Card fingerprint?

[STL1944]

Question for those of you who know more than me (which is a low bar!). Do cards have unique "fingerprints?" I am thinking about the recent post of the trimmed WWG Joe DiMaggio, where the poster highlighted all of the various print defects, card stock variances, etc.

If these are truly unique, wouldn't TPGs be able to match a newly submitted card to ones they have already scanned? This might at least slow down some of the crack, trim and resubs...

I realize this might not work on some of the modern cards but would this work on vintage?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by STL1944

Question for those of you who know more than me (which is a low bar!). Do cards have unique "fingerprints?" I am thinking about the recent post of the trimmed WWG Joe DiMaggio, where the poster highlighted all of the various print defects, card stock variances, etc.

If these are truly unique, wouldn't TPGs be able to match a newly submitted card to ones they have already scanned? This might at least slow down some of the crack, trim and resubs...

I realize this might not work on some of the modern cards but would this work on vintage?

There was a thread on here (maybe someone else can find it and post a link) that touched on how with modern technology, AI, and all, that supposedly you can take a magnified enough image of any card and find that the markings, print dots, pattern, whatever you want to call it, are when viewed at such a magnified level totally unique for every single card, like a human fingerprint. The BODA guys do their work based on only what the human eye can actually see. My further understanding is the technology and ability to do this already exists. In fact, thought I heard/read somewhere that Genamint, a company acquired not long ago by Collectors Universe (PSA's parent company/owner), already has this technology and ability. Now, what CU/PSA may or may not decide to do with this technology/ability has yet to be seen and is anybody's guess. However, hoping that it may be used to effectively find and out card doctors and alterations may be a pipe dream. To actually work you'd need to have all cards scanned and saved using this technology before they were ever subject to alteration. Who is going to go through the trouble, time, and expense to get everyone to bring in and submit all their cards for such a scan? And then who again will be responsible to go through the time trouble, and expense of getting cards being sold, graded, or whatever re-scanned and then compared to some universal database to see if they have possibly been altered? You'd need to get ALL dealers, collectors, AHs, TPGs, selling platforms, and on and on, to ALL agree to work together and openly share data, information, and everything else about all the cards they have and/or handle for such a concerted effort to even have a snowball's chance in hell of ever effectively working to help stop the card doctors. Yeah, like that is ever happening! LOL

[Eric72]

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

SGC has been scanning cards for a few years now. From what I understand, PSA has also begun to do this.

With time, that stockpile of digital images will grow. Additionally, technology will advance. The "digital card fingerprint" will either become reality or become easier to utilize.

At some point in the future, a grading company will see a before and after pair of images and say, "look, that's trimmed. This works, let's use it." Things should naturally pick up momentum from there.

I'm sure some will think, "the TPGs will never do this, because..." If business was static, that might be valid. It's not, though. Business and the pursuit of profit is a dynamic animal. If there's an opportunity to monetize this, someone will.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Eric72

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

SGC has been scanning cards for a few years now. From what I understand, PSA has also begun to do this.

With time, that stockpile of digital images will grow. Additionally, technology will advance. The "digital card fingerprint" will either become reality or become easier to utilize.

At some point in the future, a grading company will see a before and after pair of images and say, "look, that's trimmed. This works, let's use it." Things should naturally pick up momentum from there.

I'm sure some will think, "the TPGs will never do this, because..." If business was static, that might be valid. It's not, though. Business and the pursuit of profit is a dynamic animal. If there's an opportunity to monetize this, someone will.

Eric,

I know TPGs will scan and keep images for their own records, and more likely than not to protect their own arses, should someone come back and try to make a claim against them. But I'm not sure they take as magnified and high resolution enough images to be able to truly detect and be able to match photo "fingerprints" on that such level. And as I mentioned earlier, everyone in the hobby would need to help create and fully/freely share such a database with everyone else in the hobby for this to have any chance to work.

For example, a card doctor buys an SGC graded card off Ebay, and then does his/her magic, they just make sure they then submit the card to PSA or CSG, who likely won't have an already scanned image to check against. This would have only worked to detect the alteration if when SGC had originally graded the card they had also taken a highly magnified/high-res scan, and then uploaded it to some database that all the other TPGs could (and actually did) access and use to see if there was a "fingerprint" photo match for the submission to make sure it hadn't changed or been altered from the last time it had been graded and scanned by a TPG. This would require all the TPGs to work together, and for someone to take on the responsibility to keep and maintain/update this database, as well bearing the cost to do so. The TPGs are not going to cooperate and work together, and who in their right mind would ever take on such a database, unless they could somehow make money off of it? The card doctors are anything but dumb. They just make sure in the current way things are done to not resubmit a card to a TPG that may have already graded it. And once a card has been doctored/altered, I sincerely doubt it would get picked by another card doctor as a good candidate for further alterations/improvements. So, the card doctors only have to get their work by a TPG just one time for them to succeed. They're not going to keeping altering and resubmitting the same card over and over again. The only way these alterations are discovered then will be the same as it is now. Some third-party, like the BODA guys, has to take it upon themselves to go looking to find and then match what they think are likely to be before and after images of the same card. Unfortunately, that is often too little, too late, and the damage has already been done.

[steve B]

From the technical side of it.

For the older paper, most of the wood pulp based stuff that has visible darker fibers, Those are absolutely a fingerprint. And one that can easily be read without technolgy.
On some papers even without darker fibers, like T206, it's harder to see but magnified the fibers are visible. And those as well create a unique pattern.
Modern stuff typically has been bleaced, and has much finer fibers, I'm not sure it's possible to use the paper on something like 89 Upper Deck.


Print defects are not as conclusive. The entire goal of printing is to produce multiple identical items, so many defects are common and consistent. Just looking at the WWG Dimaggio, after about 10 different ones I was able to spot tiny differences that were consistent. There were probably at least two different plates, or like other sets there were two different places on a larger sheet that were that card.
Some print defects are more transient, and can be more likely as identifiers.

On a few sets there are marks in individual positions that can be used to determine authenticity.
For example, the remnants of transfer alignment marks on T206 Magie, correlate to consistent print defects on the reverse, and neither match a Magee.


My wife is a computer developer, and has assured me that having a computer compare two pictures to see if they match or not is old established technology.