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Comment by pmoriarty | Hacker News Reader

"Chang can remember a time when Black Lotuses were pushed around card shops for $50, or blithely traded for mediocre creatures by people who didn’t respect its power. Things are different now. In 2013 a 9.5-graded Alpha Black Lotus sold for $27,000 at auction."

I'd expect old Magic cards would not be difficult to forge, and would be very surprised if it didn't happen.

People forge art, they forge money, why not $27k Magic cards?

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-xnjDevAzE . Fakes are indeed a part and fear of the market. Note the cards have specific tests that weed most out, due to the amount of effort needed. The light test and spring test for example.

That is a good question, I guess its an underrated market.

I played a lot of Magic, most of it between 2002-2007 when IME, the prices were starting to get way too high for me as I was still a teenager, nevertheless, for those willing to put an effort into negotiating you could make a decent change.

I saw several fake cards during that time, some of them were terrible, HP home printer cards you could see on the spot, most of them you could still see with just a careful check. IMO, you would get away easier if you forge the most used standard and modern cards, which often go over 30+ USD each and they can undergo a huge price hike if there's a high demand on major tournament registrations, people will not be as careful checking them.

There are several sellers of so-called 'proxy' Magic: The Gathering cards. The two most known sellers are call themselves Black Lotus[1] and Villa Zheng[2]. They generally have the same product, printed somewhere in China on playing card stock. They typically are easily identifiable by their too glossy finish and not very good back coloration.

The idea purported by these sellers is that these cards are not intended to be sold as the real thing - even the price they sell the cards at reflects that. They're meant to be used in place of the real thing in your own decks either because you cannot afford the actual card that it is replacing, you have a damaged copy of the card that it is replacing, or you refuse to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a piece of cardboard. Undoubtedly some unscrupulous people try to pass these as real, and there's a large subreddit and section of the proxy community that tries to prevent this - reporting eBay sellers and generally informing people that they exist.

[1] Example of Black Lotus's product - you can see the old dual lands and power 9 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yozhleRg2SA

[2] Example of Villa Zheng's product - you can see that it's the same as Black Lotus and also contains the old dual lands and Power 9 as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRINgS8R-7w

I'd expect alpha cards to have a decent record of provenance. They only printed about 1000 alpha black lotuses and a lot of them have been destroyed from play.

If you watch Rudy's channel he does talk about fakes. But most of them have flaws/imperfections although just like anything else worth money, the copies are getting better.

edit: speak of the devil: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7gajYmdUMw

I feel as though art can have a much greater payoff, and money can be produced in bulk, at a guaranteed value, but even $27k for a card, which you can make a small number before that market is saturated, probably has poor ROI.

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