Hey guys, I am just looking for help in spotting counterfeit Magic the Gathering cards. Lots of the highest value cards have a lot of fakes flowing around that look better than ever.
What is the best way to spot them quickly during a trade or inform someone they are fake?
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The font and edges are most likely to be screwy.
Put it next to a real one and compare. Any deliberate difference will betray a fake. If you don't have a real one, ask the shop owner if you can compare to one of theirs. If the guy refuses, call him out on it.
Get a smol magnifying glass.
Look for dot matrix' on the backs of the cards.
Other than that, the best you can do is order yourself the latest fakes so you can familiarize yourself with what the differences are.
They are getting better every year though. Won't be long till they are almost identical.
Get jeweler's glasses - 5x or 10x magnification should do. Have confirmed legit card to compare (don't need to be the same card even radnom common will do, but should be from same set ideally) - tells to look for are mainly set symbol, typeface (including series numbers and copyright at the bottom) and watermark (if any).
If you're shopping online, you got no way to tell - either buy from reputable stores at mark-up or from randoms accepting risk you might be getting a fake.
addendum, what he says I forgot about backs, those can be a tell too
And having fake compare with is also helpful - just make sure you don't mix them up
Do the counterfeits have anything to do with 40% collapse in MTG playerbase like this guy says?
The one on the right is a fake, right? The colors are darker and the set symbol seems to be shifting a bit.
Please stop the shitposting
>Bringing this up in a totally unrelated thread
Hmmmmmm...
If anything having counterfeits makes it easier to buy into the game. I think that the only issue is that in the long run it can hurt stores. The playerbase drop is probably due to other factors rather than fakes that only so many people have.
I'm just nostalgic for Magic from 4-5 years ago when it was at it's best. Nothing wrong with that.
For fuck's sake we've had this discussion on like every MTG thread for the past week at least. The 40% figure is from MaRo saying a number on tumblr that contradicted the numbers every other source had said recently, and people took it as gospel despite MaRo, by both self admission and previous evidence, having no idea how any part of the company or the game works apart from the Design process and some of the Development process.
>yesterday somebody suggested "we can destroy magic by doing what the fans have been doing since 1994"
>it must be evidence of a conspiracy
Is goyf so cheap now because of counterfeits or less players?
It's not cheap enough yet goyim
That post doesn't really do much tho.
>Low quality Cards
Low quality cards have been a thing for a while now, and it hasn't gotten to the ultimate unbearable point, so that's out of the picture.
>People hating Decline in Value
Why do you think the Reserve List is in such large contention?
>Local Stores on the Brink of Closing
Not too much evidence
>Counterfeits
Have been either already passing thru events or being detected.
>Online Digital
Legit Argument right here, Especially with X-Mage doing MTGO's job.
They're trying to lower the price at a glacial pace by constant mythic reprints.
Just like if you're buying old video games from some scummy guy who gets all panicky when you go to open the cartridge up to see that everything's legit inside.
Like, DUDE! If it's legit I will pay the price we agreed on. The only reason you have for getting all squirmy right now is because you know something isn't as you have claimed.
A normal $2 loupe is enough to see the dot matrix.
It is lower because it has been pushed out of the tier 1 competitive level, some would say fatally so.
(Fatal push OP for OURGOYf)
Fatal Push.
The only real thing that kills a competitive card's price is a more competitive card supplanting it or neutralizing it.
Juzam Djinn was 10 ticks online until Abyssal Persecutor got printed. Nimble Mongoose was $4 until Delver got printed. Akroma was $20 until Iona got printed...
:^)
>The only real thing that kills a competitive card's price is a more competitive card supplanting it or neutralizing it.
Or a high density reprint. Core sets, rarity drops, even a well received limited set reprint can drastically alter card prices.
The economic principles he's talking about are pretty sound, regardless of whether or not the 40% drop in playerbase is correct or not.
Bend test. Most fake MTG cards aren't printed on good-quality card stock so when you bend them they won't bounce back.
Set the cards out on a table over night if the curl or delaminate they are real.
I've heard about the rip test too. Is that recommended for any cards I buy online? supposedly if I rip them in half I should see a blue core and then I know it's real.
>Most fake MTG cards aren't printed on good-quality card stock
As opposed to real MTG cards?
You don't have to rip them. Shine a very bright light through them and you should be able to see the blue band.
There's probably 20 times more Path to Exile than Fatal Push, and despite Push seeing more play, Path to Exile still retains it's $6-8 price.
Price memory is a thing and prevents things from losing their value even if there's magnitudes more supply than demand. Another similar case is Bitterblossom.
Goyf is no longer $100 because Fatal Push made him a good card rather than the best creature ever. Path will never not be $6-9 until a better white removal for W is printed for Modern.
Damn, that's a horrible batch for a company dependent on card value.
The worst part is that the card quality has be getting documentaly worse with each set. Somehow instead of fixing t he problem its getting worse.
Its to the point now that if you do not sleeve or press your cards they WILL curl. Period. In some instances the cards are curling right out of the pack. There was a video floating around the threads of a guy opening a pack fresh chase card and by the time the store owner got to him to start the transaction of him selling it to the store it was already visibly curling.
Extreme tinfoil hat opinion but I dont think it would be far off to believe WotC is behind the recent drama as a way to distract everyone and make them drop the cardstock concern. It's fucking retarded but it has garnered way more traction than the card stock issue has in just a few days when we've been getting bad batches since the beginning of the year and at this rate not even the Unstable lands will be worth anything
You could rip a super-cheap card if you got like a mystery pack and wanted to make sure the cards in the box were reliable, but it's really an unreliable method.
Texture can be a good indicator aside from what's mentioned here.
No matter how good a fake looks I've never seen one that felt the same as a real card.
Path's price has fluctuated several dollars this year alone.
I left my Explorers of Ixalan tokens unsleeved and out in my desk since friday, it's been raining and below 53ª. They're perfectly flat.
My Commander 2017 unsleeved cards however, are tacos despite being in a dry locker with silica gel bags.
If Rivals of Ixalan is the same cardstock, the issue has been solved.
Between 6 and 9.
It's not.
Post spoilers or go back to /pol/
More importantly, where can I buy legit looking fakes for cheap? Sick of having to fork over hundreds of dollars for cardboard.
>I dont think it would be far off to believe WotC is behind the recent drama
What drama?
Dumb shit over mean tweets and a cosplayer leaving the community. It has the whole active twitter and youtube commmunity of the game split and in an uproar, yet maybe a fraction of these community pillars had pointed out the card stock issue and didn't give it half as much attention as this drama.
It's a terrible card in an environment fraught with Fatal Pushes and 1-mana 9/9's.
Am I too late?
There were two formats where he was relevant.
Modern got Push and got too fast for a 2cmc beater.
In Legacy his prime days are long over, but now every deck runs DRS, there are too many Strixes and Eldrazi are still a thing.
>The day when a 1G 4/5 isn't good enough anymore
It's like I'm taking YGO pills
Gotta print power sparsely so people still buy packs.
I wanna see what'll occur if extended was reinstated desu.
Everyone knows a 3 mana trample haste with built-in protection is far superior desu.
Same here, i just want some cheap stapels for commander
Villa Zheng seems to be one of the more reliable Chinks from what I've seen. I heard that Proxy King is also good. Most reliable source for other bootlegs is reddit, in the r/bootlegmtg board. I haven't bought any for myself so far, but those two seem to be the most promising.
A youtube fuckwit and a cosplayer fuckwit had twitter beef just in time for the fortnightly women in magic argument.
Go Villa Zheng he a good gook
This. I’ve never seen a fake that wasn’t obvious based on touch alone. Might have changed now that the finish on the cards is more glossy but for old stuff it’s always been obvious.
The devious thing with fakes is that you can't be sure if any slipped through. Can't prove nonexistance after all. And that's what poisons the well once they become widespeead enough to enter people's conciousnes
Sounds too spooky. What if all the glossy generations of fakes were just lulling us into a false sense of security while they also churn out "perfect fakes"? What if WOTC is the real counterfeiter? What if actual counterfeiters perfected the somewhat matte finish of older cards and WOTC switched to gloss as an extra level of protection?
We all know you can't trust fiat cardboard.
>>The guy who got fucked by Force of Will
>>Sound economic principles.
Pick one.
>font
>color
>black lines and edges
>thickness and transparency
The best Chinaman fakes are at a point where you can use them in tournaments. I and many others have been deck checked while playing with fakes and the cards pass inspection.
Out of their sleeves, you can detect them unless you have no clue what to look for.
I'm perfectly happy with using them in a tournament, as far as I'm concerned.
>blue core paper
other methods include smell, texture, flexibility, glosyness, and overall "feeling" (I can't explain this one. It's like when you have it in your hands and you know it's not real).
I'm not really a friend of bend test because it damages the card.
Don't fucking put too much trust in color issues. Real cards have them too.
Rub the fakes on a wooden surface, unvarnished/polished.
Done. Can confirm did myself. Completely takes off the waxy feel of the fakes.
Also;
this
Try this with 5th gen Villa's. The pictures you are posting are quite old.
eh, maybe. All I know is that every fake I've ever seen hasn't even been close. Usually they've got multiple problems and the waxyness of the coating is only the most obvious. Seen multiple examples of cards that were totally sleeve playable but they're obvious without sleeves. Maybe the Chinese have finally cracked the code but I doubt it.
how would you spot a really good one though?
You people keep posting about really good ones but never post them. Just post a fake side by side with a real one.
If it's across the table from you, in a sleeve?
You don't.
>believing anything the Alex Jones of MTG says
There is no such thing as "fake" magic cards, just ones that aren't sanctioned by the wizards. And who gives a shit about what they think.