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Posted By: leon

The best way to arm yourself against fraudulent cards is by handling as many as you can, imo. Most of us that have been doing it for several years (and I am a relative newbee) can hold a card and "feel" if it is legit or not. David Rudd (Cycleback aka Hankron on the board) has several reference books you might want to get too. I have a few of them and they are very good. Out of all of the cards I have bought (probably a few thousand) I have exactly one fake, that I know of. It is a Brunners Bread D304 that I bought on ebay, about 6 years ago, for $40. I have kept it as a reminder even after the seller said he would take it back in trade for other cards....but all he had was new stuff anyway so now I have the reminder of what NOT to do. Once you have handled enough old cards you will start to be able to "feel" the age of them. The petina of old paper can not be faked very well. If you put an old card in the palm of your hand, laying flat, and look at it at an angle, you will be able to see the uneven gloss too. That uneven gloss look is almost impossible to fake. The "feel" of old paper is also impossible to fake, or at least I have not seen any I was fooled by. As for buying on the internet it is always caveat emptor. If you buy graded cards from PSA, SGC, or GAI you will be safe 99.999% of the time, on fakes. Alterations is another bag of worms but that is a whole nuther thread. Buy from respected dealers or ebayers at first and you should be ok. Oldcardboard.com has a list of good dealers that sell thousands of cards a day/week and that might be a good list of folks to buy from to start out with. Good luck and happy collecting !!!!!