New official article about magic counterfeits

[rg]

For those who haven't noticed yet there is a new article about magic counterfeits on magicthegathering.com:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/feature/209

[tsanchan]

After reading the article I shook my box of Italian Legends I bought from dacardworld. Luckily it sounds like it contains packs. Maybe I should open the box before it is too late.  :-/

Crossing my fingers, hoping I have no counterfeit cards that I am not aware of.

[Gryfalia]

There is enough real Italian Legends out there that I wouldn't worry about running into fakes.

I do like the line 'Square cornered cards:
While these cards never were released in official products, a number have been stolen from Wizards of the Coast and various printers over the years, including some print test cards'.

/cough bull**** /cough

I have opened square corner boosters personally in the past.

It looks like the boxes in question are basically all english, or at least those end up being the most valuable in the end, so why copy the others?  Good thing I only buy boxes of non-english..;-)

And some of the things they count as signs of being fake exist on older bona-fide WoTC product.  Like having consistant cutting errors on stacks of cards from the same box (found this a lot in Asian starters from quite a few years ago).

I would say that traders on MOTL from China and the like are going to see a marked decrease in interest as people won't trust them at all (regardless of how trustworthy they might be).

Gryfalia

[silver.paladin]

I would say that traders on MOTL from China and the like are going to see a marked decrease in interest as people won't trust them at all (regardless of how trustworthy they might be).

Gryfalia

Personally, I stopped buying anything from an Asian market a while ago.  There are far too many fakes that I have heard and seen coming from there, and even a couple emails from sellers there bragging how good their fakes were compared to the real cards.

My biggest example is the Jun Minagishi tokens.  I know these are not WotC products, but these are really fake.
Heck, the worst one I have seen there is a seller called YugiKing who appears to have been selling more tokens these past few months than were ever produced.  And that is just one seller, Rednaught, Shespawn, and other sellers all from Singapore.  

It is a shame, because there must be some legit dealers in the Orient, but because of sellers like these, I will not trust buying anything from an Asian destination seller.

[rg]

If i look at the part of the article describing the color and magic back and look at some Beta cards i recently got through a repack auction i have to asume they are all fakes.
But who would make counterfeits for 50cent beta commons ???  Or did someone make fakes of the whole set ???

And how can i get square cornered cards from Display Boxes "which are packed out with plastic overwrap that contains white Wizards logo symbols printed on the plastic"  if they "have been stolen from Wizards of the Coast and various printers over the years".   ::)  ;D

[dry cereal]

If anyone has fake cards for sale on the cheap, please let me know.  I'm a sucker for home-made cards.

[squt]

Awww...cut rosewater some slack about the square-cornered cards comment.  He's so frazzled he said that numbering and coding of rarity started in Legacy.
He's very busy teasing us about Unglued 2.
Squt

[mintcollector]

But who would make counterfeits for 50cent beta commons ???  Or did someone make fakes of the whole set ???

Oooooo....fake uncut sheets!

[l0qii]

Not a bad little article. It's nice to see something posted officialy to the WotC site about fakes. I mostly liked the stuff on the fake boxes and packs. I've never seen anything like that personally, just heard rumors. I'd love to get my hands on fake booster packs.

[Gryfalia]

I hate to say it, but due to some emails I have had forwarded to me in the past day or two, it looks like this is 0% 'for the good of the community' and 100% 'part of an overall strategy to put shackles on online vendors and make people mistrust anyone but WoTC aligned dealers'.

Yup, they are doing their 'bricks and mortar' push again and cracking down.  I like bricks and mortars, but their approach is kinda..stupid.

Gryfalia

[hammr7]

You may be right with regards to unopened material, as Wizards seems to be pushing local authorized dealers.  Their attack on Asian counterfeiters is pretty accurate, based on my limited experience.  Given that we, as knowledgable collectors, are sometimes burned, I think it fair that they give the novices some sort of warning.

I am also glad that there is an "official" statement about the numerous phoney cards.  They didn't say anything we didn't know regarding singles, and hopefully it will help regular collectors to be on their guard.  Stopping the card counterfeiters can only help the collecting and playing communities.  Otherwise, the bad experiences will eventually drive people from the hobby.

But Wizards left one gaping problem unresolved, and that is the issue of "proxies".  The article noted that copying certain card elements violated Wizards intellectual property rights.  This specifically included proxies, even when made for personal use.  But it danced around enforcement against these cards.  

The problem for Wizards is that they encouraged proxies in the past, to allow P9 owners to play their cards while keeping them in great condition.  This helped promote their sales in a big way.  This has put Wizards in a bit of a bind, since they can't have it both ways.

Think of the current resurgence in T1.  This resurgence is aided by the proliferation of proxy tournaments.  People who are spending fortunes on T1 decks want a little more than an old land card with scribbling on it for their proxies.  But Wizards is basically saying that if you even write the correct card info on a land card you are violating their property rights.  This may be theoretically true, but Wizards past allowances may harm their ability to enforce the proxy ban after their past allowances (at least proxies for personal use).

What Wizards needs to do to put an end to the proxy situation is to create a set of "official" or " authorized" proxies.  It wouldn't need to be another collector's edition.   The artwork would need to be sufficiently altered so that everyone would know these cards are "proxies".  Maybe they could have the word PROXY stamped over the art.

These could be issued as either a predetermined set, or in boosters.  The cards could actually be set up as premium of a sort.  Even at a higher price I think sales would be pretty good.  It would easily let players use proxies where appropriate while allowing everyone to keep track of how many a player had.  Wizards could even have a contest to help determine art and / or which proxy cards (beyond P9 ) to include.

This would help close the last glaring weakness in keeping unauthorized cards out of play completely.  I'd like to know what others think about this.

[mintcollector]

hammr7:  "Official" proxies...what a great idea.  One major problem with that is where do you draw the line on what should be officially proxied and what should not?  I think the same artwork/card could be printed, but maybe with the word proxy on it in red, or even the word proxy following the card title.  Heck, you can even make this a rewards program prize of some sort like FNM/MPR/etc. or even a new yet not formed program.  

Some purists may complain that this may invalidate WOTC's reprint policy promise though.

Personally, I am in favor of something like this since I have all the cards already.  It would be nice not to have to start to re-buy everything to play with as I slowly plan to start to do.

[hammr7]

If the cards are definitely "proxy" cards, then they wouldn't be legal on their own.  They could be used as inexpensive fillers in the casual "proxy" tournaments, or they could be used in place of real cards in real tournaments, so long as you could produce the real cards to show you qualified to use the proxies.  

And if they have proxy on the card, and aren't tournament legal on their own, then they wouldn't be reprints.  While they might be used as reprints for casual play, that shouldn't violate Wizard's promise (any more than another collector's edition set would).

As for what cards to include, you would immediately eliminate anything in Type 2.  You could probably eliminate anything usable in Extended as well.  That would leave you with only the oldest sets to deal with.  From those, look at cards with values of $20-$30 or more, and you are down to a very few OOPs that people desire desperately for T1 decks.  These are the cards most likely to be proxied in the casual tournaments, or counterfeited for whatever reason.

[mintcollector]

I wonder if WOTC did not want to handle this if they would let a 3rd party handle production, much like all the company-based tokens out there.

[silver.paladin]

From those, look at cards with values of $20-$30 or more, and you are down to a very few OOPs that people desire desperately for T1 decks.  These are the cards most likely to be proxied in the casual tournaments, or counterfeited for whatever reason.

Sorry, but I have to finally ask -- what is OOPS??  I originally thought it was something to mean error card, as in oops, but of course realized that was not the case, so what exactly is it meaning?