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Posted By: Hankron

Some, but by no means all, bleaches have optical brighteners added to them (opitical brighteners are chemicals specificially added to products to make them appear brighter), which may cause the bleached areas to glow brightly or at least abnormally under black light.

As bleach obviously has such a distinct and strong smell, the sniff test is often the most important and definitive.

Also, realize that the borders on a T206, for example, is an extension of the entire card front. By this I mean that, before printing, the entire front of the card was 'plastered' in a white coating. An isolated area of white (no ink) in the T206 player image should be about as bright as the white borders. Often times, the white boarders are brightend by dipping only the white edges of the card in the bleach. This means that the borders while be substantially and abnormally more white than the white areas in the image (center area).