Are counterfeit's getting better?
 

I haven't seen many fakes recently until this one popped up in a facebook group dedicated to cracker jacks. The poster claimed he found it in his deceased father's things and was asking if it was real. From the picture it looked pretty good until I noticed one major glaring mistake with the back (which unfortunately I didn't get a screen grab of) which immediately ID'd it as counterfeit. The annoying part is the scammer probably got enough info from the group to go back and fix the error.

It's surprising to me we don't see more counterfeit cards being made given the valuations in our hobby. Hopefully the TPG's are sophisticated enough to catch these if attempted to be graded.

Have you seen an increase in fakes recently?

Yep, the opinion sellers have always been quite sophisticated.

Wow AJ that front does look good. Even has a crease and some caramel staining. It looks a little too stiff in his hand to be a 1914, but if it found it's way into a slab it'd be tougher to tell. Guessing the back was a 1915 but not upside-down?

If this was the case, I got taken many years ago with the same thing. I was into the Cubs and was traveling across country. We stopped at an antique store and I saw 4 1915 Cubs. At that time, I was not into vintage and had no knowledge at all about the 1915 Cracker Jacks. However, the price was about the same as I had seen in a price guide (didn't have it with me), so I bought them. When I got home a couple weeks later, I added them to my Cubs collection, feeling very pleased. When I looked in the price guide to get further information. I then realized they were repos as the backs were not upside-down. Of course, I contact the antique shop but got nowhere. Lesson learned the hard way. I still have them but they are listed as repos.

i must admit i was fooled by this CJ JJ. i DID miss the glaring telltale detail...the wrong set size for the issue was the giveaway.

My question regarding this JJ is that it appeared to be see through...implying super thin stock in that you could see the writing on the back from the front.

i had never seen this on a fake before.

It's WAY too thick. Real ones are flimsy. And brittle. Hold it the way he's doing, the corners would flake off. Total BS.

Well it's a good thing you did not just throw them away. You might look into the slight chance that your cards are actually 1914 Cracker Jack as that year the backs were printed right side up.

The paper stock is very thin on 1914 (light shines through easily), and the checklist varies slightly between 1914/1915. You could at least verify the Cubs cards in your collection are in the '14 set.

I think certain repros have gotten much better. Fortunately a number of them either clearly state “reprint” or have intentional marking to make that ID quite easy. However fakes with the intent to deceive have also IMO gotten quite good. Although some “back in the day” were pretty darn great. 1988 Brett Hull RC comes to mind. I don’t remember all the details but I think the counterfeits were produced on identical stock and machinery - likely an inside job. The fatal flaw was a single missed dot but the upper portion of the design.

To stay on top of recent counterfeits I suggest checking out the largest open air counterfeiting criminal market on the internet, Etsy.

Etsy is the proud home of many homemade and custom created goods all the counterfeiting tools one would need for any criminal enterprise.

Appreciate your thoughts. I did do both after I got serious about vintage. Thanks.

I haven't noticed any increase but unless they are bad you will not notice. The actual good ones will end up in slabs and collections to never be known as counterfeits. As far as fairly good but just not good enough a ton came out of Canada in the 90s that someone used the correct stock and a real printing press but didn't clean up the pics before rescreening them. Then a few years ago a ton of modern "factory" autographed cards came out of the New Jersey area. Those got noticed at first because of the bad autos on them and not the actual counterfeit cards.

In all honestly it amazes me beyond belief baseball cards have any value because they are just a very simple picture on one side and some even simpler printing on the back. I know many on here say I could tell and all I can say is just keep telling yourself that. In reality people counterfeit way harder things fairly regularly and more will get to baseball cards at some point. Here is a PBS documentary on how people have counterfeited entire ancient books that have fooled experts. https://www.livescience.com/65847-ga...ook-fraud.html

We don't have the worst of it. Check out Eric Hebborn's autobiography (short CNN piece about him: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ar...ger/index.html)

He was an art forger who was an immensely talented artist (and so could pass off his own work as old masters), but who also did things like used original paper and canvases from e.g., the 16th century, researched the pigments that the guy he was imitating used, and then mixed his own paints using the original formulas so that they'll be historically accurate upon chemical analysis.

Hebborn never claimed that his paintings were original (and he didn't sign them with forged signatures), he just painted them to look like old masters and let his customers think whatever they wanted. They ended up in major museums and big collections around the world. (He also died under mysterious circumstances in 1996.)

Baseball card world has a forgery problem, but the art world has it even worse.

^^^ THIS! ^^^

This, as Howard Cosell would have said, tells it like it is.

None of my cards are in slabs. I have a great many pre-war and "vintage" cards. I don't believe I have any fakes, but who knows for sure? I can tell you this, however, if any of mine are fake, I don't care one iota. They're real to me, and that is all I care about.

Indeed!

;)

Eric Hebborn
 

Nat mentioned the infamous art forger Eric Hebborn. Look the boy up on Wiki.

He started out in art restoration and was so good at it that he began, in the words of Wiki, restoring painting on blank canvases. I love that.

Hebborn was beaten to death on a street in Rome about 30 years ago. His death may be unsolvable to this day, but understandable. Another unsatisfied customer. No mystery there.

All you T206 fakers, this is a cautionary tale.

But!

He didn't actually "forge" anything or make any counterfeits. His paintings were originals. Were they good paintings or not?

"Fine" art is 90% fraud. Van Gogh himself treated his paintings like trash and sold just one painting during his lifetime. But after his death a concerted marketing campaign by his family convinced the art world that he was a tortured genius.

:rolleyes:

Moreover if a painting is found in a garage, it's worth $millions if it turns out to have been painted by Pablo Picasso. But it's "worthless" if not. But it's the same painting! I mean is it good or not?

:confused:

Yes, the TPGs are very skilled and sophisticated, as evidenced below...

I have been to the Van Gogh Museum multiple times and can say that his stuff looks way better after some Philosopher Stones. Otherwise the other art displayed there is way better than what he done IMHO. Art is something I have never understood and I have seen many of the "great" paintings in person. You can have a painting from the 1600s that looks like a picture it is so perfect but the slop(to me) of someone like Van Gogh is worth 1000X more.

Here's something I wonder about sometimes: should I be glad that I don't think that I've ever bought a fake card?

On the one hand - of course! It would be bad to have wasted money on fake cards.

On the other hand - there are so many fake cards out there, that I don't think I've ever bought one might just be evidence that I'm not good at spotting them.

Now of course I think I'm good at spotting them; but that's just what I would think if I wasn't.

I mean...they aren't likely to be getting worse...