Card doctoring...

[steve B]

Not all cardstock is made from wood pulp. T206s and many other sets of that era are on cardstock that's probably cotton and linen fibers. It's also pretty close to modern acid free cardstock, magazine backing boards are very close. (But not the same thickness, so don't even think about it...)

DNA can be seen, but the process isn't simply sticking it in a microscope.


And it can't be seen all that well.
Plus, the pulp could have bits of multiple trees, or other plants. An old papermakers trick if the pulp was too watery was to throw in a bale of straw. That would absorb water as it got ground up in the pulp mixer.

Originally Posted by Beastmode

++This. Where there is a will....

Cardstock is made from pulp, which comes from trees. If, for example, you examined two 1939 Dimaggio cards, one altered and one unaltered, under intense magnification, I can only assume that the DNA of the chemically altered card would leave some sort of fingerprint. You wouldn't even have to take the cards out of the slab.

The day of reckoning is coming for slabbed altered cards. When a credible https://www.newscientist.com/article...rst-time/Forth Party Grader comes along to "out" these slabed altered cards, the game is over. The real question is will anyone care.

I think the poll question should be this: If there were a foresnic cardstock lab that could determine if your slabbed vintage card was altered, would you pay to have it re-certified?