Gellman at
Sports Cards Uncensored has been front and center when it comes to exposing the dark side of our hobby... fake auto's and fake patch cards. His Scam Watch feature is a must read for the modern card collector.
Tonight, he looks at some football patch cards of questionable authenticity. There are links to many eBay auctions. I recommend heading over to his site and having a look.
That brings me to my question; how do fakers fake a card? How do they pry out a single color swatch, and replace it with some 5 color monstrosity?
I recently snagged this 2011 Topps Inception Mikel Leshoure Patch card #147/158. It has a nice 2-color swatch embedded in it. Sure, it would be cool to have a swatch with a bit of Lion logo in it. Even if I wanted to, I don't see how I could extricate this swatch and replace it without wrecking the card. Anyone ever tried to replace a swatch, ya know, just for science?
After seeing one ripped one recently when getting my custom, I don't think it'd be super super hard if you were really careful. An exacto knife and patience could probably get the average swatch out, and then some glue would get the new one in. The tough part would be getting the cut down to a science. I'm sure a lot of scrub relics are wasted by people practicing that skill.
ReplyDeleteThat said, it makes me so sad people do this with cards. I've even seen faked Seneca Wallace cards before, which seems impossible since he's a backup QB but it happens. I wish it didn't.
I remember thinking the same thing a few years ago when I started reading SCU. There are videos out there showing how they do it and it didn't appear to be as difficult as one would think.
ReplyDeleteIt really is a shame.
Great question... I have no clue, but I think it's crazy people would risk destroying a card(s)... plus cut up/destroy a jersey (although I guess they probably just buy patches, instead of the whole jersey itself).
ReplyDeleteIf only someone would invent a foolproof tamper evident memorabilia card.
It's easy to create a tamper proof memorabilia card, but it would take away from the design of the card.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how to replace memorabilia but it can't be that hard with all the fakers out there. It sucks it happens, but the companies need to do something about it.