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davidcyclebackI still say that if you have some cheap commons, you should have little trouble identifying reprints and fakes. All reprints and fakes should be clearly different, sometimes not even close. If you use a blacklight, even better. It may come across as mundane stuff, but reprints really do have a tough time duplicating stock color, gloss, thickness, opacity. I've compared Topps own reprints to the original cards, and the reprints failed with the flying colors all of the just mentioned tests.
On a more technical side, say you look microscopically at the dots on the front picture a 1933-4 Goudey. An isolated red dot should be pure red, blood red, pizza sauce red. In modern printing, they don't use red for halftone dots anymore, they use magenta-- which is like a darkish pink. You have to make sure the dot is isolated, as if you have different colors overlapping you will get new colors (magenta + yellow = red; red + yellow = orange).
In examining half tone prints, the red versus magenta dot is one of the strongest indicators of age. Though you usually know by then whether or not a print is a fake, magenta serves as final proof the print is modern. Below is a pic of magenta dots on a modern Topps baseball card. As you can see, it looks like a dark pink.
I don't have Goudey on hand, but on an authentic Goudey, an isolated blue dot should be dark, pure blue. In modern printing, they use much lighter blue. However, as dark blue and light blue can be harder to differentiate, this is less reliable. But if the dots and other blue printing are dark, solid blue, that's a good sign.