[Archive]

Posted By: Mark Macrae

From my experience, there is a considerable variance in the size of cards which turn up "outside the hobby". Series of 80, generally speaking, tend to be smaller. There are different paper stocks used as well. Some are more coarse than others. Most that I have found outside the hobby appear to have been 'machine cut', although there are others that appear to have been handcut a long time ago...with heavy patination along the edges. Watch for reprints as the E-121/E-135 cards were among the hobby's earliest counterfeits circulating in 1972. These counterfeits are now 30+ years old and are beginning to show natural aging...