Guide to Authenticating Pre-War Baseball Cards

Several years ago I wrote a short paperback book called ‘Judging the Authenticity of Early Baseball Cards.” It covers the basics of authenticating and forgery detecting Pre-War cards, including T206s, Old Judges, Allen & Ginters and all the rest.   You can view/download for free the guide in pdf ebook form here.

As the book is about eight years old, I re-read it see if any corrections were in order. The cards themselves have always been old, even eight years ago, so there’s no change on that front. However, there are two changes due to recent changes in the hobby.

The first is the book lists Global Authentication (GAI) as a reputable grader and many believe that company has fallen by the proverbial wayside.

The other is that the book recommends avoiding private eBay auctions. In the ‘old days’ a bidder could see all the other bidder ids, and auctioneers would usually only hide the bidder ids for nefarious purposes– to hide shill bidding, the seller was selling fakes or otherwise was a scammer and didn’t want bidders warned. The problem is a couple of years after the book came out eBay made all auctions essentially ‘private’.

For those considering downloading the book for free or purchasing a print copy on eBay, the following are five authenticity tips straight from the book:

1) The original 1914-15 Cracker Jack cards have no white ink. The white on the cards is created by the absence of ink on the light-colored card stock. In other words, the white borders is the color of card stock surface.

If the Cracker Jack player picture has a large white section of his uniform that directly touches the border, there should little or no difference in tone between the border white and the white of the uniform.

On many fakes, the border is distinctly different from the white in the player image.

2) If a seller is offering a rare baseball card with obviously scissors clipped corners that he describes as “natural corner wear,” there’s a more than probable chance you’re looking at a fake.

With homemade fakes, one of the harder things to do is to mimic natural corner rounding. The forger often clips the corners at a straight angle, then roughs them up a bit. In many cases, the corners remain obviously hand cut.

Of course genuine cards can have clipped corners (the pictured card is authentic, and is only shown as a card with obviously clipped corners), but anyone experienced with cards can tell the difference between clipping and natural wear. Even if the there is the odd chance the card for sale is real, why would you choose to make an expensive online purchase from a seller who can’t even identify obvious trimming? Shouldn’t you be buying from the seller who can tell the difference?

3) Die cut cards are hard to counterfeit due to the non-rectangular shapes. Some old cards were factory cut into non-rectangular shapes. The 1909-11 Colgan’s Chips are round disks, the 1913 Our National Game and Polo Grounds have an intricate die cut design.

These cards are hard to counterfeit well, because the unusual shapes are hard to cut. Homemade Colgan’s Chips are often easily identified by the obviously uneven sciccors cut. Homemade and factory reprints of the National Game and Polo Grounds cards are identified because the corners are cut differently. Try cutting your own Scrapps Die Cut reprint on your paper-cutter or with sciccors. In short, the different or amateur cut of these cards is often a giveaway that they are fakes.

4) The popular T205 ‘Gold Border‘ cards have edges covered in genuine metal that are easy to identify as genuine. A plethora of tiny copper flecks of metal were glued to the borders right after the cards were printed. The ancient process of gluing metal specs, dust or leaf to the surface documents and furniture is called gilding.

The T205 cards’ metal originally had a ‘bright new penny’ color, but by now has aged and tarnished, with a dark rusty-brown and sometimes even green-tinged qualities (copper can turn greenish as it tarnishes). It isn’t shiny and smooth but roughish, including to the feel. If you close your eyes run your finger tip along the front of the card, you can feel where the matte textured metal borders start.

A quick examination of the metal borders and its consistency will quickly identify most T205s as real or reprint. Some reprints may have metal borders, but they are smoother and brighter than the original borders. Almost all home computer reprints have no metal and are just digital duplication. It would be too difficult and time-consuming to actually gild the cards, and, even if the basement counterfeiters tried, it would likely look horrible. In all the cases, the difference between the authentic and reprint borders is clear upon close examination.

As with all cards issues, before buying expensive raw Hall of Famers and rare variations it is best to buy a low-grade common or three to see (and feel) for yourself. In person examination is always the best classroom.

5) Holding a card’s surface at an angle to the light will reveal many hidden alterations. Otherwise genuine cards sometimes have ink, paint, glue, paper and erasure marks added to make them into rare counterfeits or make them look better. The notoriously condition sensitive black borders of the 1971 Topps Baseball cards are often touched up with a black felt tip pen.

When looked at straight on, and especially when the card is in a penny sleeve or plastic holder, alterations to the surface can go unnoticed. However, when examining the surface gloss of a holder free card at a sharp angle, added paint, ink and erasure marks can suddenly stand out like a sore thumb. This is the main reason why experienced collectors and dealers remove raw cards from penny sleeves to examine them.

For many more tips, check out the book.  You can purchase some of my books here.

Cheers.

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About David Cycleback

David Cycleback is an art and artifacts historian and an internationally known authentication expert. He has authenticated artifacts for major institutions, was a writer for the standard academic reference Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Photography, and teaches courses in art authentication. Reprinted by Beijing's Three Shadows Art Center, his guides "Judging the Authenticity of Prints by the Masters" and "Judging the Authenticity of Photographs" were the first comprehensive books on the subjects published in China. He can be reached at [email protected].