I haven't seen anyone else do a video, image, or discussion on the newest fakes so I'm using his videos. These fakes do exist, he did get the latest batch copies, and they are for sale and available around the internet. Whether the person is credible or not, those cards are what he says they are, aka, one real, one gen 1, and one 2nd gen chinese fake.
The latest chinese fakes are much improved over the ones from 4-5 months ago. Now they are pretty much indistinguishable from casual glances and other methods. They have the correct corners, correct shape, and good image/color/font. The latest way to look for a fake is now the light test. They pass the bend test so don't use that anymore. You can find the videos below on the latest fakes. You won't be able to tell if the card is sleeved, so make sure to take any cards out of sleeves you are buying.
The fakes being sold now are generally sold to people for play. They aren't meant to fool professional card buyers. Also it's mostly not in America but in less stringent places like Brazil etc. I don't think anyone will sell these to some big company for buylist, but rather local stores, trades, or over craigslist/3rd party sites.
Listen, you may be naive and a "s" word, but please don't waste time with threads like this in the future. Yes, some random dude on a site said they quit making them. That's great. It means nothing.
Just because something is a game/hobby does not mean it HAS to be cheap. Golf is arguably not cheap. Equestrian polo ain't either. The unfortunate economic realities are such that there are some hobbies that are less accessible if you lack money and that's just like most everything in life. You can whine about it and pray the situation changes or you can figure out how to economically advance yourself.
On a sidenote, I agree that the sentiment to "just want to play a game that they like to play without spending $10,000" provides great emotional appeal though If they really wanted to 'just play the game' they can just make proxies from free basic lands at lgs or print/cut their own proxies to play with - there's a trivial economic cost to 'just play the game'.
Printing a tarmogoyf, underground sea, or other super expensive card costs pennies once it scales up. So it really doesn't matter whether we think it's a fair price or not. What matters is whether someone in China, under minimal legal threat, will care about your argument when he sees a large market for making counterfeit cardboard cards.
The answer is no. While this thread devolved into arguments on the subject, the reality is these arguments are pointless as the counterfeiters are acting on simple free market economics of supply and demand.
We all know each sides points on the matter of card prices, availability, reserved list etc. There's really no point to rehash and re-post all these arguments over and over in this thread. While CF cards are good ammunition to people who want more reprints as it provides a very good point for wotc to reprint more aggresively, I think the better stuff to talk about is quality of the fakes, effect on market, etc. The fact is the Chinese and other counterfeiters obviously don't care about any of the ethics or IP laws.
What I would like to know is after their "creation," how are the fakes entering the market? Are they being sold to not-so-smart online retailers? Are they being traded at sanctioned (or not sanctioned) events all across Asia?
I don't know the specifics. All we know is to get the dot matrix they use on these cards requires actual printing plates and other stuff like cutting tools to match MTG corners. Meaning it's coming from a decently large print operation. From there it is sold directly to private buyers who then distribute from there.
The other fakes originate from another print shop in china, but they do not use real plates so they don't have the good dot matrix, but they offer any card. From there it goes through another party / storefront, until it reaches customers around the world. From there it depends how they sell them as proxy or scam people. Generally they don't go through online retailers though.
Also of note this is only some of the CF cards being made, there are probably a lot of other places doing the same.
these seem like they would pass off perfectly once inside a sleeve.
Is this the "tipping point" of a fakes quality that it needs to reach or is stuff like light test and loupe test the tipping point? I'm wondering if we will see these being intermixed with reals by trading or selling to smaller shops etc.
There was a lot of criticism about how obvious the last batch was but this one fixed almost all of those major problems.. I'm wondering if this really starts a financial drop.
I've seen the orders on some other fakes and it already achieved 10,000+ card sales in a month, with much worse quality than these.
Its amazing to me that people think that there's just going to be this culture of playing illegal decks in tournaments to the point where it decreases the price of other cards and nothing bad will happen.
They are only going to get better
this is the "2nd" attempt and already fixed a majority of the flaws. Give them a few more batches and these will be exact replicas.
This. A million times this. Why did counterfeiters stop making fake Yugioh cards? Because all of the expensive cards get reprinted, and thus counterfeiting Yugioh cards is not profitable. Magic prices of a lot of cards, on the other hand, are just absurd because Wizards refuses to meet demand. Let's be real here. How many people would love to get a playset of Tarmogoyfs? Now out of those people, how many would be willing to shell out close to $800 for a playset? However, think of how much profit Wizards can make if they include a Tarmogoyf in a Duel Deck or Event Deck. You may say, "well, stores will just jack up the price." Not if you have a large print run and make them available in big box stores as well. Wizards needs to stop letting itself be ("b" expletive)-slapped by the secondary market. This is Wizards' own damn fault for letting secondary market prices get out of control. They are so careful not to piss off speculators and investors. Now it's coming back to bite them in the rear.
Completely agree, if you make $0.01 pieces of printed cardboard and retail them for $200 a piece, tarmogoyf, and there is a huge demand for these still, then you're just inviting other people with printing presses to go black market. The free market won't ignore how crazy MTG pricing has gotten lately thanks to wotc not meeting demand.
Can you imagine what a chinese printing operation thinks when they hear some cards retail for $200 a piece in the west? Their eyes probably glaze over in money symbols and they start working on getting in on that market.
First up. It seems to be the same print operation as you might have been hearing about for the past 6 months. You can know it's them because they do a certain 55 cards at all times because they use a rolling print machine meant for playing cards normally. They originally did a batch with a lot of errors like playing card type corners and wrong sizes.
Well their latest batch has been sold for at least a few weeks now. If you remember the old problems.. well they are all almost fixed so you can't reliably use them. The best thing to do is if you buy or trade for any cards on this list is to do a touch test with them and a real card side by side and feel for any inconsistency. The other test is to look at the mana symbol for a different dot matrix than the rest of the card, simply compare it to a real one with a jeweler's loupe.
what's wrong with your rational thought process?
I haven't seen anyone else do a video, image, or discussion on the newest fakes so I'm using his videos. These fakes do exist, he did get the latest batch copies, and they are for sale and available around the internet. Whether the person is credible or not, those cards are what he says they are, aka, one real, one gen 1, and one 2nd gen chinese fake.
Ripped in half
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLpGdQ8aCWo
Bend tests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egnufd9lsi4
Light tests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIQxYsCR9-s
I don't know, why would they lie to the guy making the opening post?
its a good thing counterfeiting is done for now, I was getting worried prices might drop.
But they closed down 5 months ago
http://imgur.com/r/magicTCG/o8f8Yti
Listen, you may be naive and a "s" word, but please don't waste time with threads like this in the future. Yes, some random dude on a site said they quit making them. That's great. It means nothing.
Printing a tarmogoyf, underground sea, or other super expensive card costs pennies once it scales up. So it really doesn't matter whether we think it's a fair price or not. What matters is whether someone in China, under minimal legal threat, will care about your argument when he sees a large market for making counterfeit cardboard cards.
The answer is no. While this thread devolved into arguments on the subject, the reality is these arguments are pointless as the counterfeiters are acting on simple free market economics of supply and demand.
We all know each sides points on the matter of card prices, availability, reserved list etc. There's really no point to rehash and re-post all these arguments over and over in this thread. While CF cards are good ammunition to people who want more reprints as it provides a very good point for wotc to reprint more aggresively, I think the better stuff to talk about is quality of the fakes, effect on market, etc. The fact is the Chinese and other counterfeiters obviously don't care about any of the ethics or IP laws.
I don't know the specifics. All we know is to get the dot matrix they use on these cards requires actual printing plates and other stuff like cutting tools to match MTG corners. Meaning it's coming from a decently large print operation. From there it is sold directly to private buyers who then distribute from there.
The other fakes originate from another print shop in china, but they do not use real plates so they don't have the good dot matrix, but they offer any card. From there it goes through another party / storefront, until it reaches customers around the world. From there it depends how they sell them as proxy or scam people. Generally they don't go through online retailers though.
Also of note this is only some of the CF cards being made, there are probably a lot of other places doing the same.
Watch this and you'll understand. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDO9oAi6b7M
Counterfeiters trying to make good fakes have to use the same techniques and everything.
these seem like they would pass off perfectly once inside a sleeve.
Is this the "tipping point" of a fakes quality that it needs to reach or is stuff like light test and loupe test the tipping point? I'm wondering if we will see these being intermixed with reals by trading or selling to smaller shops etc.
There was a lot of criticism about how obvious the last batch was but this one fixed almost all of those major problems.. I'm wondering if this really starts a financial drop.
I've seen the orders on some other fakes and it already achieved 10,000+ card sales in a month, with much worse quality than these.
They are only going to get better
this is the "2nd" attempt and already fixed a majority of the flaws. Give them a few more batches and these will be exact replicas.
I don't think anyone in this thread has their hands on any to test. They look good enough to be undetectable sleeved or in play though.
Completely agree, if you make $0.01 pieces of printed cardboard and retail them for $200 a piece, tarmogoyf, and there is a huge demand for these still, then you're just inviting other people with printing presses to go black market. The free market won't ignore how crazy MTG pricing has gotten lately thanks to wotc not meeting demand.
Can you imagine what a chinese printing operation thinks when they hear some cards retail for $200 a piece in the west? Their eyes probably glaze over in money symbols and they start working on getting in on that market.
People have been.
If you are told to copy a bunch of chinese names I'd think you might mess some up. It's correct on card.
Well their latest batch has been sold for at least a few weeks now. If you remember the old problems.. well they are all almost fixed so you can't reliably use them. The best thing to do is if you buy or trade for any cards on this list is to do a touch test with them and a real card side by side and feel for any inconsistency. The other test is to look at the mana symbol for a different dot matrix than the rest of the card, simply compare it to a real one with a jeweler's loupe.
Here is a 1080P video of someone going through some of the latest from china fakes, note the junk cards at the start are real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5si8VZ9ISrs
Here is the list to look out for.
They might be impossible to spot in sleeves and it's currently not public knowledge how to spot these from reals.