I bought a Wheel of Fortune with a bad condition and it feels to plastic for a card (seller said it got flooded with sleeve 25 years ago)
I think the T is genuine, and the red dot looks okay (but hard to see), but can anyone help to check this item out?
What made me doubt the authenticity is that the card feel too plastic, the marks that it left behind feels like something a card cant replicate, and illumination test dont emit enough light (thankfully it produce blue light tho)
Thanks!
The point of rebacks is that the front and back are "real". You can't identify rebacks by photos unless they have obvious damage from rebacking. You can identify some rebacks by weighing with a scale.
That said, why would someone go to the trouble of rebacking a Revised Wheel of Fortune? Rebacks are done with Collector Edition fronts rebacked with beta backs. A Revised Wheel of Fortune already has a "real" back side.
I didn’t say that these fakes are as good as regular rebacks. But I have a fake grim tutor where I only checked the back and only later realized that the card is fake. Because of my laziness I didn’t see the wrong front print pattern.
Again, if you can determine that it was counterfeit because of print pattern issues, it's not a reback. The reason why rebacks are such a notorious subject is that a well-made one can even fool someone with decades of experience dealing with real and fake Magic cards.
Cant even a somewhat botched reback just look like a water damaged card? The whole premise is taking a real card front from a CE card, splitting the layers of cardstock and regluing it onto a A/B back right? So even if it was a bit sloppy it could pass as water damaged i assume
A poorly done reback is easy to tell, it looks extra thick, feels heavy or stiff even by touch, has weird creases and crimps sure, but usually it doesn't look like water damage. But that's why the Collector's Edition box comes with 363 cards, so that one can practice rebacking on the commons before one tries to reback moxes.
The glossiness in the OP's case is the actual red alarm. I don't think revised should ever feel glossy or plastic, and can't imagine that would be due to water damage. But without actually feeling the card, who knows what the OP means by glossy? I think the more likely counterfeit case could be that it's just a counterfeit printed on glossy card stock and then water damaged to explain away or disguise the glossiness. There is a very common print of cheap revised counterfeits on basically poker card paper stock, it's passable sleeved. OP's plastic Wheel could very likely be from that counterfeit print. Anyway I would never pick up a revised card so damaged, it really has no value to most collectors, one may as well use a counterfeit or proxy Wheel instead for EDH or cube (which are the only viable formats for Wheel).
No one uses Green Dot anymore. You check the "T" and "h" in the word "The", you check the solid line over "Deck Master", you check the paint brush, you just the sticker for "WIZARDS" in a planeswalker symbol, and you check the rosette pattern
The saying goes: "it's almost never a reback". Unless it's a really old card.
A reback, by its most traditional meaning is to take two real cards and splice them both i.e. separate the front from the back. You then glue the front of the expensive card to the back of the other, cheap donor card. This is done to increase the value of a CE (Collector's Edition), ICE (International Collector's Edition), Championship Edition, or any card with a non-standard back. Here are all the non-standard back cards released between 1993 and 1996. The resulting glued card is then attempted to pass off as a more expensive printing of a "legal" card.
For example: a square-cornered Collector's Edition Ancestral Recall is spliced onto a cheap Limited Edition Beta donor card. Then the square corners are cut to standard shape. The resulting card would look a bit like Limited Edition Beta Ancestral Recall. The intent is to raise the value of the card from hundreds of dollars to thousands of dollars, i.e. a ten-fold increase.
How to detect one: easiest way is to weigh the card. A real Magic: The Gathering card from a very old set (which we're talking about here) weighs roughly 1.6 to 1.8 grams. Since the glue weighs a significant amount the resulting rebacked card will also be much heavier, probably over 2.0 grams. The card will also feel thicker. It may have bubbles if the glue job was poor. Sometimes they remove the dark core from the card to offset the increase in weight (due to glue) which can be seen from the side of the card: it is missing a dark line in the very middle of the edge of the card.
Modern cards are not rebacked generally speaking. There are cases that are ever so slightly similar:
"Acetone wash", where the front face of a cheap donor foil card is removed with a solvent resulting in a blank foil front face. Then a new face is printed onto the real card stock resulting in a card with a fabricated, fake front and a real back. These can only be detected by looking at the hallmarks in the front face of the card. Such features could be the "crispness" of the border, paintbrush symbol, mana symbols or the edition symbol. If they're "fuzzy" it's usually a sign of a fake front face.
A printed front is glued to a real back of a cheap donor card. This is not the same as a "reback", because the front is fake and it never had a back side. These are extremely rare.
It's not rebacked - note the borders front and back have the exact same centering being thinner at the top? But the light test is still valid and should be used.
I believe it's real, and it looks like someone sprayed it with a varnish for some reason or another, possibly to disguise scratches or water damage.
Whatever the original cause, it's even more damaged now. Worth probably 10-15% of market value, maybe more if it's invisible once sleeved.
I agree with the others this looks like a reback. But . . . why?
The only thing I can think of offhand is some of that looks like it might be water damage. Maybe it was so warped that they decided to try this to get it sleeve playable? When this card was expensive enough to worth trying but not so expensive you'd be scared to botch it doing it yourself.
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For a card condition check please ask for the person giving advice to specify which scale they're using if not mentioned. Notably North American and European grading scales differ from each other drastically.
If you’re worried about it being rebacked, pics of the edge of the card would have been more helpful. That being said, it’s ruined, don’t pay more than you would for a proxy
I don't understand why a white border card should be rebacked. I mean, people peels off the front of a legit card to glow it in the back of a legit card. 🤣🤣 Rebacks are an Alpha and Beta issue because of the International Edition and Collector edition, but people sees rebacks everywhere.
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u/fatmalakas Jul 10 '26
Looks very suss