Identifying a Counterfeit Through Printing Knowledge

[steve B]

Originally Posted by thatguywithadot

i do feel that there are some patient "thoughtful" or detailed(horrible word LOL) counterfeiters out there that the masses including tcg will not catch nor can with the little wiggle room of variance that existed between print runs.

That's one of the reasons a lot of people don't get into the very detailed specifics on fakes. If we can read it, so can the forgers. And there isn't a lot of upside to doing their research/QA for them.

I bought a fake in 1978, that at the time was a lot of effort for the $2 it cost me. Someone actually copied a black and white halftone card, and a reverse and printed them on a press.
But they put a back on the card that it shouldn't have... Close, but nope. I keep it to remind me how much I always need to learn.

The card I saw in I think 81 or 82 was a really beautiful 51 Mantle. The dealer I hung out at handed it to me and asked what I thought about it. After a couple minutes I said "beautiful card, too bad it's fake" He asked how I knew, and all I could come up with was that it just seemed off but I couldn't say why. He'd shown it to a few local dealers and had talked to a couple others farther away who had also been sent the card. Everyone had the same opinion.
I like to think that now almost 40 years later I might be able to prove it was fake.
As far as I know they declined buying it, and sent it back.
(Oh, for the days when someone would actually mail a 51 Mantle to a dealer asking for an offer.... )

It's very likely there are some really skilled forgers out there. But they almost always get caught eventually

From a different hobby
Sperati
Fournier
And a whole rogues gallery of others, some very skilled, some less so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stamp_forgers

https://d2jf3tgwe889fp.cloudfront.ne...8pp147-163.pdf

Someday we may have similar resources for cards, but that may not be in my lifetime.

[danf19]

I really appreciate you all taking the time to write this down. Very helpful !
Dan

[thatguywithadot]

that was some interesting linked material Steve! amazing to see basically an entire industry of stamp forgery that was thriving like that lol

[steve B]

It's a crazy hobby in some ways.
Sometimes something was printed using a different process, or even using a different press. And that can make a huge difference in value. As can sometimes slight differences in the paper used.

Cards are much easier!

Here's what's probably the best "find" I'll ever have.
A very common stamp, something like 65 million issued. Except, Plate 40 which can just be seen at the top was only used on an experimental steam powered press along with plate 36. Only about 2400 impressions total (240,000 total stamps from each plate) . I wrote an article about finding it for a stamp publication in 2012, the last time stamps from that plate had even been described was 1932. There are a few probable copies now that what the details were, but this is still the only certain copy from either plate. It would be a maybe if they'd gotten the centering right... The print quality is not great, about half of the 2c were done on the same press, and the print quality on those is often very bad. So bad the government insisted that steam powered presses not be used for any production, a contractual ban that lasted from 1873 into the late 1880's.

[thatguywithadot]

that is incredible! It really does pay off to learn production history of any item as it creates targets where nobody will ever even know it half the time i feel like!