[drcy]

I would use a combination of magnification (Scott and I were looking at 200x power, by the way), gloss (including in comparison to other T206s), black light, infrared and provenance.

Duly note that it was provenance (past sales) that identified these cards. Card collectors often dismiss provenance, but if you can document that a Magie has been around in that state for twenty years, the sage collector would pay a premium. On the other hand, a forger can't show where he obtained the cards-- because he made it.

As board member Jim Stinson once said about another form of collectible, “Authentic autographs have a history or source … forgeries do not. They just ‘appear’.”

Obviously, provenance isn't fool proof and has obvious limitations, including because rare cards really can be found in shoe box collections and in attics and inherited and because for every forged JFK signed baseball is a made up story where it came from, but it is something collectors should keep in mind. And I included it in my list as a supplement to, not a replacement of physically examining the card.

P.s., forgeries, alterations and shilling are all bad. Why is there this debate? As my dad would say "The answer isn't either/or. It's a both/and." Or if I asked "Where would you rather live, Siberia or the Sahara Desert?," he'd say "That's easy. Neither."