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Paul SMy kind of thread. All tips for spotting fakes immensely appreciated. Thanks.
I've uploaded the front and back of my own E90-1 Lajoie. Even in its poor condition it looks better than the fake. Operating along the lines of what has been mentioned about borders, I went through my own E90s. The trend seems to be that the bottom border was intentionally meant to be larger (than the side borders) and larger than the top border...easily either at least 40/60 or 30/70 top to bottom. This is true for 35 out of my 45 cards. And that the left and right borders strove to be as close to 50/50 as they could get (although my particular Lajoie doesn't display that.) Of the other 10 it looked like 5 either wanted to look that way but didn't/couldn't (i.e., leaning towards it but not very pronounced) and the other five were random, as they didn't much know what they wanted to do. My feeling is that if these cards could do their own borders like we do our own hair, the left, top, and right would be even and the bottom would be noticeably larger to accomdate the text. But that is just my own subjectivity (and my own hair rarely does what I want, anyway.) The color of my scan is extremely close to the colors of my actual card.
I think the bogus card was not scanned, but photographed, and then downloaded into the computer, because it verges of that fisheye look that happens when a camera's lens is too close to the subject. Also, on the back the lines on the bats have that squiggle look to them that screams lo-res, either saved that way or initially shot that way. Not that the scan is intended to reveal the truth, but the black print on the white back screams xerox to me. I love the line about the store being closed for a week, where to you think they will be when it reopens? Somewhere offshore that has no extridition pact with the U.S.?