t206 spotting fakes ... any tips?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

If you have a small collection of genuine T206s and enjoy looking at them, the reprints will stand out in person. The reprints will be on different stock (tone, glossiness, thickness). But most important the reprints won't look right. At the least, you would say, "There's something strange about this card."

Realize that most fakes are intended to fool in person people who don't collect the cards, not people who collect the cards.

Josh is correct, if you get a strong maginfying glass or handheld microscope, you can identify T206 reprints due to the fine multi color dot pattern in the printing of the player image. If it looks like the dot pattern on a modern card or color picture in this week's magazine, it's a reprint. If you look at the image area of a genuine T206 under a microscope, it almost looks like a watercolor painting.

The good thing for early baseball card collectors know about it is that this 'multi-color dot pattern = reprint' applies to almost all early baeball cards-- Old Judges, Allen & Ginter, Gold Coin, T3, Peck & Snyder, T5 Pinkerton, early E cards, T200 & T222 Fatimas, etc.