Magic: The Gathering (MTG) players can create cards, planeswalkers, and tokens online using various card creators like Card Conjurer, Magic Card Maker, and Artificer. These tools use AI to generate realistic cards based on user prompts, offering a wide variety of card types such as creatures, sorceries, instants, artifacts, enchantments, lands, sagas, and adventures.
MTG.Design allows users to create custom Magic cards from their web browser. The light test involves shining an LED light behind the card, which will give the light a blue tint. MTG Cardsmith is an online card generator for creative MTG players to create and share custom cards and concepts.
To prove the authenticity of Magic: The Gathering trading cards, there are several easy tests to apply. One way to spot fake Magic: The Gathering cards is by holding the card between your fingers and thumb and bending it so that the ends touch briefly. Then, straighten the card out flat and examine the center.
Fake magic cards are a significant illegal industry, and it is essential to be aware of these methods to avoid being duped with a fake MTG card. By using these tools, players can create realistic-looking Magic cards quickly and easily, ensuring the safety and authenticity of their creations.
📹 How To Make Paper Proxies For Magic: The Gathering | BEST METHOD
This is the easiest method to make good-looking paper proxies for your decks.
How is a Magic card made?
Magic cards are made from two layers of cardstock and an adhesive polymer-core, providing a snap and opacity. The blue-core used for Magic cards is an anachronism, as it is less opaque than contemporary black-core, which was not cost-effective in 1992. Contemporary cards may have a purple core due to its recycling requirements. Foil cards have an extra layer, the “white under-print plate”, to highlight certain artwork parts. A varnish coating is applied over printed materials.
Official Magic cards have a Magic card front and back, unless they are double-faced or meld cards. Rules inserts and tokens lack these features, making them not technically cards. Magic cards pass global toy safety regulations for heavy metals and hazardous chemicals, making them non-toxic and safe for normal use and foreseeable abuse for children 8 years and older.
Is my Magic card legal?
The Magic: The Gathering cards are typically framed in a traditional black border, which serves to emphasize their legality in formats such as Commander or Modern.
Do people sell fake MTG cards?
Magic Trading Cards (MtG) are not a popular choice for counterfeiters due to their high demand. They buy and sell over 600, 000 and 400, 000 non-bulk cards annually. During the buying process, they identify fakes and train staff, resulting in a low number of counterfeit cards. The lack of good fakes that pass the eye test and the absence of a single best test for Magic card authenticity also contribute to the issue.
Why are cards banned in Magic?
Cards are frequently prohibited due to their influence in a particular format or the emergence of an unhealthy metagame. This discourages players from engaging with that format, leading to a decline in interest until a solution is provided by Wizards of the Coast.
Are Magic 30 cards legal?
The 30th Anniversary Edition of Magic cards represents a collectible item commemorating 30 years of Magic. It should be noted that these cards are not permitted in any officially sanctioned Magic: The Gathering format and feature a distinct back design. The financial implications and accessibility of the 30th Anniversary Edition on MTGO or Magic Arena remain unconfirmed.
Are Japanese cards legal in Magic?
MTG events allow cards of any language as long as the card itself is legal. However, improper use of a card, classified as intent to cheat, can result in disqualification from the event. Players can use any cards from special sets, supplements, and promotional printings that meet certain conditions, unaltered, to participate in the event. For example, a Squadron Hawk is legal in any Standard tournament, while a Jace, the Mind Sculptor is illegal.
What are fake Magic cards called?
Fake Magic: The Gathering cards are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with players often purchasing counterfeit cards to save money and avoid wearing out their existing cards. These cards are often referred to as “proxies” as they are easy to spot. There are three main types of fake Magic: rebacks, old proxies, and new proxies. Rebacks attach the front of a re-issued card to the back used in a previous generation, while old proxies are easy to spot.
New proxies require more scrutiny. To test these cards, it is recommended to have a genuine card from the same set for comparison. It is also important to use all available tests to make a stronger conclusion. Some common tests include:
- Rebacks: Re-issued cards with the front attached to the back used in a previous generation. Old proxies are easy to spot, while new proxies require more scrutiny.
Why are some cards illegal in MTG?
It is prohibited to utilize cards that feature offensive artwork, text, or names in any format. A list of items still in progress is available for reference. It is prohibited to utilize restricted cards in more than one copy, including both the main deck and sideboard. The Vintage format is currently employed with a restricted list. The following cards are currently banned in Standard:
Is it a crime to sell fake Pokemon cards?
The sale of illicit items, including those that are fake, counterfeit, or “proxy” items, is a criminal act and should be disposed of in an appropriate manner.
Are custom Magic cards legal?
Artistic modifications are allowed in sanctioned tournaments as long as they don’t make the card art unrecognizable, contain strategic advice, or contain offensive images. They can’t obstruct or change the mana cost or name of the card. The Head Judge is the final authority on acceptable cards. If a player can’t find a replacement, they can choose a card from Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountain, or Forest, and this applies to lost cards as well.
How to craft cards Magic?
In order to construct a deck, it is first necessary to select the appropriate card format and then choose non-owned cards. In the deck builder, one can view all cards within the format (timeless is always a card) and craft any desired card.
📹 Can We Sneak Fake Cards Past Cardmarket’s Counterfeit Detection Expert?
How good can fakes actually be? Jamin & Carl try to pass 6 fakes under the nose of Cardmarket’s counterfeit expert. How many …
Hell yes!!!!! It’s awesome to see someone else using this method! I’ve been doing this for ages! Although I use slightly different options in mtgprint, i.e. I find black corners gives the prints a cleaner look unless you want to spend the time snipping all the white corners off. PRO TIP: You ask someone working there about printing on card stock instead of regular printer paper. That way you can put the proxies directly in the sleeve instead of using bulk cards as backing.
Graphic designer here. Never done these myself but I would use 250 – 300 g/m2 (grams per square meter) uncoated paper. You can print the paper on both sides (you just have to find a backside pdf in the right dimension and align them with the frontside. You need a bit of photoshop skills for that since the webside doesnt give the backside of the cards). Make sure to include trim marks. After you cut the cards you can take them a level further and use a corner cutter to… round the corners duh. Ask for that at your local graphic studio, it should be a couple of bucks. You should have wonderful proxys after that 🙂
Best thing I’ve done, buy some 120lb cardstock, go to your local office store with self service printers (I use office Depot) bring the paper in, give it your PDF file, print a whole deck for less than $10. I wouldn’t suggest scissors, get a pepper slicer, if you wanna be fancy get a 3mm corner cutter punch, then sleeve it. Feels real, looks great (besides the white back of the card)
I have to ask. I really am getting into the cable when I test a variety of texts, and I have crap ton of basics from old days that I don’t use anymore. Is it bad to just make a deck full of proxys to play test as long as it’s not CEDH level? In my main decks and reuse a couple for cards I don’t want and I don’t have the money to afford to really get the deck together, but I would love to make a bunch of fun decks like tribal decks or janky decks. Sometimes I don’t want to buy the same card 50 times more to keep smoking in LOL. I only play Commander casually, do you think it would be okay to do it this way
This is exactly the type of thing I hate with proxying; low quality, difficult to read cheap proxies. If you’re going to proxy, please just order legit proxies off something like MPC. I do not care how good you think your HP Deskjet 5300 or the FedEx printer is, printed off, paper proxies look like absolute shit.
As a shop worker and buyer/trader of magic cards, I appreciate the consumer education. I do wish someone had mentioned the false positive rate. WOTC has cut corners in the past 3-5 years, using more print facilities and materials. In some cases, legitimate cards do not meet all the usual heuristics and tests for fakes, meaning real cards can be tested as fake. This has created a lot of paranoia and confusion in the community. Something can fail a test and still be within normal print variance, but requires a lot of experience and scrutiny to confirm.
I love how this was a way to promote and prove your anti-counterfeit policy… But man, was it was fun learning about these little details and perusal a pro show just how good he is. As someone who has worked with detailed work on photographs before, I was able to pick up on some of the tricks but it’s fascinating to see how some of my old work applies to TCG cards as well. Absolutely amazing.
I have nothing against counterfeit cards, as long as youre not trying to pass them off as real. I frequently purchase fake cards from China because I dont want to spend tons of money on the real thing. I would much rather have real looking cards and save money…while also having artwork that I like. I ALWAYS MARK MY FAKES with a silver sharpie on the back side of them.
It’s actually super interesting to look at faked collectables, because obviously many people do try, but they are also some of the very hardest things to fake simply because (with a few exceptions) there are many examples in circulation which can be compared. Obviously the fakers are only trying to fool the foolish… But it’s really interesting to look at the things that they choose to care about. I think that most people wouldn’t ever EVER notice the weight difference. And yet most of the cards you showed were actually close enough in weight that it wasn’t obvious. Clearly some of these guys have made a good effort to match the card stock. But that actually makes sense because card stock is something that people who handle cards all the time do actually notice. Maybe not down to the tenth of a gram, but the texture and shine and how it bends is really familiar to us, so the fakers have found something that feels right otherwise they won’t get ANYWHERE. Things like the red dots on the back are interesting too because that is something that we know about, and there’s no specific reason why you couldn’t recreate that. They are small, but they are also just ink and not a specific security feature, so they could reasonably be placed into a fake if you know about them and adjust your files. They don’t even necessarily have to be a perfect match, just be close enough, because simply seeing the dots will make people feel confident. I get the feeling that this sort of thing is almost a hobby in itself to a certain kind of person, in the same way that a certain kind of person has a weird interest in forging paintings or whatever else.
There was a time back in the day when Wizards’ didn’t spit on its customers where I cared about fake cards. In the recent years that Wizards’ has shown themselves to be a greedy company that couldn’t care less about its customers and pro players I honestly don’t care anymore. The less I can do to directly support Wizards’ the better.
I think I might have received a fake card when I bought cards at cardmarket last year, but since the card was included as an extra that I didn’t pay for I didn’t raise an issue. It was a WoW tcg hero card, which are supposed to be two-sided but this one was with a regular card back, which meant that half of its abilities were missing from the card.
Should have tried rebacked CE/IE as a fake beta, and also alpha-clipped beta, and see if he found it! Also, you are wrong about the green dot test. Alternate fourth edition are real cards that don’t have the four red dots, so it’s not completely “impossible” although very rare. And lastly, older foils like Urza’s Legacy are usually between 2.0 and 2.1 grams. Weights can be tricky, I’ve seen real cards as low as 1.65 grams.
Happy to hear cardmarket is doing something against sellers of fake cards. 3 years ago I bought a few cards for like 60€ on cardmarket from a seller. All where fake. Cardmarket told me to send them back to the seller and I received a refund. The seller excused himself and said it was a mistake. I doubt they’d mistakingly send 3 fake cards from different edition. After a month or so his profile was back on cardmarket and you could buy cards from them again. I was pretty surprised he was allowed to sell again.
Red dot is a good test but its not 100% decisive on it’s own, there are legit cards that fail it. You should deck the red dot, the clarity of the rosette pattern, mana cost and deckmaster printing. (Cost should be clear, deckmaster should be jagged) its also good to compare against a known real card from the same set. And of course with a scale. Haven’t seen a fake that could pass on all fronts.
11:03 Not necessarily. The issue has more to do with the programs used and the original source file being converted. It just so happens that the original print files were made using a program that’s only available on a 90s version of Mac OS. But if you get that version and set the angles of the rosette pattern to Cyan 15°, Magenta 75°, and Black 40° And most importantly, most counterfeiters don’t even use offset printing. They just use digital printing, which means the dots are gonna be all over the place
Thats happend to me with a Pikachu with a Gray Hat. I bought it on Ebay for around 110€, and drove to Cardmarket Authentification, and what a surprise… its a fake. Thanks to the wounderfull team they showd me a real Gray Hat and, yeah you saw the difference between both of them. Good thing, i got my money back from the seller, so.. always check your expensive cards guys 😅
Do yous have a service for just checking fakes, even if not bought through you, as that was impressive, and from clearing out an ex-mtg printer engineer’s house, found cards that are supposedly to be destroyed, so they have printing errors, but just wondering if you can still check if it’s a real error printed card?
I havent held a magic card in 10+ years same with pokemon and I was amazed I got the first 4. The yugioh one I missed but I have never held a yugioh card and know nothing about them. The reason I thought the left on yugioh was real was because the background where the description text is. On the fake its easier to read and I would have assumed with beta testing and what not yugioh would have made the text easier to read.
Right when they showed the Tropical Island and Underground Sea, I instantly said they were both fake Revised Dual Lands. I know this because have proxy dual lands in my commander decks, BUT I have also, at one point until recently, had bought an actual Tropical Island and Underground Sea, and immediately saw the differences. Even from the best of proxies that are out there, I could see the differences, to the best that my eyesight can give me
There’s a big difference when you KNOW one of them is fake than when you don’t. It’s easier to fool someone without the assumption that one must be fake. This goes with everything, not just cards. But in theory, if you play with a deck using some “fake” cards, no one will likely notice or care enough to check. I know that playing with the cards vs buying/selling the cards are different animals altogether, but still, the point remains that if expectation precludes the event, then focus typically wins out over passive experience.
I received a card that was a counterfeit and confirmed by a local game store. Card market refused to accept the card for further investigation. Claimed I closed the transaction when it autoclosed. The weight was off (1.6 g), feel (shine did not match scuffing level on edges), and front face print pattern. Thankfully, the remaining power and more expensive cards I bought were authenticated, so the loss on the one Grim Monolith was a drop compared to the rest, but I wish the claim would have been taken seriously and just checked.
without a jewelers loop usually feel and backside representation are key factors into a cards authenticity. That being said I got everything right up till and after the Ugin because of the wear on the outside left and bottom edge. Enjoyed the insight about non foils from 1.74-1.80g. I used my scale back in the day to find foils cuz the packs would actually weigh more if your scale could hit 3 places post zero.
“One of these is two: one real, one counterfiet” is literally the worst test/exercise you could have come up with! That’s way too much preliminary information to give him to work with. Much better would be to give him 12 unrelated cards (no baseline to compare against) and say something sneaky like “at least one of them is counterfeit” and then have him run the gauntlet on that set of 12.
I love this! How about allowing people outside of Europe // the Euro zone to buy, sell, and trade on cardmarket? I have an inventory of over 100,000 cards available as a mid level speculator working out of a home office in the United States and loved dealing with Europe, not to mention having counterfeit detectors available.
Please more articles with Tarik! He is a great expert that could share a lot of stuff about the different generations of genuine and fake cards! Or spotting resealed packs and boxes, misprints etc. This is a very interesting subject that can broaden this websites (and companys) reach in the collector community, which generates most of your revenue, one might imagine.
As a card shop employee and the go to guy for spotting fakes, it was vindicating to be able to detect some of them through the screen (Except the ones that got spoiled for the audience of course, or that were impossible to intuit without handling the cards) I love seeking out counterfeit cards. It’s amazing how much you can intuit by feel after handling thousands of cards.
The single cards I buy almost never go above 8 euro’s, but I have zero experience with fake cards so I have zero reference material. I always stay below a certain price range like I said, so the risk is very mnimal but when I buy large quantities from different sellers It sometimes still ads up. Exactly how carefull and suspect should I be when I order cards through mcm?
I’ve got 1020 purchases on cardmarket; I’ve never had a fake and I buy alot of bulk. I play magic the gathering, pokemon and yugioh – no issues with fakes at all except for the seller not protecting the cards et cetera abd there damaged bur that’s there fault 🤷♂️ the risk et cetera. I love shopping in cardmarket! There the best europe has to offer ❤
I think it will be better if you just have 6 fakes and say there all real and let him compare because he knows 1 is fake and 1 is real we he can make decisons off that but you say there are real and fakes but only fakes you can test him like he would be at card market and see if he makes a bad call beacause he thinks there is a real card
Hold on, back up a second – Dual lands are worth how much? When I first started playing (around 2010) my dad gave me his very small collection that he hadn’t touched since the 90s. There are two Underground Seas in that collection. Are you telling me that I may have been sitting on a couple of thousand for over a decade and nobody ever told me? Well, my new plans for the weekend now include driving an hour to the nearest collector’s shop to get an appraisal done. If these are real, I’m paying off my car.
This is a really terrible way to test someone’s skill. Telling them “hey, here’s two cards and one is fake” will almost guarantee they have 100% accuracy. Give them a pile of cards, don’t tell them how many are fake, and see what they come up with. The guys in the room shouldn’t even know. Also this is basically a 12 minute advertisement.
Back in college, I used to make proxies by sanding the front of a card until it was blank, then spraying it with primer and running it through an inkjet printer with the help of a little double-sided tape. It worked great, though the ink tended to bleed a little so everything was just a bit fuzzy. Was super handy for being able to tell my proxies from the real deal without unsleeving them. Also they felt really weird unsleeved. The texture was all wrong, and they were weirdly heavy and stiff due to the thick layer of primer.
Yeah, because judges/tournament organizers are Totally going to get out a magnifying glass to check each individual card in a player’s deck. eye roll But seriously, with how high quality fakes can be, I don’t see how playing fakes in tournament settings (and often getting away with it) wouldn’t be a common occurrence, whether as an accident or otherwise.
I paused the article at 1 minute. I don’t even need to watch it to know that your professional will surgically find every single card and will have 100% detection rate. Now I’m gonna actually watch the article, let’s see if I’m right. Who said people buying proxies are trying to fool others? It’s people trying to play the game without spending 100€ on a Sheoldred, nice narrative you got there cardmarket, subliminally projecting a shadow on people buying proxies cause you sell cards of course… proxies bad uhhh. Of course he nailed every card he’s so good card market can’t fail etc etc. Great article guys, proxies bad, buy card from us.
fake cards are not only made to fool buyers mate, they’re useful in many situations like to spicy up your cube or to be put in decks when you can: many stores allow you to put a limited amount of proxies in they’re friendly tournaments and fnms of expensive formats like legacy or vintage to have more (and youger) people signing up