If such fakes are out there, they would almost certainly be slowly dripped into the market to not crash prices, while the forgerers simultaneously flood the market with obvious fakes to make people feel more secure about buying the fee cards that do pass the light and dot tests.
At the end of the day, its just ink printed on paper. The reserve list cards were printed when magic was a small hobby. With how valuable reserve list cards are, it would be worth it for forgerers to obtain or reverse engineer the exact same types of paper and printers used to print the first magic cards. How it could be impossible to reverse engineer printing techniques from the 90s?
The methods/tests to detect fakes are common knowledge which means that forgerers know what they need to modify in ordet to pass those tests.
It’s inevitable that with machine learning and other advanced techniques, counterfits that are indistinguishable from genuine cards will arise. They are probably technically feasible even now.
With singles of power 9 going for tens of thousands of dollars, it is absolutely worth the time and effort it would take for counterfeiters to perfect the process and make counterfeits that pass all the common tests.
Imo, there is a very high chance that such forgeries already exist, and we have no way to know if they are very slowly dripped into the market to not plummet card prices, while forgerers also flood the market with obvious fakes to make people feel more secure in the cards that pass all the tests.
IIRC, the type of printer (and/or paper) used to make the original cards aren't used anymore, so it's kinda hard to replicate it.
They would only need to get their hands on a single printer from back then, or even just the blueprints for that printer, in order to be able to easily reverse engineer it. But even barring that, machine learning would let them create a printer that prints in the same manner. Manufacturing the same type of paper would be even easier.Originally Posted by Barook
I already swapped out my duals for proxies. No one can tell them apart. I can't either, I only know by keeping them separately.
I currently play "beta duals" in my deck. No one can tell those are fake either, including a handful of judges. They just check for the CE/IE stamp and shrug when it's not there.
Of course, I only play locally with my friends right now since paper events are gone.
The chemical engineering department where I received my PhD had a paper mill and focus on pulp and paper engineering, and having briefly worked in a paper mill while pursing my degree, easy is not how I would describe the manufacturing process.
I am not saying that manufacturing paper is easy.
I am saying that if a company in the 90s was able to mass manufacture a type of paper, a resourceful company with modern techniques could find a way to manufacture that same type of paper.
There isn't.
There is, however, a good test though for people talking out of their ass about it: Just look for the word "loupe" in their answers.
You have no idea what you're talking about. There is no "perfect" fake, and this is an irrational fear. These are physical cards that were printed decades ago. You can't print cards today and have them be indistinguishable from cards printed in 1993. Everything is different.
This isn't true. Of course you can. These cards weren't given to us wholly formed by God, and whatever techniques were used to create them once can be used to create them again and any differences dismissed as aging.
Your post history has long indicated a need to continually argue, and I'm not going to engage with you on these boards.
Perhaps coincidentally, there's a similar thread on the mtgfinance subreddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/...that_pass_all/
It's worth a read and contains many comments that address logistics, practicality, and the physical and technical challenges of forgery.
Thanks for linking to my reddit post. celticstill_i_last made an excellent post in that thread explaining the process...
“ You could buy a cheap beat up single color 9810 or 360. It’s just finding ink and stock. There isn’t much of a plate issue anymore with the advancement of paper plates. Metal plates are dead, and so are dark rooms. You could 100000% create identical alphas as long as the ink and paper are correct, down to the pica and point(old school printing terms).
A ab dick 360 or 9810 aren’t the price of a Honda, easy to maintain, and fun to use. It’s finding the exact ink and card stock.
As for the pattern. I think that could be the easiest part. We are talking about single color, overlapping printing. Each plate, for each color. You change the plate, clean the rollers, add new plate, add new ink. Paper plates are so cheap and easy to use, getting the pattern down would take some time yes, but once you have it done, it’s just a matter of cleaning rollers and swapping plates. 1 color press, 3 man job. One to watch the feed, one to watch the tray, one to handle cleaning and design and replicate image to plate. We are talking about 30 year old applications with modern techniques. It’s very plausible that within a month of trail and error you could easily manufacture thousands of 1 card. It’s all on card and ink. That will always be the hardest to match. Which is why it’s hasn’t been accomplished perfectly.
Edit: to put it bluntly. If I had the perfect matched ink and card stock, a single color press, and the plate maker/printer, within two months of running solo I could have many unl lotuses in the world. It’s not hard to age card stock after printing. Place hundreds of sheets on the floor and drive over them with a forklift and do some sick spins, lmfao. Seriously tho, time, money, and the right tools and it’s not challenging”
Cool?
But could you edit out the outright falsehoods from your post before you do, thanks.
As the art world well knows, yes, you can. These days you can fake anything and make it virtually undistinguishable of the real thing, in fact, for modern* processes like these cards, you can make as real as the real thing. What you may argue is that the cost do this would largely surpass what you could make selling these fakes, and in there you would be absolutely right.
* modern when compared to a 17th century painting, or a 13th century manuscript.
OK, "as real as the real thing" and the real thing aren't really the same, but if we can put that aside, then what we have is a fundamental problem with scaling. The technical challenges and the cooperation involved are so significant that they defeat the profitability of the operation to produce "perfect" fakes. Thus, there are very good fakes in circulation, but not ones incapable of being detected.
I would never be as adamant as that in what concerns counterfeiting. Even highly paid specialists can be fooled, much quicker your sunday judge with his ebay bought infallible loupe:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90170415...fake-paintings
Ultimately, if someone has the resources and is willing, then it can be done, it nobody can be arsed or has the resources, then it cannot be done. The main problem with MtG cards is that a) it's not a one-off piece that can reap a massive RoI (ex, a painting) b) It's not something you can sell or disperse a lot of it without an immediate crash of confidence and price (ex, currency).
TL;DR: Technically perfectly possible, economically, not viable unless you suddenly find the entire setup to do it on an abandoned warehouse (which is an interesting example, since bankrupt companies sometimes sell on the market the most remarkable machinery and supplies for peanuts)
The analysis that goes into judging the authenticity of a magic card doesn't require all this though.
The goal is to pass as a real card to be sold once. Not to create a replica that is effectively an expansion of the supply.
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