is still out, because it can't be conclusively proven whether or not it's real from that fact alone.

Another way (probably?) would be to measure the Mantle card's active area (from the black line on the left across to the black line on the right). Then measure that same distance on other 1968 cards and see if they match (or come extremely close to matching). If they don't, it's bad.

We all seem to agree that the 68 is fake, so I’m trying to find out if anyone thinks the border width on the other two is wrong? If it’s just the 68 you’re talking about, then yes, that may be another sign. But I’m more concerned about the other two at this point.

I think you should be able to tell the other ones with a loupe/magnifier in the solid sections (purple on Mays, black bottom section on Mantle). Both look real to me from the scans.

I just double-checked both of the solid sections - the Mays against a Murakami RC and the Mantle against a 64 Kubek - and they both look 100% legit as far as I can tell. It's strange.

Why is it strange? That a seller was duped by a fake Mantle and sold all three to you? That seems like it would happen pretty often.

Yeah, I guess maybe I'm just being too suspicious in thinking that if one is fake, the seller is unscrupulous and the others must be too. It's tough diving back in to the hobby waters after so long, with so many good-intentioned warnings that fakes and trimmed cards are everywhere.

My 2 cents
 

68 sounds 100% fake. Definitely would make me uneasy about the other 2 from the same seller. That said - I am with the consensus that from the scans and your description there is nothing obviously fake about the other 2. That said - someone who in a best-case is inexperienced enough to miss the 68 as a fake could miss a number of other potential alterations (trimming, coloring, bleaching, etc) would concern me. In a worst case they knew the 68 was fake and was tried to either pay it forward or intentionally deceive. In all cases the cards you are talking about are relatively common - why not just send them all back, find new ones and rest easy at night.

What does the '68 Mantle measure side to side??

It's only juuuuuust short of 2.5 in. - about 1/32 in.

Well, the short answer is that I got them for a very good price - which, yes, I know, another flag. I basically made the deal figuring there was a chance there would be an issue and I'd have to return them, which is why I examined them thoroughly upon receipt. But I'm hesitant to let the ones that look good go without any concrete evidence that they're not legit (and in spite of apparently all concrete evidence that they are).

If they are trimmed, they must have been too big to begin with, because they're right on par with cards I've had since I was a kid both horizontally and vertically. I don't know the specific signs of coloring or bleaching, but I don't see anything suspicious on the surfaces even under a loupe.

Q.E.D., in my book.

Everyone jumped on that Mantle pretty quickly, because it just didn't look right. The other cards certainly seem to pass the visual 'smell test' (yes, that makes no sense at all), so hopefully they are okay.

Is there any known method of counterfeiting that would reproduce the dot patterns that make up the photos of cards from this era so well that it's virtually indistinguishable (to the admittedly untrained eye) from a real card?

When I load a hi-res photo of the 68T Mantle into the photo viewing software on my laptop and zoom in, the lack of a dot pattern is obvious, showing a different printing method. For the other two, I can't spot any readily noticeable differences. The only thing that occurs to me is that on the 64T Kubek and Terry, there are no dots, just a blank white space, for portions of the uniform that are close to the camera and in the sun (i.e. super ultra white). The Mantle has the dot pattern across his whole uniform, but so does Clete Boyer, who is also posed a little further away from the camera.

The other guys who've helped you have more experience than I do. But from my experience, this variation of patterns among different colored areas of the same card is common and totally normal.

As far as your other last question, I've never had a legit card w/ the right pixel patterns that didn't pass all the other typical "real" tests. But I'm also curious if it's ever happened out there.

Technology has increased exponentially with everything, so it only stands to reason that fakery with baseball cards would improve as well, and that is the case. Fakes used to be obvious. Not so anymore. There are any number of high grade fakes out there. PSA and others have admitted this. Many get found out, but many others make it all the way through the grading process. Unfortunate but true. When something becomes valuable, let the games begin. Humans are only human after all, no matter how much experience you might have evaluating baseball cardboard cards, and the ego to go with it.

Update: The seller, who seems to have a bit of a "quirky" communication style, has been apologetic and says he has refunded my money for the '68 and it should process in 24 hours. Also said I could keep the card to save on return postage and because he wouldn't sell it again anyway. He offered to refund all three if I wanted to return the '64 and the Mays as well.

Thank you very much to all who have given advice and weighed in. This board has been a huge help for me in navigating the current market after a long absence.

The giveaway to me on the '68 is the rather perfectly uniform slight rounding of all 4 corners. Most cards don't age that way.

Just today I thought I had a deal on this ‘65 Mantle. $100 on Craigslist. The pictures on the site and those texted to me had me hopeful, but after a 30 minute drive I knew it was a reprint the second I saw it in person.

Interesting - how were you able to identify the fake '65? Same type of things as with the '68 above?

If you've collected for a long time and handled lots of vintage cards, you just know.

Well that doesn't help me much :D.

That’s true Andrew. Experience is the best defense. And even there it is hard to detect in an electronic image.

If you want to take a crash course on identifying fakes from a particular issue, pick up a handful of commons from that set. For example, if you're hunting down a '65 Mantle, buy a small mixed lot of 1965 Topps cards. Make sure a couple of them are Yankees, so you become familiar with the way Topps printed that logo and team name.

After you get the cards, spend some time with them. Handle them raw and thoroughly check them out. You'll pick up on things a camera/photo cannot properly capture - qualities such as texture, fine print details, and the way light reflects off the surface.

You're also likely to begin developing an "eye" for spotting photos of fakes.

The best thing about this approach: the cheap common was printed using the same materials/equipment as the expensive HOFer. The experience and knowledge gained with the dollar cards will translate well when you go to make more expensive purchases.

And, from what I hear, the smell. Vintage cards have a certain aroma that is also very hard to fake. Always give a look at Etsy or eBay to see what the available fakes look like, before making an expensive purchase. And definitely inspect cards you bought online when you get them, while the return window is still open.

The opposite is also true, and often helpful. With more recently printed cards, there can be a "chemical" smell. This is difficult to describe; however, it is easy to recognize.

So, everyone should make sure their cards "pass the smell test" - literally.

Or, buy graded? (Stick to PSA, BVG/BGS or SGC) A presentable low grade 68 Mantle is about $100. Worth the piece of mind and easier to sell later.

The fakes are getting better so if you are light on experience I would go this route.

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Fake or real?
 

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be condescending or anything with that response. I just think it's true. If you've handled a considerable amount of vintage cards, that's way better preparation to spot fakes and reprints in person than spending 10x that amount of time looking at real vintage cards online. There is a certain texture to them, and even a certain smell. 1950's cards are different from prewar cards, and 1970's cards are different from 1950's cards. In many cases with fakes, the gloss and color on the surface of the cards can be way off, and if you've spent a lot of time flipping through stacks of mid or lower grade commons from the era in question, you are going to notice that kid of thing in a couple of seconds. Another thing that's much easier to see in person with older cards is the halftone dots that make up the pictures, from the printing process of the day. If you compare that in many cases to reprints or modern cards, you will see that they don't have this.

These kinds of things are what I mean. Of course it's more difficult now, when I grew up collecting you could walk into any one of about 3 or 4 cards shops locally and handle vintage cards. These days you would probably have to start by buying some of them online.

Since we are talking about the '65 Mantle - some things I would look for with fakes there is the white borders being too white, the card overall being too glossy, and that magenta / pink inner border at the bottom. Legit copies of this card can have some variation with how bright this pink is, but based on how it was printed - a fake or reprint is almost always going to get that slightly wrong. As mentioned already, get some common '65 Yankees and see how this border looks. Once you've seen a few, a fake one is going to stick out like a sore thumb. To me another dead giveaway with this card is some combination of what I just mentioned with dead nuts perfect centering. You just don't see it that often. The real card was frequently cut to be off-center, often times with some degree of tilt to the picture. Perfectly centered copies exist, sure, but if you have a random otherwise midgrade card that someone is selling on Craig's List or eBay, the odds of it being perfectly centered are kinda low. Most fakers get this wrong, since modern cards are generally much better consistently centered than their vintage predecessors.

Thanks much for the advice, everyone - it sounds like I was on the right track as far as comparing it to known commons, etc.

So, further update...get this: I was going through my HOF box just now to rearrange it alphabetically by player rather than by year, and I found another 65T Mays in about the same shape that I had completely forgotten I bought about a month ago. (This is what happens when you get a little overly enthusiastic about buying cards after a long layoff.)

Comparing the two directly, I'm now completely convinced that this one is legit. Either that, or they're both examples of the same incredibly good fake. I don't see any or feel any differences at all, even under the loupe.