Dangerous Chinese forgeries of high-value Magic cards

The issue of very dangerous forgeries is old old news in stamp collecting. There is a very simple way to deal with it: Wizards can write an article after acquiring by whatever channels samples of all of the cards that have been forged so dangerously and provide very high resolution scans describing the difference between the forgeries and the legitimate cards. It is very difficult to forge something exactly, and therefore, there is always a way to compare the forgery and the genuine item.

It is common for those who collect 19th century rare stamps to have in their collection a representative sample of forgeries. Members of the local Magic community could give their LGS samples of the forgeries we are discussing here and each LGS could have them in a binder. That way, when someone comes in trying to sell to the LGS, the LGS can always do their own expertization.

It is interesting that it also took approximately 20 years for very high quality forgeries to become a serious problem in stamp collecting with the work of Fournier and Sperati in the 1860s and 1870s.

I don't see the value of the cards that have been forged plummeting. It will make the network of trusted sellers more aware of the product they sell and they will have to either become better expertizers, or rely on certification experts or both. We have slabbing certificates for cards like the P9, and this just means that JTMS will either get slabbed more, or a new and cheaper group of certificate issuers will come along and provide that service. Its just like 9/11 and the Target POS hack, it will create a new business for trusted certifications of high-value Magic cards like JTMS.

For example, here is my Griselbrand (I only have one, sigh!). Gatherer could have a link for expertization for the the high value cards with very high resolution scans of selected parts of the card that anyone could download for their own use.

Provenance: AVR MTGO redemption.

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There are many valid points on both sides of the argument 'how much is too much to pay to play Magic at any level.' Unfortunately, it is only indirectly related to the subject of counterfeiting. The people who fake Magic cards could be faking any other product, this is not their calling or selfless endeavor to save our wallets from unjust expense. I doubt they care about all of the expense arguments. The only relation to counterfeiting is that there are high-priced cards in the game, and in a game with 1000's of cards that is played in the industrialized world, it is completely reasonable that a large number of people will be willing to pay $20 for a sought-after card. Check out any hobby and you will find the same thing happening.