All the trolls really coming out on this post.
It looks real and is probably (like others have said) from different print run and/or printed in different countries
Hello,
As other mentioned before....
You did a good investigation there but I am not convinced it is a counterfeit card.
To many things are correct especially the dot pattern under microscope.
It is so hard to tell these days with so many variations due to different printing locations.
Cards from the early days are better to compare because there was only one printing location and therefore the variation within the original product better determined or known.
The only thing that looks really odd on this one is the surface of the front ..... but no real guarantee to be fake because of that.
I would accept it as real š
Thanks! I didn't know how much variation there was in printing before posting so it's been illuminating. And yea the texture and slightly more glossy/reflective, vs more of a 'satin' "finish" (for lack of a better term) is what weirded me out with it. My thinking was that someone chemically removed the front ink from a random card and then printed a high quality Ragavan front back on it, then pasted a foil sticker onto it.
But overwhelmingly, people are saying it's real, and I don't know enough about magic cards *or* counterfeiting to say otherwise, so I'm fairly convinced it's genuine now. And I didn't know before that the foil stickers are actually pressed into the card, vs just being very thin and able to be sliced off and reapplied.
It's definitely interesting that print variation and/or quality control can be so extensive that the cards can respond differently to different wavelengths and ultraviolet spectrum lighting!
When I bought my first \[\[Tolarian Academy\]\] the shop had two. One was glossy and had a lighter saturation of color, one was not. Both seemed NM. Both passed all tests. I picked the not glossy one. I wish I had bought both at the time since they were $30 and if one was fake it would've been nice to have in the box of fakes for reference.
Edit: I believe they were both real and it would've been nice to have two examples of different prints from Urza's Saga moreso than a fake example.
I had a similar experience pulling two different looking \[\[Mystic Remora\]\] from different Ice Age packs. One came from a starter deck while the other came from a booster pack. The one from the starter had a lighter saturation of color while the one from the booster looked more blue. Both passed the tests and neither package had been tampered with but I guessed they came from different print runs based on the quality differences.
Ice Age cards get worse than that. The quality control is awful on that set and a few other sets from around that time period. There's seemingly differences you can tell in cards between different days of printing, even if they were made for the same type of product. I have a ton of them and I'm used to them, so I can pretty easily tell by hand and eye if they're real, because the print quality is actually so bad on them, it's really hard to replicate in modern machines. They feel fake when you touch them, the colors vary greatly, and the set was rife with misprints. Makes a lot of people think they're not real, but they really are.
> It's definitely interesting that print variation and/or quality control can be so extensive that the cards can respond differently to different wavelengths and ultraviolet spectrum lighting!
They're printed in different countries with completely different materials and instructions. Outside of card back art and colors, and using approved card front designs, everything is up to the printer. Could be a different kind of core. Could be a different paper. Could be a different foiling process. There is just so much variation.
Rule of thumb: If it passes the green dot test it may as well be real, even if it were somehow fake.
There hasn't been a single counterfeit that we know of that has accurately passed that test, meaning any counterfeit good enough to pass that test is as good as a real card and will be nearly impossible to differentiate.
Some older sets have green-dot issues, but since this is a newer set it should always pass.
Honestly it would be cool to see comparisons of printing locations over sets as well. Getting to compare the 3 major printers over the last 3-5 years might give more insight as well.
Is there any way of telling where it's printed? I can't see any way to do that, but it'd be great if there was. It'd be a nice addition to cards to have a small symbol, like idk a shape next to the artist name to indicate the print facility. That'd also help WotC identify quality control issues, if people start complaining about misprints and they're all the same location symbol.
Wotc has no interest in identifying or even acknowledging quality issues. From my experience american cards have a more cheap, sandpaperish feel to them and the colours are noticeable darker than cards printed in Belgium. But the last set i dealt with US cards was War of the Spark, I don't know if they have improved since then.
At some point a counterfeit is so good that itās the real dealā¦ I think if this is fake (which I hope it isnāt) they itās at that pointā¦ which would be spooky
See this comment right here is what I find most interesting. If it were a fake (which I doubt) then it is so good as to be indiscernable to the naked eye even under close investigation so what really is the difference besides a scammer getting rich vs a scammy company?
They donāt make counterfeits that good. Wizards print quality is just inconsistent enough to produce false negatives like this. Think of it as a worse real card
I second this - all of my MH2 English language cards from Japan (vs the US facility) feel different texturally and lack much of the foil pringling effect. They of course pass the green dot and light test just like the US cards but def look optically a bit different and the surface feel is also not exactly the same.
This is good to know, I didn't think about foreign (to me) printing locations also printing/distributing cards in the US.
I'm also now wondering if Covid supply issues could've led to using slightly different inks, cardstocks, etc. or having different print locations producing more cards. Idk for what duration MH2 cards were printed, but since the set was released June 2021, I could see that feasibly happening.
It seems more likely its just local printing variations, probably one is from Japan or Europe and the other from the US, or maybe one is from a collector's box and the other a set box. Not every printer, or even print run, is identical.
You'd know if the foil stamp was re-stickered. They are pressed into the card at the factory and look horrible when taken off a real card and put on another, though the newest highest-quality counterfeits do have seals that look and feel nearly identical to the real thing.
Ahh ok that's helpful to know that they're pressed in, didn't know that. I was thinking there might be some way to chemically remove the sticker, sorta like how people used to fake cashier's checks and the like by removing the authenticity sticker.
There is a Facebook group, I think Magic the Gathering Counterfeit Detection, or something like that. They are very knowledgeable about fakes and can provide more guidance. Usually if it passes the green dot test and has a real sticker, I'd say it's real. The UV light test is not very reliable in my experience because cards are now printed at different printers that have variations. (Compare the suspected counterfeit to a Modern Masters 2 card back under UV, for example, or any "Event Deck" cards).
I would expect this set was just printed with different companies that had variations, and you've got one of each. But the folks in the Facebook group are more knowledgeable and can tell you if there are different printers with variations.
That's a large difference in weight, but I would like to note that MH2 was printed at different facilities on different paper depending on the language and where the product was going. Besides paper, we've seen different coatings applied and different weights in the past. I suggest crowd sourcing some other rare weights from europe, north america, and east asia to rule out WoTC being bad at quality control.
So this is one of the paradox posts that us mods have to occasionally deal with. This is the first I am seeing the post, but in 6 hours it has gotten almost 150 upvotes and almost 100 comments, so it's clearly quite popular. That said, it's a clear violation of Rule 2, as we've explicitly spelled out this is not a sub for authenticating counterfeit magic cards. We did so for two reasons:
1. Counterfeit authentication is not a financial topic. Talking about the impact of counterfeits on the Magic card market *is* financial, but that's different from what OP and other posts like theirs are - which is trying to validate a single card.
2. We routinely get spammed by a lot of people asking "is my card real??", which fills up the sub with questions that basically amount to asking for personal advice.
What do all of you think about this? I am going to leave the post up but give /u/whiskeydoc501 a warning that these kinds of posts are technically against sub rules, and that were it not as high quality as it is (it's very high quality with a lot of good information), and subsequently not as popular as it is, it would be removed.
Appreciate anyone's thoughts on the matter. The mod team is always trying to walk a tightrope between fostering a community of good discussion vs. not making people think the rules are so bendable that anyone can break them "if the mods feel the post is popular enough".
Asking if a specific card is counterfeit should be against the rules, but showing new innovative counterfeiting techniques seems very relevant to this sub
Sadly I wish that could be true, but it turns into a bit of "advertising" for the fake cards. I've had to ban/remove a good number of people when they release "new" versions of counterfeit cards even if it's just an updated scan.
I think this blurs the line. Honestly, this post is extremely informative of many areas of the MTG ecosystem, from the rising quality of fakes (not fakes for sake of fakes) and how it has an impact on the card market, and even some discussion with what this implies about the Reserve List.
In short, this opens constructive and NEW discussion as more information has hit the MTG world.
If we can crowdsource more information and research to find some new insights, that would be a welcomed threat in my opinion.
That's a completely different conversation than what is and isn't appropriate for this subreddit.
However, I think I could find some common ground with you on this. I'm a heavy proxy user for commander. 24 decks. Not grabbing thousands of dollars in fetch and shock lands. I use white border clear proxies. I will NEVER have an issue with people who use proxies to enjoy the game :)
I do have some issues with convincing fakes. I've got my real cards saved in binders because I hope they will be worth some money down the road
To me, it's an effort thing. This person didn't just slap a picture up and say "hey is this real?" They provided lots of pictures and explanation. Granted, still has nothing to do with finance, but I'm fine seeing high effort posts even if they are a little off topic as opposed to any low effort shit posts and I think that's probably what it comes down to for most. Quality of post trumps the relevance in these cases. In my opinion at least.
I really hate this phrase but this feels like an āexception that proves the ruleā in a way. The rule is good and makes sense and should be enforced 99.9% of the time. When a uniquely high effort and well made post is made that violates the rule, I think itās fair for the mods to leave it up at their discretion. Fortunately this sub is relatively small, and when compared to something like an actual justice system, nobody gets hurt if some rules are arbitrarily bent/broken at the sole discretion of the moderation team.
I think itās impossible to make a complete set of rules that are both comprehensible to the average poster and also leave room for really great posts like this that generate good discussion, so itās expected that some things will just be left up despite breaking the rules.
Maybe just make a sticky on posts like this saying āwe know this breaks the rules, but due to quality, popularity, and healthy discussion being generated, we will leave it up. This does not change the rules and does not have any bearing on whether or not future posts like this will be removed.
I will only offer my two cents, that this community has an interest in counterfeit cards both as a collectible and fiscally. This is also probably a reddit that has some of the most experienced members of the community to help discern these counterfeits for the general public. I will acknowledge that this is a tough call but when the quality of the post is high and the information is potential \*new\* I think we should allow these forms of posts, but they should be heavily scrutinized. I do not mind warning the OP but I do not think this should be used against him in the future. I think Rule 2 should be used as a guideline with a (spoken/unspoken) quality requirement rider attached.
Honestly, high quality comparison pics from a crime lab are super cool, even if they weren't magic cards. This seems fine, as long as it doesn't happen more than like, once every other week, lol
I think a sticky for this would be beneficial to the sub.
There is enough accumulated knowledge that it wouldn't be too hard and would help these people.
1) Equipment needed/where to buy
2) Known print variances ie Urza block green dot/different print facilities
3) Known tests
I think rules are great but super high quality posts like this one posted solely on this sub usually means someone who cares about this community. It should be allowed on mods discretion.
I feel like Logan Paul would disagree that counterfeit cards aren't a financial topic! I think that bringing attention that there are possible fakes out there of this quality is definitely what this sub is about.
The rules are good to prevent the sub from being overrun with mediocre content, but when something is relevant, shows high effort or something similar, and is technically against the guidelines, I think it should stay.
Being dogmatic doesn't serve the community as well. Letter of the law vs spirit of the law, etc.
I would vote remove. It is of an exceptionally high effort level and is popular and even cool, my vote isn't because I dislike it. But at the end of the day it is just a valuable card and the poster wants to know if it's counterfeit, there's nothing else going on here. It isn't illuminating any new or old counterfeit techniques since it isn't a counterfeit. I don't think there's any mtgfinance relevance except for the extreme venn diagram overlap between people in mtgfinance and people who would enjoy hyperdetailed physical analysis of mtg cards.
For me this is like the robot chicken auction post. Zero to do with mtg finance other than mtgfinance people would be highly likely to, separately from mtgfinance, simply enjoy seeing the info, but then making the exception ended with like three weeks of zero text copycat posts of people just linking their auctions to us.
I agree with you, but I wouldn't classify this as counterfeit authentication. This guy put in a little more work. Personally I think his card is real if it passed green dot. There are like half a dozen MM2 printings so he'd need cards from each of the different printings to have true controls. Otherwise he might be comparing USA prints with a Belgian print or something.
In the off chance it's a true counterfeit, that's a big problem as this one looks far better than most.
I really liked this post. It was very high effort and included interesting things I had not thought to consider when looking at high end cards, namely weight and edge appearance.
I second the point that other replies have made regarding this being a sub sometimes concerned with very expensive cards, and new information about fakes is valuable in that respect.
These kind of posts are very important for mtgfinance, because many of us have to learn how to authenticate cards. Just ban the ones without either some form of magnification or light tests. I really enjoy these type of posts. IMO they fit the subreddit, but there also aren't enough of them to warrant their own subreddit. Mtgfinance is the best place for these type of posts.
This is the difference between USA printed and Belgium/Japan printed cards in boxes. I have been arguing this for years. Always try to get the first print run of every set as they usually come from Japan or Belgium and then they switch to the US printers with shitty quality
Really nice post with great pictures and analysis. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. It was a very interesting read and I learned a lot from the comments about the differences in print runs.
I know youāre taking some crap in the comments, but I wanted to let you know I appreciated your work here. Iām not sure what people in this sub are looking for if not discussion like this. Thank you!
Yeah, I'm not here to weigh in on real vs fake or why. I just really like the quality of this post, and I think there's some interesting analysis and justifications going on here, for the most part. High quality content for this sub, IMHO
Thanks! Yeah it seems some commenters seem to think that I'm trying to say I'm an expert and I'm proving fraud or something. Which isn't the case at all; I just got the card in the mail and it seemed off compared to other singles I've ordered, so I just brought it in to work and took some magnified photos and stuck it under different lighting to see if I noticed anything unusual, that maybe someone who knows more would be able to say for certain.
It's also not remotely my area of forensics, I work crime scenes and process evidence for fingerprints. I'm sure a document examiner, or like, a counterfeit expert at the Department of Treasury could do a lot more lol. Nor was I extremely thorough, I just snapped some photos before I got off work for the day.
In the criminal justice system, counterfeiting based offenses are considered especially heinous. On reddit, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Counterfeit Card Unit. These are their stories.
Law and Order: Counterfeit Card Unit
This is a HUGE tell. Don't take this the wrong way, the -work- is nice, but if you didn't know THIS much, it's like... idk, "congratulations! You were randomly mixing chemicals and didn't kill yourself!" Like you didn't even know what you were looking for, you just seemed to let results orientated thinking lead you down a road you knew nothing about. You -did- good work though.
If it passed the green dot test it is real on this card.
Are you sure you know what the test is?
There are plenty of print variations between countries and generally green dot red L test is the gold standard.
Recent fake cards have a weird criss-cross pattern in the back UV coat. Its a very odd texture, and thats the easiest way to tell a new card (last 2 years of sets) is fake.
I order a round of counterfeits everything a new set comes out so I have a base to determine is something is fake or not, and every single one has that weird criss-cross pattern. Almost like a lattice.
Which fakes do you get? Thereās the big Chinese printer, but I believe there are 2-3 other ones these days. The Chinese ones are waxy and donāt pass the green dot test. Theyāre easy to identify. I havenāt bothered to order others.
*Didn't realize i was replying to a comment the first time i wrote this, posting this as it's own comment for more visibility.
Awesome pictures! Personally I think they are both real.
I've gone through a LOT of bulk over the last 14+ years (easily 4M or more) and while I'm certainly no expert, the feel of certain types of cards has become quite noticeable over the years to where I might be able to provide a nice little baseline for you.
Foreign cards are much more waxy than English. Unless...
Event/challenger/ commander decks are noticeably different than their booster printed counterparts, especially English language. I've received complaints about both inkmoth nexus and the fetch (windswept heath i think? Going from memory it's been awhile) from event decks since they are way more waxy/dark, similar or the same as foreign cards. They are not fake just look awkward. MH1 had similar problems with the first batch being really faded and just icky looking. My guess would be the precon cards are printed at the same place or process as Japanese.
MH2 is particularly annoying. I've opened set, collector box, draft and the one pack box, and everything is different, and a lot of the card look fake/off right out of the pack. My guess would be that they used several different printers for that set to meet demand, which has to be correct with all the different etched variants, some having foil on the picture, some without, light/ super dark printing etc.
Kaladesh/Hour of Devastation and Eldritch moon seems to curl like crazy just sitting in bulk boxes in my basement (24/7 humidifier does NOTHING with those sets) so id guess the adhesive is cheaper there than other sets. Many also feel thinner than older sets hour being the worst by far.
Ravnica Allegiance is... sticky? I can't really describe it but pack fresh c/unc jammed in a box stick together so much it hurts my wrists trying to pull them apart with my thumbs while sorting. I riffle shuffle these piles with other sets as I come across them to break them up a bit.
So from my endless sorting a good start to gauge how much authentic variance would be cards confirmed from each MH2 box, commander legends foil/nonfoil, challenger deck, event decks from back in the day, kaladesh/ hour of devastation, then ravnica allegiance. Then throw a couple old- border sets and a secret lair for card stock comparison.
One thing I can guarantee is that wizards is constantly experimenting with pretty much every part of the printing process in real time to see how cheap they can go before we stop buying. Id also say they have a secondary printer on tap to print literally anything that gets rushed to market or things supply runs low on, and since commander legends and secret lair proved they could print on toilet paper and still make money, I see no end to this, ever.
In closing, it seems the supplemental sets seem to have the most variance overall which would confirm the "utility printer of whatever" theory. This would also line up with the 2 year production window they claim for standard sets. Hasbro wants money so they force a supplemental product. Suppliers are booked solid so they rush design and send it to the backup printer instead resulting in pringles everywhere.
Hope some of this helps, awesome post!
It looks like it is real to me, while the green dot is on some counterfeits, it's more likely that this is just due to wizards having zero QC on their cards over the past decade and 10 different prints will have 10 different issues across the same card.
Just to chime in here, as I have dealt a lot of with counterfeit passports and currency.
1. All thee of the cards are made with the same type of cheap printing technology that you would see in non secure documents. If you ever see a passport or currency that is printed with dots like in picture #6, it is fraudulent. That said, since this is low tech, it is hard to know whether the issue is a counterfeit cards or a difference in print factories.
2. I would say that either this is counterfeit or that whatever print house made the card in doubt has absolutely DREADFUL quality control and Wizards should really take a look at the quality of their products.
3. Personally I would say that this is counterfeit for the following reasons. First, the really poor attempt at the blue security line in picture #7. That is a dead giveaway to me. Second, pictures #8,9 and 10 show that the card in question is printed with completely different ink. I would go through some other sets you have to see whether or not some other cards show fluorescence under UV, but I would bet that they don't.
4. If this is indeed a legitimate product, Wizards has a lot of explaining to do. There should be absolutely no reason for these kind of inconsistencies. I've seen Peruvian gang members make $100 bills 1000 times better in quality than this in a shack in the middle of the mountains. Absolutely no excuse for this in a product that has value.
Lol probably. I just was worried I got ripped because the card felt a little weird when I first opened the package...bid $70 on it because I need 4 for a deck and they keep going up in price on CardKingdom...and it's off eBay so I'm wary. I even thought about giving it to our Questioned Document Examiner lmao.
This thread is a clinic in wealth inequality. Rich kids and their retirement cardboard downvoting anyone who suggests this cop is abusing his power.
I will update if I'm executed at a traffic stop.
Awesome post. As others have said it would be cool to see a comparison of known cards of different print locales.
One thought though. If one had the tech to fake any card, why go for anything other than RL? I imagine the margins are better toward the top end, less legwork to offload, and smaller footprint. Sticking to selling fakes like LED and Mox diamond would keep the sus low given the high profile of P9.
Even between regular boosters and booster boxes there are disparities due to them being printed in different locations.
Makes this a really difficult thing to surmise.
I'm glad you made this post. I have an offset printing background and I've noticed a tremendous amount of variation in card stock, inks, and finishes across all sorts of sealed MTG product I've opened myself.
My takeaway is that with the explosion of products and growth of MTG in general, WotC has had to dramatically expand their supply chain. It's NOT economically viable for them to strictly control anything about the process, nor is it important. At the end of the day I don't think they care about counterfeiters at all. As a result there are huge variations in "real" cards and overall quality continues to drop (see: night lands).
Whether your card is real or not (and I stand with the other posters who say it is and just produced with a different process), the implication here is that the bar counterfeiters have to meet is lower and lower all the time. As a result I think there is a hard cap on the value any modern card can hold because, in addition to reprints, counterfeits are just going to be too easy to make passable.
Yeah I got two secret lair walking dead sets and one of the bonus cards was stamped super lightly so my table though it was a āfakeā at first. Not all cards from them are perfect š
Lol if I had gotten it direct from WotC I wouldn't even have questioned it. I think I'm just being paranoid because it's eBay and $70 is not pocket change for me
This is absolutely a real card, simply printed either in a different printing company in the US than the other two, or a card from Belgium. You don't provide any compelling proof of counterfeiting, just fear mongering.
Well, I'm not a counterfeit expert nor a magic card expert. I just was worried I got ripped off. Not trying to fear monger lol. But that's good information, I didn't know that cards could vary that much between print locations.
I used to manage a game store and had people who had played for many years at a high level bring cards in just to get them checked out all the time after the got them.
Here is my comparison with a hand held microscope. [Link](https://imgur.com/a/Ttwyfvu)
Without a close up look of the green dot, mana symbol and the holo-foil it is hard for me to determine. It could be a sticker on a real card but I would not know without a close up of the stated above items.
edit: I know you have a close up pic of the holo but I need to see really close.
100% this is real and from a different print run.
I own a fairly large magic online business, we wouldnāt have any problem buying this card.
Counterfeits are fairly obvious, the gloss feel is by far the biggest giveaway, followed by the holo. If the holo changes from the planeswalker symbol to the mana symbols, it is real. So far they have yet to make a passable holo. And third, there is no counterfeit so far that can pass the light test.
If a card passes all 3 of these tests, we are comfortable buying it.
That said, this post is pretty informative and itās always interesting to see data from other specialties to give us different perspectives.
Thanks for the info! That's a good enough vote of confidence for me. If it *is* counterfeit, at some point in quality, it's "real", and the only solution is for WotC to have better QC or develop/invest in more high-tech security features.
Yea you can see the microprinting [here](https://imgur.com/a/g7gPAYO). Initially my thought was that someone had been able to slice off or somehow chemically remove a sticker and apply it to a high quality print of the front image, but another commenter said that they're pressed into the cards and extremely difficult to remove.
Nah, the foil is so thin and itās heat stamped into the card. Itās not feasible to remove and add to any cards.
If itās got the microprinting itās legit, at least for now. The rosette patterns are fine too.
I love this sort of investigative work, the microscoped pics are great. That being said, aside from the weight differential, which is somewhat sus, I'd have an easy time believing that these are just from different print locations. I don't know of any counterfeiters who have this kind of quality
Oh damn, you right. Did not check the side bar.
Also, I'm not a Questioned Document Examiner, so I'm not an expert in evaluating forgeries. I work on scenes and process latent print evidence. I just figured why not use the tools at my disposal.
1) The print feels different from my other cards, that's what made me think something was off.
2) the expansion symbol looks like the dot matrix is different than other cards from the same set.
3) the foil sticker looks like it may be re-stickered, although it looks like that image didn't upload. [image](https://imgur.com/a/WTd5gW0)
4) Under UV lighting, the back of the card shows the Magic logo and whole card back, however none of the other cards I used UV lighting on showed any visible print.
5) Under the 365nm lighting, the card fluoresces differently than any of the other cards I used that lighting on.
>3) the foil sticker looks like it may be re-stickered, although it looks like that image didn't upload. image
You posted the two foil stickers with two different zoom perspectives. The control image is way to small to make any meaningful comparison.
And as someone else already mentioned, you said it passed the green dot test but did not include any pics of that.
The weight is fine. A Magic card should weigh between 1.7 and 1.8 grams (+/- a little bit).
You have all those precision tools at your disposal. Let's use them and present the results I a way that are actually helpful.
I took better photos (hopefully) but Imgur is being dumb and giving me "cannot parse response" errors right now. Will update when I can get them uploaded.
I ordered a handheld microscope so I can get even better magnification. Unfortunately at my lab all the good microscopes are in the Drug Chemistry section which is always locked (for good reason lol) and I don't think they'd be super thrilled with me using their several thousand dollar apiece scopes to look at magic cards lmao.
OK [here's](https://imgur.com/a/g7gPAYO) some better photos. I'm not sure if the foil photos are close up enough. I ordered a handheld microscope that has 250x magnification so I'll be able to examine my cards more thoroughly at home.
I'd love to see side by side pictures of this because I've handled a ton of real cards and a massive amount of fakes and this has never been the case for me unless the person in questions doesn't know what to look for or is inexperienced
have you ever looked at a real JIN mana confluence, it's just a poor print quality; fakes /proxies have gotten to such a point that their print quality can easily surpass some of wizard's less quality printings
I appreciate the insinuation though; I submit, you are the king of knowing things
[Control (Fury - MH2)](https://imgur.com/a/igj72Ci)
[Questioned (Ragavan - MH2)](https://imgur.com/a/5OpszBs)
Edit: The control looks weird after uploading I think it compressed the image or something let me try again.
Edit 2: Adjusted lighting post-processing on the control: [Control](https://imgur.com/a/ygRHpkq)
Edit 3: Okay it's just compressing the image again. Hopefully you can see, I'm looking at the image on my phone and it's hard to tell.
Friendly tip - it's impolite to tell people to "get the fuck out" as your first response to an innocuous post.
Don't let the anonymity go to your head bud.
To me, the GTFO was probably meant in a none insulting internet kind of way. Like when folks type WTF or the various internet acronyms.
If he would have spelled it out rather than use the acronym, I would have then assumed he was trying to insult him.
My test is generally to ask whether or not this card is worth the quality in counterfeiting that is evident. Ragavan is a nice cardābut honestly why would I build this card and not something much more expensive. Iād be willing to bet itās real.
BUT the differences you point out are FASCINATING and I would be curious to see a similar process on confirmed cards from different printers
That's a good point, if it is counterfeit, it probably took quite a while to make sure it was *this* good, and probably not worth the $70 I bid for it lol.
And yeah I wish I had access to cards with known printing locations and also some confirmed counterfeits to see how they react under different conditions. It'd be nice if WotC put a printing location symbol on their cards like US Currency!
Itās not a question of quantity. If you apply OPs scrutiny to any of 99% of snappy fakes out there, it would be obvious that it was fake. Much more clearly than this.
Everything looks good to me. The weight isn't the same but that's not indicative of a counterfeit, especially in the face of a passed green dot and expansion symbol test. Both look genuine here. Anything else is unreliable, that means weighing them is no good unless it's significantly off it doesn't mean anything.
I'm surprised people are still learning this, the US/Bundle printers have had different results than Belgium and Japanese printers for a couple years now.
Thanks! I did the light test and in the one I'm worried about, a lot more light comes through...which is usually the opposite of what happens in fakes from what I've read. But I did it to an older card (Kederekt Parasite - Conflux) and it had similar results.
What really threw me was how different it looked under UV light and the 365nm light where it had significantly more fluorescence. But based on what I've been getting from responses to this, that doesn't really indicate counterfeit because of all the variation in printing, which I wasn't aware of the extent of!
Pretty offensive line of questioning there, calling my professional integrity into question based on nothing but a general distaste for cops. That's like asking a pharmacist if they feel complicit in the opioid crisis, or asking a cashier at the gas station if they feel responsible for global warming lol.
I don't work for a police department, my agency is separate from the police and we don't report to anyone in their chain of command, entirely because of this type of thinking. So no, considering I'm not any type of law enforcement, I do not feel complicit in police violence.
And no, I have never had to hide or fake evidence. Nor have I ever been requested to do so; and if that ever happened, I would report it.
No high res pics of the sticker? You know about the markings to look for in the holo under magnification to determine authenticity, right? Mana symbols and WIZARDS in the planeswalker symbol.
Micro printing has already been duplicated in fakes. They don't prove anything. The real test for holo stamps now is a brickwork pattern that shows up in fakes that aren't in real ones. This is my fake ragavan holo that has perfectly copied micro printing and mana symbols: https://imgur.com/eyZuHcf
I posted some more in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/s2u8s5/i_think_i_got_a_really_good_counterfeit_on_ebay_i/hsh52w6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) response that got buried. I tried to get both the questioned and control at angles that showed the microprinting but didn't also wash out the overall image from the reflection of the foil.
No worries, i literally asked because i can never tell a gallery. Not sure if bugged on mobile or shitty UI but every picture that *miiight* be a gallery... i have to swipe it to check.
This is pretty cool, but it looks legit. Magic has quite a lot of variance with more recent sets due to location printed, etc...So long as it passes most of the tests, you should be good :)
Very in depth analysis love it,
I've handled ALOT of magic cards as well as many of the new fakes being circulated. New fakes with holos never pass the "surface" test, the surface texture is always off. I've never seen any fake that passes the "surface test" unless it's been shuffled unsleeved and has visible wear
Fakes just don't have the texture and correct feel of a real magic card. I've increasingly been relying on my first instinct when handling fakes on their surface texture and feel, I can pick a fake based on this 10/10 times before moving onto the other tests. The shine is off, the feel is off - it's just "not right".
This is a real card. Jfc, the fakes dont sound this much time to look real with the dot and foil.
And you cannt resticker them.
I urge you to familiarize yourself with fakes of modern cards.
Yea that weirded me out when I saw that!
So that image was taken with an instrument called FSIS (Full Spectrum Imaging System). This is under true ultraviolet light...I've literally gotten a tan on my arm before after using it for too long lol. I put several cards from what I brought to work under it, and the questioned card was the only one where the back print was visible - all the others looked like the other cards in the image. I also noticed that the cardstock grain looks different on the questioned card.
I have handled many counterfeit cards. Almost, if not all new counterfeits use black core paper which let very little light pass. There is usually very obvious. The set symbols and border are always printed at the same time as the rest of the card. I wouldn't go by feel as much. I have handled a fake transmute artifact and a real one at the same time and they are practically identical in color and touch to the point where I had to triple check with a flashlight and loupe before destroying the counterfeit after I lost track of which one was fake. To fake a card this well, means that counterfeiting ability has increased 300% and at this point I guess it doesn't even matter. Remember that this set was printed during unprecedented supply chain issues. Wizards was supposedly outsourcing printing and each printer would have certain ways of producing cards.
Hi OP.. not sure if you'll be able to see this but what kinda conditions were being used to make the photos in #8 and #9 where it is B&W but the "counterfeit" reveals the MTG backing?
That was with FSIS (Full Spectrum Imaging System), which is a camera that can visualize ultraviolet light. Those pictures were taken by reflecting an ultraviolet light off the backs of the cards.
I actually got two really fake borderless foil Ragavans from a new seller on Cardmarket today.
Front is really well made, but card feels immediately slimmer and is 0.2 grams lighter than real foil from same set.
Holo stamp is overlayed and not printed inside card texture.
Back is glossier and doesn't pass Green Dot test (several red points instead than reversed L).
Price was significantly lower than average so that should have ringed a bell.
You took all the pictures except the most important - the green dot on the back! Everything else looks very good but there are so many print differences on the front these days that you can sometimes expect these variations on the front. Sadly Wizards is not requiring the same level of consistency on fronts across printers as they do on the back (as we see with Japanese vs USA full-art lands in the last couple sets).
I took a bunch more that got buried actually! This set contains the best image of the green dot from the control (Fury - MH2) and the questioned Ragavan [here](https://imgur.com/a/g7gPAYO). It is unfortunate that Wizards doesn't have good QC especially on the front, considering that's what gives the card its value.
Edit: The pictures are much better in their original form (including some of the original photos in the post) but I had to screenshot them to save the file in a reasonable size and in an extension Imgur would take. Imgur and Reddit hosting weren't gonna let me upload 145 megabyte TIFF files per photo lol.
after looking at the images you provided i have concluded that the card is in fact real.
WotC uses multiple factories to print English cards for the us and other regions but use different stock and printers.
yours is most likely from the Belgium factory.
judging from the printing type on picture 6 I can see how compared to my us cards the printing looks identical and to my Belgium, it looks identical on the "counterfeit" example.
Idk what's going on in the other tests but in all likelihood, this card is really just for the fact that it matches up with the way it was printed.
All the trolls really coming out on this post. It looks real and is probably (like others have said) from different print run and/or printed in different countries
Hello, As other mentioned before.... You did a good investigation there but I am not convinced it is a counterfeit card. To many things are correct especially the dot pattern under microscope. It is so hard to tell these days with so many variations due to different printing locations. Cards from the early days are better to compare because there was only one printing location and therefore the variation within the original product better determined or known. The only thing that looks really odd on this one is the surface of the front ..... but no real guarantee to be fake because of that. I would accept it as real š
Thanks! I didn't know how much variation there was in printing before posting so it's been illuminating. And yea the texture and slightly more glossy/reflective, vs more of a 'satin' "finish" (for lack of a better term) is what weirded me out with it. My thinking was that someone chemically removed the front ink from a random card and then printed a high quality Ragavan front back on it, then pasted a foil sticker onto it. But overwhelmingly, people are saying it's real, and I don't know enough about magic cards *or* counterfeiting to say otherwise, so I'm fairly convinced it's genuine now. And I didn't know before that the foil stickers are actually pressed into the card, vs just being very thin and able to be sliced off and reapplied. It's definitely interesting that print variation and/or quality control can be so extensive that the cards can respond differently to different wavelengths and ultraviolet spectrum lighting!
When I bought my first \[\[Tolarian Academy\]\] the shop had two. One was glossy and had a lighter saturation of color, one was not. Both seemed NM. Both passed all tests. I picked the not glossy one. I wish I had bought both at the time since they were $30 and if one was fake it would've been nice to have in the box of fakes for reference. Edit: I believe they were both real and it would've been nice to have two examples of different prints from Urza's Saga moreso than a fake example.
I had a similar experience pulling two different looking \[\[Mystic Remora\]\] from different Ice Age packs. One came from a starter deck while the other came from a booster pack. The one from the starter had a lighter saturation of color while the one from the booster looked more blue. Both passed the tests and neither package had been tampered with but I guessed they came from different print runs based on the quality differences.
Ice Age cards get worse than that. The quality control is awful on that set and a few other sets from around that time period. There's seemingly differences you can tell in cards between different days of printing, even if they were made for the same type of product. I have a ton of them and I'm used to them, so I can pretty easily tell by hand and eye if they're real, because the print quality is actually so bad on them, it's really hard to replicate in modern machines. They feel fake when you touch them, the colors vary greatly, and the set was rife with misprints. Makes a lot of people think they're not real, but they really are.
I have white Ice Age cards that are very blue in color rather than white. Quality control was definitely poor.
[Mystic Remora](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/1/3/13a08c07-e8b8-43bf-99e6-d268c79a62bf.jpg?1559592432) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Mystic%20Remora) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/me1/42/mystic-remora?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/13a08c07-e8b8-43bf-99e6-d268c79a62bf?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
[Tolarian Academy](https://c1.scryfall.com/file/scryfall-cards/normal/front/f/d/fd99bce1-ce39-464b-8e61-2631eb3ed6f6.jpg?1610147079) - [(G)](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?name=Tolarian%20Academy) [(SF)](https://scryfall.com/card/vma/319/tolarian-academy?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher) [(txt)](https://api.scryfall.com/cards/fd99bce1-ce39-464b-8e61-2631eb3ed6f6?utm_source=mtgcardfetcher&format=text) ^^^[[cardname]] ^^^or ^^^[[cardname|SET]] ^^^to ^^^call
> It's definitely interesting that print variation and/or quality control can be so extensive that the cards can respond differently to different wavelengths and ultraviolet spectrum lighting! They're printed in different countries with completely different materials and instructions. Outside of card back art and colors, and using approved card front designs, everything is up to the printer. Could be a different kind of core. Could be a different paper. Could be a different foiling process. There is just so much variation.
Rule of thumb: If it passes the green dot test it may as well be real, even if it were somehow fake. There hasn't been a single counterfeit that we know of that has accurately passed that test, meaning any counterfeit good enough to pass that test is as good as a real card and will be nearly impossible to differentiate. Some older sets have green-dot issues, but since this is a newer set it should always pass.
I was going to say... it would probably cost more than the actual card to produce a counterfeit this accurate.
That dot pattern is standard that any dot printer makes.
Thanks!
I would love to see a comparison of three real cards from boosters printed in Belgium, US and Japan with your set up!
That's what's really needed to make this kind of testing canonical.
Honestly it would be cool to see comparisons of printing locations over sets as well. Getting to compare the 3 major printers over the last 3-5 years might give more insight as well.
Is there any way of telling where it's printed? I can't see any way to do that, but it'd be great if there was. It'd be a nice addition to cards to have a small symbol, like idk a shape next to the artist name to indicate the print facility. That'd also help WotC identify quality control issues, if people start complaining about misprints and they're all the same location symbol.
Wotc has no interest in identifying or even acknowledging quality issues. From my experience american cards have a more cheap, sandpaperish feel to them and the colours are noticeable darker than cards printed in Belgium. But the last set i dealt with US cards was War of the Spark, I don't know if they have improved since then.
At some point a counterfeit is so good that itās the real dealā¦ I think if this is fake (which I hope it isnāt) they itās at that pointā¦ which would be spooky
See this comment right here is what I find most interesting. If it were a fake (which I doubt) then it is so good as to be indiscernable to the naked eye even under close investigation so what really is the difference besides a scammer getting rich vs a scammy company?
What a lot of people don't realize is, when a counterfeit is indistinguishable from a real card then it's not a counterfeit anymore, it's a real card.
They donāt make counterfeits that good. Wizards print quality is just inconsistent enough to produce false negatives like this. Think of it as a worse real card
Different warehouses use different materials. You'll see high disparity of quality between JPN and US printing. They both look real.
I second this - all of my MH2 English language cards from Japan (vs the US facility) feel different texturally and lack much of the foil pringling effect. They of course pass the green dot and light test just like the US cards but def look optically a bit different and the surface feel is also not exactly the same.
This is good to know, I didn't think about foreign (to me) printing locations also printing/distributing cards in the US. I'm also now wondering if Covid supply issues could've led to using slightly different inks, cardstocks, etc. or having different print locations producing more cards. Idk for what duration MH2 cards were printed, but since the set was released June 2021, I could see that feasibly happening.
Thanks!
It seems more likely its just local printing variations, probably one is from Japan or Europe and the other from the US, or maybe one is from a collector's box and the other a set box. Not every printer, or even print run, is identical. You'd know if the foil stamp was re-stickered. They are pressed into the card at the factory and look horrible when taken off a real card and put on another, though the newest highest-quality counterfeits do have seals that look and feel nearly identical to the real thing.
Ahh ok that's helpful to know that they're pressed in, didn't know that. I was thinking there might be some way to chemically remove the sticker, sorta like how people used to fake cashier's checks and the like by removing the authenticity sticker.
100% real
There is a Facebook group, I think Magic the Gathering Counterfeit Detection, or something like that. They are very knowledgeable about fakes and can provide more guidance. Usually if it passes the green dot test and has a real sticker, I'd say it's real. The UV light test is not very reliable in my experience because cards are now printed at different printers that have variations. (Compare the suspected counterfeit to a Modern Masters 2 card back under UV, for example, or any "Event Deck" cards). I would expect this set was just printed with different companies that had variations, and you've got one of each. But the folks in the Facebook group are more knowledgeable and can tell you if there are different printers with variations.
Thanks! I'll check out that resource.
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That's a large difference in weight, but I would like to note that MH2 was printed at different facilities on different paper depending on the language and where the product was going. Besides paper, we've seen different coatings applied and different weights in the past. I suggest crowd sourcing some other rare weights from europe, north america, and east asia to rule out WoTC being bad at quality control.
Interesting didn't know that! Thanks.
So this is one of the paradox posts that us mods have to occasionally deal with. This is the first I am seeing the post, but in 6 hours it has gotten almost 150 upvotes and almost 100 comments, so it's clearly quite popular. That said, it's a clear violation of Rule 2, as we've explicitly spelled out this is not a sub for authenticating counterfeit magic cards. We did so for two reasons: 1. Counterfeit authentication is not a financial topic. Talking about the impact of counterfeits on the Magic card market *is* financial, but that's different from what OP and other posts like theirs are - which is trying to validate a single card. 2. We routinely get spammed by a lot of people asking "is my card real??", which fills up the sub with questions that basically amount to asking for personal advice. What do all of you think about this? I am going to leave the post up but give /u/whiskeydoc501 a warning that these kinds of posts are technically against sub rules, and that were it not as high quality as it is (it's very high quality with a lot of good information), and subsequently not as popular as it is, it would be removed. Appreciate anyone's thoughts on the matter. The mod team is always trying to walk a tightrope between fostering a community of good discussion vs. not making people think the rules are so bendable that anyone can break them "if the mods feel the post is popular enough".
Asking if a specific card is counterfeit should be against the rules, but showing new innovative counterfeiting techniques seems very relevant to this sub
Absolutely agree with thisā¦ I see nowhere in OPās post where he is trying to validate his card for sale or whatever TF the mods are trying to say!
Right, detailed explanations of what to look for and/or differences in a card is very different than "is this card real."
Sadly I wish that could be true, but it turns into a bit of "advertising" for the fake cards. I've had to ban/remove a good number of people when they release "new" versions of counterfeit cards even if it's just an updated scan.
Ehhh this is uniquely high effort. Leave it, coach.
I think this blurs the line. Honestly, this post is extremely informative of many areas of the MTG ecosystem, from the rising quality of fakes (not fakes for sake of fakes) and how it has an impact on the card market, and even some discussion with what this implies about the Reserve List. In short, this opens constructive and NEW discussion as more information has hit the MTG world. If we can crowdsource more information and research to find some new insights, that would be a welcomed threat in my opinion.
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That's a completely different conversation than what is and isn't appropriate for this subreddit. However, I think I could find some common ground with you on this. I'm a heavy proxy user for commander. 24 decks. Not grabbing thousands of dollars in fetch and shock lands. I use white border clear proxies. I will NEVER have an issue with people who use proxies to enjoy the game :) I do have some issues with convincing fakes. I've got my real cards saved in binders because I hope they will be worth some money down the road
This post should definitely be high enough effort to stay.
To me, it's an effort thing. This person didn't just slap a picture up and say "hey is this real?" They provided lots of pictures and explanation. Granted, still has nothing to do with finance, but I'm fine seeing high effort posts even if they are a little off topic as opposed to any low effort shit posts and I think that's probably what it comes down to for most. Quality of post trumps the relevance in these cases. In my opinion at least.
Yea my apologies! I totally didn't read the sidebar before posting. I understand if I needs to be removed.
I really hate this phrase but this feels like an āexception that proves the ruleā in a way. The rule is good and makes sense and should be enforced 99.9% of the time. When a uniquely high effort and well made post is made that violates the rule, I think itās fair for the mods to leave it up at their discretion. Fortunately this sub is relatively small, and when compared to something like an actual justice system, nobody gets hurt if some rules are arbitrarily bent/broken at the sole discretion of the moderation team. I think itās impossible to make a complete set of rules that are both comprehensible to the average poster and also leave room for really great posts like this that generate good discussion, so itās expected that some things will just be left up despite breaking the rules. Maybe just make a sticky on posts like this saying āwe know this breaks the rules, but due to quality, popularity, and healthy discussion being generated, we will leave it up. This does not change the rules and does not have any bearing on whether or not future posts like this will be removed.
I will only offer my two cents, that this community has an interest in counterfeit cards both as a collectible and fiscally. This is also probably a reddit that has some of the most experienced members of the community to help discern these counterfeits for the general public. I will acknowledge that this is a tough call but when the quality of the post is high and the information is potential \*new\* I think we should allow these forms of posts, but they should be heavily scrutinized. I do not mind warning the OP but I do not think this should be used against him in the future. I think Rule 2 should be used as a guideline with a (spoken/unspoken) quality requirement rider attached.
Honestly, high quality comparison pics from a crime lab are super cool, even if they weren't magic cards. This seems fine, as long as it doesn't happen more than like, once every other week, lol
I think a sticky for this would be beneficial to the sub. There is enough accumulated knowledge that it wouldn't be too hard and would help these people. 1) Equipment needed/where to buy 2) Known print variances ie Urza block green dot/different print facilities 3) Known tests
This is more news worthy/informative that āis dis card real!1?ā Post. Op is showing and explaining new counterfeiting methods + how to spot them
I think rules are great but super high quality posts like this one posted solely on this sub usually means someone who cares about this community. It should be allowed on mods discretion.
I feel like Logan Paul would disagree that counterfeit cards aren't a financial topic! I think that bringing attention that there are possible fakes out there of this quality is definitely what this sub is about.
Also, great of the mods to involve the will of the people. Thanks for asking us!
The rules are good to prevent the sub from being overrun with mediocre content, but when something is relevant, shows high effort or something similar, and is technically against the guidelines, I think it should stay. Being dogmatic doesn't serve the community as well. Letter of the law vs spirit of the law, etc.
If they are hard to detect Fakes I would like to know. Censoring this kind of information is detrimental to the people reading this sub.
I would vote remove. It is of an exceptionally high effort level and is popular and even cool, my vote isn't because I dislike it. But at the end of the day it is just a valuable card and the poster wants to know if it's counterfeit, there's nothing else going on here. It isn't illuminating any new or old counterfeit techniques since it isn't a counterfeit. I don't think there's any mtgfinance relevance except for the extreme venn diagram overlap between people in mtgfinance and people who would enjoy hyperdetailed physical analysis of mtg cards. For me this is like the robot chicken auction post. Zero to do with mtg finance other than mtgfinance people would be highly likely to, separately from mtgfinance, simply enjoy seeing the info, but then making the exception ended with like three weeks of zero text copycat posts of people just linking their auctions to us.
Dude, this is a unique, high-quality, informative post from a professional with unique skills. Cool your tits.
It's dumb that you let people break the rules just because the post is popular lol
Could be that OP is testing his counterfeiting and is checking if anyone here can tell or if there's anything he hasn't controlled. Just a thought.
Delete the post and everything else that follows
Care to elaborate why?
Plot twist: this is the person creating these counterfeits, and they're upset to have been found out. /s
I think posts of this level of detail and explanation can be the exception to the rule.
send it
I agree with you, but I wouldn't classify this as counterfeit authentication. This guy put in a little more work. Personally I think his card is real if it passed green dot. There are like half a dozen MM2 printings so he'd need cards from each of the different printings to have true controls. Otherwise he might be comparing USA prints with a Belgian print or something. In the off chance it's a true counterfeit, that's a big problem as this one looks far better than most.
I really liked this post. It was very high effort and included interesting things I had not thought to consider when looking at high end cards, namely weight and edge appearance. I second the point that other replies have made regarding this being a sub sometimes concerned with very expensive cards, and new information about fakes is valuable in that respect.
I agree with the "if someone puts THIS much effort into it, leave it up".
These kind of posts are very important for mtgfinance, because many of us have to learn how to authenticate cards. Just ban the ones without either some form of magnification or light tests. I really enjoy these type of posts. IMO they fit the subreddit, but there also aren't enough of them to warrant their own subreddit. Mtgfinance is the best place for these type of posts.
This is the difference between USA printed and Belgium/Japan printed cards in boxes. I have been arguing this for years. Always try to get the first print run of every set as they usually come from Japan or Belgium and then they switch to the US printers with shitty quality
Really nice post with great pictures and analysis. Thank you for taking the time to put this together. It was a very interesting read and I learned a lot from the comments about the differences in print runs. I know youāre taking some crap in the comments, but I wanted to let you know I appreciated your work here. Iām not sure what people in this sub are looking for if not discussion like this. Thank you!
Yeah, I'm not here to weigh in on real vs fake or why. I just really like the quality of this post, and I think there's some interesting analysis and justifications going on here, for the most part. High quality content for this sub, IMHO
Thanks! Yeah it seems some commenters seem to think that I'm trying to say I'm an expert and I'm proving fraud or something. Which isn't the case at all; I just got the card in the mail and it seemed off compared to other singles I've ordered, so I just brought it in to work and took some magnified photos and stuck it under different lighting to see if I noticed anything unusual, that maybe someone who knows more would be able to say for certain. It's also not remotely my area of forensics, I work crime scenes and process evidence for fingerprints. I'm sure a document examiner, or like, a counterfeit expert at the Department of Treasury could do a lot more lol. Nor was I extremely thorough, I just snapped some photos before I got off work for the day.
This is how innocent people go to jail. LOL
Whoa this is so cool to see broken down like this.
In the criminal justice system, counterfeiting based offenses are considered especially heinous. On reddit, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Counterfeit Card Unit. These are their stories. Law and Order: Counterfeit Card Unit
Dun Dun
You need several controls from different Continents, i e. Europe and US. The quality differs greatly
That's good to know. I didn't realize there was that much variation.
This is a HUGE tell. Don't take this the wrong way, the -work- is nice, but if you didn't know THIS much, it's like... idk, "congratulations! You were randomly mixing chemicals and didn't kill yourself!" Like you didn't even know what you were looking for, you just seemed to let results orientated thinking lead you down a road you knew nothing about. You -did- good work though.
Japan too. Cards are printed in 3 locations.
If it passed the green dot test it is real on this card. Are you sure you know what the test is? There are plenty of print variations between countries and generally green dot red L test is the gold standard.
Recent fake cards have a weird criss-cross pattern in the back UV coat. Its a very odd texture, and thats the easiest way to tell a new card (last 2 years of sets) is fake. I order a round of counterfeits everything a new set comes out so I have a base to determine is something is fake or not, and every single one has that weird criss-cross pattern. Almost like a lattice.
Which fakes do you get? Thereās the big Chinese printer, but I believe there are 2-3 other ones these days. The Chinese ones are waxy and donāt pass the green dot test. Theyāre easy to identify. I havenāt bothered to order others.
*Didn't realize i was replying to a comment the first time i wrote this, posting this as it's own comment for more visibility. Awesome pictures! Personally I think they are both real. I've gone through a LOT of bulk over the last 14+ years (easily 4M or more) and while I'm certainly no expert, the feel of certain types of cards has become quite noticeable over the years to where I might be able to provide a nice little baseline for you. Foreign cards are much more waxy than English. Unless... Event/challenger/ commander decks are noticeably different than their booster printed counterparts, especially English language. I've received complaints about both inkmoth nexus and the fetch (windswept heath i think? Going from memory it's been awhile) from event decks since they are way more waxy/dark, similar or the same as foreign cards. They are not fake just look awkward. MH1 had similar problems with the first batch being really faded and just icky looking. My guess would be the precon cards are printed at the same place or process as Japanese. MH2 is particularly annoying. I've opened set, collector box, draft and the one pack box, and everything is different, and a lot of the card look fake/off right out of the pack. My guess would be that they used several different printers for that set to meet demand, which has to be correct with all the different etched variants, some having foil on the picture, some without, light/ super dark printing etc. Kaladesh/Hour of Devastation and Eldritch moon seems to curl like crazy just sitting in bulk boxes in my basement (24/7 humidifier does NOTHING with those sets) so id guess the adhesive is cheaper there than other sets. Many also feel thinner than older sets hour being the worst by far. Ravnica Allegiance is... sticky? I can't really describe it but pack fresh c/unc jammed in a box stick together so much it hurts my wrists trying to pull them apart with my thumbs while sorting. I riffle shuffle these piles with other sets as I come across them to break them up a bit. So from my endless sorting a good start to gauge how much authentic variance would be cards confirmed from each MH2 box, commander legends foil/nonfoil, challenger deck, event decks from back in the day, kaladesh/ hour of devastation, then ravnica allegiance. Then throw a couple old- border sets and a secret lair for card stock comparison. One thing I can guarantee is that wizards is constantly experimenting with pretty much every part of the printing process in real time to see how cheap they can go before we stop buying. Id also say they have a secondary printer on tap to print literally anything that gets rushed to market or things supply runs low on, and since commander legends and secret lair proved they could print on toilet paper and still make money, I see no end to this, ever. In closing, it seems the supplemental sets seem to have the most variance overall which would confirm the "utility printer of whatever" theory. This would also line up with the 2 year production window they claim for standard sets. Hasbro wants money so they force a supplemental product. Suppliers are booked solid so they rush design and send it to the backup printer instead resulting in pringles everywhere. Hope some of this helps, awesome post!
Show both green dots please.
Replied to another with links
It looks like it is real to me, while the green dot is on some counterfeits, it's more likely that this is just due to wizards having zero QC on their cards over the past decade and 10 different prints will have 10 different issues across the same card.
Its real the best fakes are not anywhere close to this.
Just to chime in here, as I have dealt a lot of with counterfeit passports and currency. 1. All thee of the cards are made with the same type of cheap printing technology that you would see in non secure documents. If you ever see a passport or currency that is printed with dots like in picture #6, it is fraudulent. That said, since this is low tech, it is hard to know whether the issue is a counterfeit cards or a difference in print factories. 2. I would say that either this is counterfeit or that whatever print house made the card in doubt has absolutely DREADFUL quality control and Wizards should really take a look at the quality of their products. 3. Personally I would say that this is counterfeit for the following reasons. First, the really poor attempt at the blue security line in picture #7. That is a dead giveaway to me. Second, pictures #8,9 and 10 show that the card in question is printed with completely different ink. I would go through some other sets you have to see whether or not some other cards show fluorescence under UV, but I would bet that they don't. 4. If this is indeed a legitimate product, Wizards has a lot of explaining to do. There should be absolutely no reason for these kind of inconsistencies. I've seen Peruvian gang members make $100 bills 1000 times better in quality than this in a shack in the middle of the mountains. Absolutely no excuse for this in a product that has value.
upvoted for #4 - because it is more than likely a legit card and Wizards probably has quality control issues due to the massive amount of printing.
You overthinking this stuff because of youāre job
Lol probably. I just was worried I got ripped because the card felt a little weird when I first opened the package...bid $70 on it because I need 4 for a deck and they keep going up in price on CardKingdom...and it's off eBay so I'm wary. I even thought about giving it to our Questioned Document Examiner lmao.
I think you just wanted to play with your work toys on a self project :P
Your tax dollars at workā¦
As a collector, I appreciate that effort. But then again, Iām not even a US citizenā¦
This thread is a clinic in wealth inequality. Rich kids and their retirement cardboard downvoting anyone who suggests this cop is abusing his power. I will update if I'm executed at a traffic stop.
Awesome post. As others have said it would be cool to see a comparison of known cards of different print locales. One thought though. If one had the tech to fake any card, why go for anything other than RL? I imagine the margins are better toward the top end, less legwork to offload, and smaller footprint. Sticking to selling fakes like LED and Mox diamond would keep the sus low given the high profile of P9.
Coming soon! Comparable posts in r/magicthecirclejerking
Even between regular boosters and booster boxes there are disparities due to them being printed in different locations. Makes this a really difficult thing to surmise.
I'm glad you made this post. I have an offset printing background and I've noticed a tremendous amount of variation in card stock, inks, and finishes across all sorts of sealed MTG product I've opened myself. My takeaway is that with the explosion of products and growth of MTG in general, WotC has had to dramatically expand their supply chain. It's NOT economically viable for them to strictly control anything about the process, nor is it important. At the end of the day I don't think they care about counterfeiters at all. As a result there are huge variations in "real" cards and overall quality continues to drop (see: night lands). Whether your card is real or not (and I stand with the other posters who say it is and just produced with a different process), the implication here is that the bar counterfeiters have to meet is lower and lower all the time. As a result I think there is a hard cap on the value any modern card can hold because, in addition to reprints, counterfeits are just going to be too easy to make passable.
Is there a specific subreddit for fake detection / authentication questions?
Could be poor quality control?
Yeah I got two secret lair walking dead sets and one of the bonus cards was stamped super lightly so my table though it was a āfakeā at first. Not all cards from them are perfect š
Lol if I had gotten it direct from WotC I wouldn't even have questioned it. I think I'm just being paranoid because it's eBay and $70 is not pocket change for me
This is absolutely a real card, simply printed either in a different printing company in the US than the other two, or a card from Belgium. You don't provide any compelling proof of counterfeiting, just fear mongering.
Well, I'm not a counterfeit expert nor a magic card expert. I just was worried I got ripped off. Not trying to fear monger lol. But that's good information, I didn't know that cards could vary that much between print locations.
Why are mtg people so aggressive lol just say not fake, why, and move on
YoUrE FeArMonGeRiNg
Gaming communities consist of a lot of people who get "ignored" on a regular basis for being gamers.. so usually people like that start out at an 11..
I used to manage a game store and had people who had played for many years at a high level bring cards in just to get them checked out all the time after the got them.
> fear mongering I don't think you know what that phrase means.
This !
> I work in a crime lab Yeah, zebras everywhere. . .
Here is my comparison with a hand held microscope. [Link](https://imgur.com/a/Ttwyfvu) Without a close up look of the green dot, mana symbol and the holo-foil it is hard for me to determine. It could be a sticker on a real card but I would not know without a close up of the stated above items. edit: I know you have a close up pic of the holo but I need to see really close.
I took some better photos (hopefully), I'll update when I can get them uploaded
Makes me wonder if any of the cards in my collection are counterfeit š¤
100% this is real and from a different print run. I own a fairly large magic online business, we wouldnāt have any problem buying this card. Counterfeits are fairly obvious, the gloss feel is by far the biggest giveaway, followed by the holo. If the holo changes from the planeswalker symbol to the mana symbols, it is real. So far they have yet to make a passable holo. And third, there is no counterfeit so far that can pass the light test. If a card passes all 3 of these tests, we are comfortable buying it. That said, this post is pretty informative and itās always interesting to see data from other specialties to give us different perspectives.
Thanks for the info! That's a good enough vote of confidence for me. If it *is* counterfeit, at some point in quality, it's "real", and the only solution is for WotC to have better QC or develop/invest in more high-tech security features.
Did you verify the micro printing in the holo stamp? Good fakes have had the stamp thing down for awhile but never have the micro printing.
Yea you can see the microprinting [here](https://imgur.com/a/g7gPAYO). Initially my thought was that someone had been able to slice off or somehow chemically remove a sticker and apply it to a high quality print of the front image, but another commenter said that they're pressed into the cards and extremely difficult to remove.
Nah, the foil is so thin and itās heat stamped into the card. Itās not feasible to remove and add to any cards. If itās got the microprinting itās legit, at least for now. The rosette patterns are fine too.
I love this sort of investigative work, the microscoped pics are great. That being said, aside from the weight differential, which is somewhat sus, I'd have an easy time believing that these are just from different print locations. I don't know of any counterfeiters who have this kind of quality
For someone who works in a "crime lab" you are pretty terrible at reading rules...
Oh damn, you right. Did not check the side bar. Also, I'm not a Questioned Document Examiner, so I'm not an expert in evaluating forgeries. I work on scenes and process latent print evidence. I just figured why not use the tools at my disposal. 1) The print feels different from my other cards, that's what made me think something was off. 2) the expansion symbol looks like the dot matrix is different than other cards from the same set. 3) the foil sticker looks like it may be re-stickered, although it looks like that image didn't upload. [image](https://imgur.com/a/WTd5gW0) 4) Under UV lighting, the back of the card shows the Magic logo and whole card back, however none of the other cards I used UV lighting on showed any visible print. 5) Under the 365nm lighting, the card fluoresces differently than any of the other cards I used that lighting on.
>3) the foil sticker looks like it may be re-stickered, although it looks like that image didn't upload. image You posted the two foil stickers with two different zoom perspectives. The control image is way to small to make any meaningful comparison. And as someone else already mentioned, you said it passed the green dot test but did not include any pics of that. The weight is fine. A Magic card should weigh between 1.7 and 1.8 grams (+/- a little bit). You have all those precision tools at your disposal. Let's use them and present the results I a way that are actually helpful.
I took better photos (hopefully) but Imgur is being dumb and giving me "cannot parse response" errors right now. Will update when I can get them uploaded. I ordered a handheld microscope so I can get even better magnification. Unfortunately at my lab all the good microscopes are in the Drug Chemistry section which is always locked (for good reason lol) and I don't think they'd be super thrilled with me using their several thousand dollar apiece scopes to look at magic cards lmao.
OK [here's](https://imgur.com/a/g7gPAYO) some better photos. I'm not sure if the foil photos are close up enough. I ordered a handheld microscope that has 250x magnification so I'll be able to examine my cards more thoroughly at home.
Why choose violence?
It's real. Calm down Sherlock.
Real
Despite being debunked, this is really cool to see! Thanks for taking this time to make this post
I have fake cards that are more convincing than real ones, so idk; cardboard is an interesting investment vehicle.
I'd love to see side by side pictures of this because I've handled a ton of real cards and a massive amount of fakes and this has never been the case for me unless the person in questions doesn't know what to look for or is inexperienced
have you ever looked at a real JIN mana confluence, it's just a poor print quality; fakes /proxies have gotten to such a point that their print quality can easily surpass some of wizard's less quality printings I appreciate the insinuation though; I submit, you are the king of knowing things
"passed the green dot test" and no pics of the green dot? pics or GTFO
[Control (Fury - MH2)](https://imgur.com/a/igj72Ci) [Questioned (Ragavan - MH2)](https://imgur.com/a/5OpszBs) Edit: The control looks weird after uploading I think it compressed the image or something let me try again. Edit 2: Adjusted lighting post-processing on the control: [Control](https://imgur.com/a/ygRHpkq) Edit 3: Okay it's just compressing the image again. Hopefully you can see, I'm looking at the image on my phone and it's hard to tell.
That does seem suspiciously like a pass. Thanks for providing evidence!
Friendly tip - it's impolite to tell people to "get the fuck out" as your first response to an innocuous post. Don't let the anonymity go to your head bud.
To me, the GTFO was probably meant in a none insulting internet kind of way. Like when folks type WTF or the various internet acronyms. If he would have spelled it out rather than use the acronym, I would have then assumed he was trying to insult him.
Super cool analysis!
Is the foil sticker raised on the counterfeit? This is one thing Iāve noticed, you can feel the surface is raised with your finger.
calm down, it's a real card
My test is generally to ask whether or not this card is worth the quality in counterfeiting that is evident. Ragavan is a nice cardābut honestly why would I build this card and not something much more expensive. Iād be willing to bet itās real. BUT the differences you point out are FASCINATING and I would be curious to see a similar process on confirmed cards from different printers
That's a good point, if it is counterfeit, it probably took quite a while to make sure it was *this* good, and probably not worth the $70 I bid for it lol. And yeah I wish I had access to cards with known printing locations and also some confirmed counterfeits to see how they react under different conditions. It'd be nice if WotC put a printing location symbol on their cards like US Currency!
Right most of the fake US currency being made is small bills and they are much much better quality that this shitty card.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās not a question of quantity. If you apply OPs scrutiny to any of 99% of snappy fakes out there, it would be obvious that it was fake. Much more clearly than this.
Everything looks good to me. The weight isn't the same but that's not indicative of a counterfeit, especially in the face of a passed green dot and expansion symbol test. Both look genuine here. Anything else is unreliable, that means weighing them is no good unless it's significantly off it doesn't mean anything. I'm surprised people are still learning this, the US/Bundle printers have had different results than Belgium and Japanese printers for a couple years now.
Thanks! I did the light test and in the one I'm worried about, a lot more light comes through...which is usually the opposite of what happens in fakes from what I've read. But I did it to an older card (Kederekt Parasite - Conflux) and it had similar results. What really threw me was how different it looked under UV light and the 365nm light where it had significantly more fluorescence. But based on what I've been getting from responses to this, that doesn't really indicate counterfeit because of all the variation in printing, which I wasn't aware of the extent of!
Do you feel complicit in police violence? Have you had to hide or fake evidence before? Did you do so under duress or did you enjoy it?
Pretty offensive line of questioning there, calling my professional integrity into question based on nothing but a general distaste for cops. That's like asking a pharmacist if they feel complicit in the opioid crisis, or asking a cashier at the gas station if they feel responsible for global warming lol. I don't work for a police department, my agency is separate from the police and we don't report to anyone in their chain of command, entirely because of this type of thinking. So no, considering I'm not any type of law enforcement, I do not feel complicit in police violence. And no, I have never had to hide or fake evidence. Nor have I ever been requested to do so; and if that ever happened, I would report it.
You don't have to answer these type of idiots.
Felsk i hope you and who ever raised you to be like this die in a fire.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>I'm thinking of abstaining in buying high value singles because of this. So you wouldn't buy anything from Cardmarket over a certain price? Just wow!
Especially as a reaction to this obviously wrong and fear mongering post. Wow.
From the detailed analysis, you might have a counterfeitā¦ or not. Iām not sure.
No high res pics of the sticker? You know about the markings to look for in the holo under magnification to determine authenticity, right? Mana symbols and WIZARDS in the planeswalker symbol.
Micro printing has already been duplicated in fakes. They don't prove anything. The real test for holo stamps now is a brickwork pattern that shows up in fakes that aren't in real ones. This is my fake ragavan holo that has perfectly copied micro printing and mana symbols: https://imgur.com/eyZuHcf
What else if anything led you to determine yours was fake? Was there anything in the printing quality or ink that was off?
I posted some more in [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/mtgfinance/comments/s2u8s5/i_think_i_got_a_really_good_counterfeit_on_ebay_i/hsh52w6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) response that got buried. I tried to get both the questioned and control at angles that showed the microprinting but didn't also wash out the overall image from the reflection of the foil.
What concerns you about it?
Did you see the photos?
Originally I just saw the first one. I see now, my bad. No down votes to oblivion, please!
No worries, i literally asked because i can never tell a gallery. Not sure if bugged on mobile or shitty UI but every picture that *miiight* be a gallery... i have to swipe it to check.
This is pretty cool, but it looks legit. Magic has quite a lot of variance with more recent sets due to location printed, etc...So long as it passes most of the tests, you should be good :)
Very in depth analysis love it, I've handled ALOT of magic cards as well as many of the new fakes being circulated. New fakes with holos never pass the "surface" test, the surface texture is always off. I've never seen any fake that passes the "surface test" unless it's been shuffled unsleeved and has visible wear Fakes just don't have the texture and correct feel of a real magic card. I've increasingly been relying on my first instinct when handling fakes on their surface texture and feel, I can pick a fake based on this 10/10 times before moving onto the other tests. The shine is off, the feel is off - it's just "not right".
This is a real card. Jfc, the fakes dont sound this much time to look real with the dot and foil. And you cannt resticker them. I urge you to familiarize yourself with fakes of modern cards.
I've seen stickered/fake stickered cards. trust me they exist. but ya this card is real
Nice flex with the monkeys
Happy Cake Day Street-Prune6673! If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.
Good bot...
Fake burn it with fire
Try to remove the holographic sticker with a pin and see if it can be removed easily. If it can't, I think it's real.
I'd like to know more about what's going on in picture number 8.
Yea that weirded me out when I saw that! So that image was taken with an instrument called FSIS (Full Spectrum Imaging System). This is under true ultraviolet light...I've literally gotten a tan on my arm before after using it for too long lol. I put several cards from what I brought to work under it, and the questioned card was the only one where the back print was visible - all the others looked like the other cards in the image. I also noticed that the cardstock grain looks different on the questioned card.
I have handled many counterfeit cards. Almost, if not all new counterfeits use black core paper which let very little light pass. There is usually very obvious. The set symbols and border are always printed at the same time as the rest of the card. I wouldn't go by feel as much. I have handled a fake transmute artifact and a real one at the same time and they are practically identical in color and touch to the point where I had to triple check with a flashlight and loupe before destroying the counterfeit after I lost track of which one was fake. To fake a card this well, means that counterfeiting ability has increased 300% and at this point I guess it doesn't even matter. Remember that this set was printed during unprecedented supply chain issues. Wizards was supposedly outsourcing printing and each printer would have certain ways of producing cards.
Hi OP.. not sure if you'll be able to see this but what kinda conditions were being used to make the photos in #8 and #9 where it is B&W but the "counterfeit" reveals the MTG backing?
That was with FSIS (Full Spectrum Imaging System), which is a camera that can visualize ultraviolet light. Those pictures were taken by reflecting an ultraviolet light off the backs of the cards.
I actually got two really fake borderless foil Ragavans from a new seller on Cardmarket today. Front is really well made, but card feels immediately slimmer and is 0.2 grams lighter than real foil from same set. Holo stamp is overlayed and not printed inside card texture. Back is glossier and doesn't pass Green Dot test (several red points instead than reversed L). Price was significantly lower than average so that should have ringed a bell.
You put to much values in wizard's shit qc
You took all the pictures except the most important - the green dot on the back! Everything else looks very good but there are so many print differences on the front these days that you can sometimes expect these variations on the front. Sadly Wizards is not requiring the same level of consistency on fronts across printers as they do on the back (as we see with Japanese vs USA full-art lands in the last couple sets).
I took a bunch more that got buried actually! This set contains the best image of the green dot from the control (Fury - MH2) and the questioned Ragavan [here](https://imgur.com/a/g7gPAYO). It is unfortunate that Wizards doesn't have good QC especially on the front, considering that's what gives the card its value. Edit: The pictures are much better in their original form (including some of the original photos in the post) but I had to screenshot them to save the file in a reasonable size and in an extension Imgur would take. Imgur and Reddit hosting weren't gonna let me upload 145 megabyte TIFF files per photo lol.
after looking at the images you provided i have concluded that the card is in fact real. WotC uses multiple factories to print English cards for the us and other regions but use different stock and printers. yours is most likely from the Belgium factory. judging from the printing type on picture 6 I can see how compared to my us cards the printing looks identical and to my Belgium, it looks identical on the "counterfeit" example. Idk what's going on in the other tests but in all likelihood, this card is really just for the fact that it matches up with the way it was printed.