Let's talk about Red Manga fakes and how to spot them.
The photos above are of a fake card. The last 4 pictures are of real cards to compare
The first post in our series examining proxy cards to hopefully provide a resource to people out there buying singles. Some fakes are getting much better than others. This has a pretty typical flaw, but let's look at what else to look for if the old standbys fail us.
Let's start with the obvious, and i'm aware that most of you know this. Every day I see people ask what someone means by the AI. This is for them.
BAND AI: On the trademark text coming up the bottom right of the card is the trademark text. This text should be clear, crisp, properly spaced, and properly aligned. On this fake example, you will see it clearly. This is maybe the most common indicator of a fake. It is not, however, foolproof.
Cost Number Background: On a lot of the fakes with the red mangas specifically, the foil on the background of the circle shows a lot of color, on the real red mangas it appears for black, slightly green-ish sometimes in light.
Back Color: An almost universal trend among proxy cards, the backs are glossy. I'm not sure why so many get this wrong, but it's clearly more shiny in light than a normal card. It's not subtle. In my experience the proxy card back colors are typically correct. I've also seen a lot more variance in colors on real cards than most people credit. Color is in my opinion a bad indicator alone. Shine is a much more important factor to check.
Gold On Flames: The gold trim around the flames should be raised and shiny. Lots of fakes, like the one above, will use texture and color to APPEAR like its raised, when in fact it's just a rough, gold texture. (side note: red mangas don't have an embossed "ONE PIECE CARD GAME" mark, but the proxies that do almost never actually have an embossed mark. they use the same combination of color and texture to make it appear raised in a photo.)
Background: On a different example proxy I have, there's a background panel missing text. I left it out of this post because its not a red manga, but check these anyway. I will show the missing text in the normal manga post.
Power Bubble: The symbol in the power bubble should be thick and raised gold. The same combo of rough texture and color are used in the example above to appear raised.
Color Wheel Frame: The color wheel should be made of 6 distinct trapezoids. The frame around the wheel and the interior dividing lines should be connected in one single flat piece. The interior cells should be textured differently from the border. Proxies will often have the entire wheel textured flat across.
I believe the below listing, as an example, is fake. There is texture on the background bubbles that should be flat, the gold on the text of the b in "sabo" is spilled out. The S and A in special look goopy. The seller has 0 sales and 0 ratings. If this turns out to be real, gg I guess, but its not.