Posted By:
davidcyclebackI don't think reprints could be made today or in the 1950s that could fool an expert looking using his naked eyes, and I'm including many of the avid T206 collectors on this board. Further, original T206s were made with an antique printing process and ink that can be identified with the microscope and couldn't be duplicated on a good reprint.
The printing processes is a catch-22 for the forger. The original process was primitive and could not create great detail-- thus, the cards resemble paintings. If you tried to reprint a Ty Cobb using the original process the reprint would come not looking like the original, but a primitive reprint-- as the original process isn't detailed and modern enough to reproduce exactly an image. It's kind of like to make a reprint of a Van Gogh, you take a digital photo. If you tried to make a copy of a Van Gogh using the original process (oil paint on canvas), the copy's likely to come out horrible. To reprint well the T206 card from the naked eye level, you need a modern, detailed process (like a fancy computer printer), but the modern process would be easily identified under the microscope. Just as you can tell the digital copy of the Van Gogh isn't the real painting, as it has all those little pixels in the image ... So a forger can't can't mimic naked eye quality (looks real when sitting in my hand) and real microscopic quality (looks like the original printing process and ink). The qualities are mutually exclusive.
I don't believe the 1950s reprint stories, unless the people who were fooled weren't good at identifying authentic T206s.