Does it look legit??

[Archive]

Posted By: Hankron

I've mentioned this before, but if you are worried about couterfeits you should get a variety of commons from the particular issue. If you ever see a 'shoebox' of commons from the year you collect at a cheap price, buy it. I would think you could get a pile of 1984-5 OPC commons for a dime a dozen. Direct comparison with a card and a variety of commons, will usually reveal a card to be counterfeit as the card will be significantly different, including qualities of gloss, card texture, color of the edge of the card. Realize, that there can be legitimate differences in an issue, such as grey versus white cardstock-- which means you have to be familiar with the issue and ask others when you have questions.

Also, get a blacklight. A blacklight is good both for identifying many modern cardstocks (when you are buying Pre-WWII card), but is also good for comparing cards. In many cases, a counterfeit will fluoresce (glow) differently under blacklight. To see how it works, everyone one on this board is encouraged to put under a blacklight a same year/same player OPC versus Topps. Fron the fronts the cards may appear very similar, with nearly the same image, but you will see what happens when you shine the black light on them. It's almost like a magic trick you will want to show your friends.

Learning how to look at cards is not an overnight project, so don't expect to become an expert overnight. However, like exercize, come next December you will be glad you started today and kept at it. The best thing any collector can do is to handle and look at cards a lot, learn as much as they can and ask lots of questions.

I was approached recently by a man who said he had been collecting 1933-5 Goudeys for 20 years, and, after hearing about counterfeits, was worried that there might be some counterfeits in his longtime collection that he didn't know about. I said, "If you've been collecting Goudeys for 20 years, you would know if you had a counterfeit."

In fact, you will find that most experienced collectors who accidentally buy a counterfeit in person buy a card that is out of their realm of experience. It's often the first of that type that they ever collected.

I've often heard the refrain (including from well known experts people in the hobby)
"I don't need to do that scienfitic stuff, I've handled probably a million T206s and would never be fooled by a counterfeit."
And I will say, "I don't doubt that. But what happens if you are buying card from an issue you've never seen before?"

Lastly, I always recommend that, for high priced items, you buy from people you have personally know and trust or someone who is recommended from elsewhere or has a strong reputation in general. It isn't just an issue that they are experts in the field, but that, if a problem arrises, you know that they will fix it. Everyone makes mistakes-- the people you want to deal with are the people who fix the mistakes.