A Large Amount of Fraud in Our Hobby Today- Daniel Desmond aka Daniel Paul

[steve B]

A good magnifier and knowing what to look at as far as the printing and edge quality goes will detect most of them.

Blacklight will pick up a lot of them too.

After that it gets a bit tricky.

I don't have the number handy, but at one point I measured the thickness of several T206s and they were all the same. Within reason, I didn't look beyond thousandths of an inch, and given the tech of the day I'd say +/- .001 is reasonable. If I remember it correctly there was no difference in any of the ones I measured.

Just seeing a lot of originals up close is probably the biggest thing. After a certain point, the ones that are "wrong" will be more obvious.
That's also something I don't have much advice on. Most collectors who started a long time ago have probably held more T206s and other prewar cards than most newer dealers have seen. One show I went to there were probably 5-6 dealers who had between 50 and 100 in stacks. Not even a plastic holder. That just doesn't happen today.

[rockthree]

The problem with these cards is that there is extra paper and glue on there, which would totally throw off the weight.

[Leon]

Originally Posted by rockthree

The problem with these cards is that there is extra paper and glue on there, which would totally throw off the weight.

Really? How many have you handled?