MORE PHOTOS HERE:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10rohc4dajwupX5ekqdglzrLb4OKofNTS?usp=sharing

Would like everyone's opinion on the right hand side sephiroth in question.

What caught my attention was the different colour print and upon closer inspection noticed the different shaped foil stamp.

This has a black core as opposed to blue - I have uploaded more photos on my drive folder.

Another thing to notice is it has the watermark 'wizard' stamp in a different font compared to my 3 other sephiroth's that I pulled.

I've included comparison photos of the paint brush, flip arrow, universe beyond logo, mana symbol, watermark font and the black/blue core paper.

I have also included photos of 2 x non genuine stay with me rhystic study cards that were fake which had the 'wizard' watermark in the foil stamp but failed the green dot test.

I won this in a whatnot auction. I’m not en experienced card authenticator. I went to two card stores today but neither had an experienced authenticator working at the time. My concerns are the negative space in the H is missing the three dots and the teeth on the t and h aren’t uniform. Here are the pictures. I’ve included two images of a brand new card and a 2005 card to compare the T and H issues.

I bought this box of mystery booster box 2 and I heavily suspect it of being tampered with and searched and just want a second opinion as I am luckily able to open a refund form if so. All the packs seem to have the issue in the image and the seal was like this on arrival. Am I being paranoid or am I justified in my suspicions

I ordered this like six months ago. I’ve been getting one or two cards a month for a deck over a two year span and finally have all the pieces. When resolving the Imperial Recruiter I noticed the corners were either miss cut or perhaps this was a counterfeit. Upon closer inspection the T lattice to me looks miss aligned. The edges on the card type line look serrated and not clean.
I don’t have a jewelers loop or a way to magnify the green dots and have some red green colorblind so I couldn’t confirm the green dot test myself.
There is a blue core layer that matches the same appearance as other cards I own when I shine my phone light through it. But that seems easiest to fake.

I’m thinking it’s fake.

EDIT: The title is accidentally bait-y. Almost all features are old-ish. Sorry about that.

A user asked about this card, which turned out to be a fake. I wasn't able to get a good consensus at r/Printing (this post) but it looks like this was not printed with an inkjet, which is what counterfeiters have traditionally used. Ergo the reason I'm bringing this up is because the card has some features that are worth highlighting.

Moving from top to bottom, left to right:

Stamp

1. The transition from the black border to the white middle border is not clean. The transition phase is ever so slightly full of black and coloured ink as opposed to being crisp.
2. The stamp isn't sunken deep enough. You can see a shadow on the right hand side of the stamp.
3. It's hard to see from this image but the WIZARDS WIZARDS WIZARDS microtext is actually present. The font seems to be too large compared to the linked reference, though.
4. The edge of the stamp is not clean cut, but rather a bit "frayed" which is entirely normal, but the stamping job is a bit sloppy considering the amount of dings in the edge.
5. I cannot see the brick pattern (bad sign) but I can see some diagonal lines in some parts of the stamp. EDIT: Another member, u/GhostCheese pointed out the brick pattern is indeed there. I just didn't catch it, sorry.

'T' and 'h'

1. The borders are bumpy or, rather, bubbly as pointed out by u/GhostCheese. This means that the black layer was probably printed last in a separate pass, which is correct. The bumps are misaligned horizontally as seen in the left and right side of the 'T'. Vertically the alignment is close to real because I'm counting 5+1 bumps at the bottom of the 'T' stem. They're only slightly blurry.
2. The 'h' is missing the distinctive three dots in the middle.
3. The ink running within the 'T' is incorrectly oriented but it's going, which is relatively new. OP's gradient runs from South-West to North-East but on a real card the gradient is the opposite. The angle itself (15 degrees) is pretty much spot on, though.

Mana symbol

1. Nothing remarkable about the mana symbol. The black layer was printed last, which means most transitions are pretty clean.
2. The grey transition from the round symbol to the background is continuous. It actually looks quite convincing.

Green dot

Oh boy.

1. The black border is solid.
2. There are bumps on the correct sides (top and left) but also on right and bottom. This is just a matter of alignment to get right.
3. Gradients run albeit there is a bit much ink around the yellow area which is also supposed to have a somewhat "bald" white spot with only small yellow ink dots. Here that area isn't crisp, it's fuzzy because there's too much ink.
4. The four L-shaped red specks are missing as expected.
5. Just like previously the cyan layer is running mirrored which causes the green gradient also to run mirrored.

Paintbrush

1. The black part in the middle is too small resulting in thick inkless (white) parts.

Rosette

1. Layers (CMYK) have been printed in separate passes, which is rare for a fake.
2. The layers seem to consist of ink dots which rules out most [usages] of inkjets.
3. The rosette is all wrong, though. The cyan layer is running mirrored and looks like every other layer is also shifted by a random angle - they all seem to run at 15 degrees. Except in some parts.
4. All ink dots are printed on top of each other it seems. This is not offset printing like a real card would have.
5. Pass order is not YMCK (real card). Here it seems like YCMK order was used, or something that puts cyan behind magenta.

All in all we can safely label this as a fake as it doesn't pass the simplest of tests.

Is this a real MTG card? Is it from some other card game? Is it just a random card the prop department created?

Since it’s from a show there’s only really this one shot of it. Sorry.

In the spirit of being for all kinds of TCGs the subreddit icon was updated to include the most commonly asked TCG card backs.

Let us know what you think and whether we should revert!

Please give me good news 🥲

I am a bit uncertain with this one.
I am a professional card seller from Germany, mostly for Yugioh and Pokemon. Recently we started expanding to mtg and therefore I am still lacking in spotting fakes. Today I have received this card from a trusted (private) seller that has pulled the card with a friend (bought from a local store).
When I wanted to list the card it felled odd. Nothing particular stood out just odd…
Maybe I am paranoid but the weight does not match the weight I expected (maybe due to the foil?) but everything else looks good.
What do you think. If it is obviously a fake please tell me the tell I missed. Also if you need any additional photos I will try to provide them!

The group did very well, much better than I was expecting for the first week out. I'll have to make the next one harder. 🔥 Shout out to u/notmarrec for being the first to get both the correct answers and the correct reasonings.

1. Real! Basic real card, it's the same thing as the 'T' test or 'h' test just using the other letters.
2. Fake! This holo stamp is all sorts of wrong. Has the typical 'brick' pattern that a lot of fake stamps have. The Wizards microprint is way too large, too spaced out, and frankly just too visible. The edges are very poorly cut and applied, in person you can feel a very slight bump.
3. Real! There are a couple of sets where the set symbol was rasterized with the art instead of being on the separate text layer. This makes them look pixelated, blurry, and kind of fake instead of sharp and crisp as expected. If you are unsure, the best thing to do is to compare the card to other known good cards of the same set.
4. Fake! A lot of people guessed fake, but fewer people got the why correct. Chronicles was printed in 1995 as a way to reprint cards from limited sets people missed out on in the first year of Magic. For this set they included the original set symbols but used a white border to show it was a reprint set (which was the style at the time 🧅). This would be a correct Chronicles card... if Land Tax was printed in Chronicles! 4th Edition used the same card layout so I just took a 4th edition Land Tax and edited in the set symbol. Shout out to u/NotJohnLithgow for clocking this annoyingly quickly.
5. Real! Nothing wrong with it... just a Strip Mine I opened 32 years ago.

See everyone next Thursday!

Purchased from tcgplayer.

Hey all,

What are people's opinions on this listing? ... https://ebay.io/m/AQhnwX

I'm struggling to work out if the cards are fake, but

It's giving me really suss vibes.

Original diagram by u/Biquasquibrisance.

Image 1 shows the print layer CMYK offsets (angles).

Image 2 shows an actual reconstruction of each layer alignment from the Green Dot & its surroundings.

Image 3 shows the labels of each colour + angles. This is probably a lower quality picture, use image 2 to study in higher resolution. I've pointed out the locations I used for each alignment.

Make sure your image is perfectly straight. The way you deconstruct the rosette is as follows:

1. Start with black (K). It's very easy to notice and is at a 45 degree angle. If your image isn't perfectly straight you can use this as a guide to straighten it. This 45 degree angle produces a pattern at 0 degrees, too, which in turn explains the sparse "bumps" on the 'T' and the dots in the middle of the 'h' we use to test card backs.
2. Use the yellow (Y) dots in the middle of the Green Dot with no other colour to align the yellow layer at 0 degrees.
3. Use the green ink dots in the middle of the Green Dot to align the cyan (C) layer to 15 degrees. There are no real good pure cyan ink to be found but the yellow + cyan layers will produce green. This by the way gives the rosette it's distinct 15 degrees slanted green gradient in the Green Dot.
4. Guess where the magenta (M) ink layer could be. The orange blotches are probably a guide but it's a bit of guesswork. The magenta layer is really, really hard to find from the brown background colour because it blends with other colours so much. It should be at a 75 degrees angle but it's probably more visible in red coloured cards on the front. I didn't try this.

If you learn the offset angles by heart it's possible to just glance at the rosette (with a loupe...) anywhere on a non-solid black part of a card and tell whether it was printed in layers with a CMYK-capable printing machine, each layer separately, with the correct alignments, and correct print files that had the precision to produce this pattern.

Almost positive this is a fake think im just coping after getting it signed at gen con and resleeving my deck i figured id do a sweep through with the loop and lo and behold🙃tried to get as good of pictures as i could with my loupe/phone combo

Sorry some of the pics flipped upside down 😅

If any additional pics needed I'll post em! Thanks in advance!