The one Todd posted seems to have the identical caption. The shorter letters and a few other pointers. So right now I'm leaning towards it being real.
We could line up a few Magies in a similar animation, that would tell us a lot of stuff.
If the caption is brown and was laid out from a master that had the caption then the realtionship between the P and caption should stay the same for an entire press run. (Barring of course minor changes from humidity, shrinkage etc which should be very small.)
If the captions were done in brown apart from the artwork then it would vary, but should be consistent for each position on the sheet.
The other colors should move in your animation because of varying registration. If they didn't that would indicate cards produced at nearly the same time.
Now that Todd has posted one that's nearly identical, I think the card is more interesting than it first appears.
I've become convinced there were at least three printings with slightly changed artwork for at least some of the 150 series. Maybe more than that. I've been studying Magie because I believed it would have only been on one sheet since it's uncommon, maybe even rare.
This one along with the one Todd posted is making me totally rethink that.
There are a few little things that are exactly right between the two. Like the tiny frame break just left of the top center. But the remnant of an alignment mark in red at the top center is different. The Ebay card also appears to have less red overall, so maybe it's just underinked.
The caption seems more gray than brown on both. I've seen this on other T206s but haven't started tracking it other than a note that it happens. I'd thought it might simply be the use of a different brown, but it could also be the caption being on a different color plate. There are a few things I can think of that photoshop might tell us about color, but it won't be at all conclusive for a lot of reasons. (Unless we had the cards in hand, but Magie is on my "probably never" list
)
I have been able to link particular Magie fronts with particular backs. I was getting ready to start organizing the scans so I could get the info ready for posting. I can also say that more than one plate was reworked to make the corrected version, since I have a scan of a Magie and Magee with identical recognizable backs and some front differences aside from the caption.
I'll have to see if the back of the Ebay card matches any of the others. It's not one of the obvious ones, so it may take some time.
Steve B
PS- Of course there's always the possibility that the card Todd posted is also faked, meaning there's someone capable of replacing a caption well enough to get past grading- something I consider possible but very difficult.