Totally a stretch but there's a great novella about an expert forger that certainly made me think about the trading card world.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/16...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
The thought that a person or company could get so good at creating forgeries they start to be hired and paid legitimately to do so is fascinating. Rather than creating a fake and selling it as real--'this one is fake but is 100% indistinguishable from even the world's greatest experts'-blows my mind a little bit.