New too Vintage...should I buy raw?

[steve B]

Certain cards do get faked, and have in the past. Most of the older ones are pretty easy to spot, and a lot of the newer ones are just printed on a home printer so they look "different". What was faked were usually the hot, high demand cards. there are a couple "sportscard counterfeit detector" books that cover almost all of those done in the late 80's/early 90's

What I'd recommend is buying a batch of cards in about mid grade that's mostly commons. Those will give you a good idea of what a real unaltered card should look and feel like. As usual, no guarantee you won't get an altered card in there, but a whole batch of altered commons would be pretty unusual - the main exception would be 71 Topps, where some people colored edge damage with a marker. I have seen batches of 1-200 of those that were all colored in. Usually it bleeds onto the edge, so a photo of the side of the stack usually makes it obvious.