General Forum

Here's a good article on detecting vintage counterfeit cards and common warning signs.

https://allvintagecards.com/detecting-counterfeit-vintage-cards/

Great stuff. Thanks. 

When I see a card that I'm not convinced is authentic and I suspect the eBay seller doesn't really know either, I will ask the seller to take the flashlight on their phone and point it at the back of the card real close.  And I ask them to report back to me whether they can see the light through the card or not (I don't tell them what to look for, I just ask them to report to me what they see). 

For those of you who don't know, most vintage cardstock will completely block the light.  It's not true for every single vintage cardstock, but it is for most.  The light typically shines through fakes and reprints.  If they report to me that they can see the light through the card, I let them know the card is not authentic.  Every seller I have had to tell this bad news too has been thankful, and they have taken the card down from eBay immediately.

Of course an unscrupulous seller on eBay could lie to you, but I have found this approach to be very effective at spotting unwitting fake sales without me being a jerk.

Dot-matrix printing is right for the time it was printed. It was how everything was printed back then including newspapers that still use it to this day.

I downloaded both images looked at them on my image program for 20 to 30 minutes did comparisons to other High rez images of the same card and no bells went off. I could not spot one thing and I went down the list twice. without holding the cards in my hand I'm going to say it's real.

The offset print, the colors, the lines, all look good. for its age and the time, it was printed. If that is a fake they spent way too much time on it. 

I'll be watching the biding on the last day and if it does not go too high for my budget, I'll take a shot at it. It would be cool to own one of them cards from that era. 

If it was me I would stay away from this card

the first letter in MERKLE the "M" should be larger than the rest of the name and in this case to me it looks like the "M" is smaller than the rest---this is the first thing I look at when trading or purchasing a t206 card

Now that I notice it, you're right