Are counterfeit's getting better?

[bnorth]

I haven't noticed any increase but unless they are bad you will not notice. The actual good ones will end up in slabs and collections to never be known as counterfeits. As far as fairly good but just not good enough a ton came out of Canada in the 90s that someone used the correct stock and a real printing press but didn't clean up the pics before rescreening them. Then a few years ago a ton of modern "factory" autographed cards came out of the New Jersey area. Those got noticed at first because of the bad autos on them and not the actual counterfeit cards.

In all honestly it amazes me beyond belief baseball cards have any value because they are just a very simple picture on one side and some even simpler printing on the back. I know many on here say I could tell and all I can say is just keep telling yourself that. In reality people counterfeit way harder things fairly regularly and more will get to baseball cards at some point. Here is a PBS documentary on how people have counterfeited entire ancient books that have fooled experts. https://www.livescience.com/65847-ga...ook-fraud.html

[nat]

We don't have the worst of it. Check out Eric Hebborn's autobiography (short CNN piece about him: https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ar...ger/index.html)

He was an art forger who was an immensely talented artist (and so could pass off his own work as old masters), but who also did things like used original paper and canvases from e.g., the 16th century, researched the pigments that the guy he was imitating used, and then mixed his own paints using the original formulas so that they'll be historically accurate upon chemical analysis.

Hebborn never claimed that his paintings were original (and he didn't sign them with forged signatures), he just painted them to look like old masters and let his customers think whatever they wanted. They ended up in major museums and big collections around the world. (He also died under mysterious circumstances in 1996.)

Baseball card world has a forgery problem, but the art world has it even worse.

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I haven't noticed any increase but unless they are bad you will not notice. The actual good ones will end up in slabs and collections to never be known as counterfeits. As far as fairly good but just not good enough a ton came out of Canada in the 90s that someone used the correct stock and a real printing press but didn't clean up the pics before rescreening them. Then a few years ago a ton of modern "factory" autographed cards came out of the New Jersey area. Those got noticed at first because of the bad autos on them and not the actual counterfeit cards.

In all honestly it amazes me beyond belief baseball cards have any value because they are just a very simple picture on one side and some even simpler printing on the back. I know many on here say I could tell and all I can say is just keep telling yourself that. In reality people counterfeit way harder things fairly regularly and more will get to baseball cards at some point. Here is a PBS documentary on how people have counterfeited entire ancient books that have fooled experts. https://www.livescience.com/65847-ga...ook-fraud.html

^^^ THIS! ^^^

This, as Howard Cosell would have said, tells it like it is.

None of my cards are in slabs. I have a great many pre-war and "vintage" cards. I don't believe I have any fakes, but who knows for sure? I can tell you this, however, if any of mine are fake, I don't care one iota. They're real to me, and that is all I care about.