How To Spot a Fake BGS Slab
A Twitter post from the US went viral to our local card groups and got us alarmed. It was a post about fake BGS slabs. Now, this is a very big issue. We pay big bucks to these companies for them to grade our cards and this grade multiplies a card’s price depending on its grade and now that someone is faking their slabs means that there will be UNAUTHENTICATED graded cards floating around. You might be buying a card that would grade a 5 while paying for a 10.
Now, I love good mysteries so I decided to take a look at the post and tried to spot the difference or look for clues as to how to identify the fake ones.
Why am I doing this? Because BGS, the very company that’s in the center of this just gave a very vague statement.
They simply said the difference is obvious BUT didn’t say what to look for. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re doing this to keep the “fakers” from adjusting their fakes but it doesn’t give the general public knowledge also.
So put on your thinking hat because we’re about to crack a case. (See what I did there? LOL)
Presenting the suspects
This is the obvious one based on a quick look. The left one has a thicker font than the right one.
A close-up picture shows that the bottom one also has it’s text a bit blurry compared to the top copy.
I compared this to an image sent to me by Sir Brei Salonga and I can say that the one on the right is the real one.
One thing to note is these differences are obvious if you have something to compare to but what if you don’t have? So I looked more for clues.
Given the limited clues I have, I played with the images and looked at all the possible items on the images that might show some difference. Everything I can look at.
One thing I’ve noticed is the PAT number. I haven’t paid attention to it earlier but I found a difference in those. I opened my ever trusted Paint and took a closer inspection. One thing I noticed is that the distance between the T and 6 are different.
The one on the left is much closer than the one on the right (it’s not that obvious but take a closer look at the red lines).
So if there’s a difference in an embedded item it only means something. There’s something IN THE MIDDLE of it.
I messaged Sir Brei Salonga again and asked for another picture. (sorry for disturbing you, sir) and I confirmed I might be onto something.
The T and 6 SHOULD have a certain distance on them.
So now the question is what causes that distance? So I looked closely at the pic Sir Brei sent me and I noticed something. The T and 6 have something that looks like a DOT in the middle of them.
It can be just an optical illusion due to the image being zoomed in too much and just can be a factory defect. So I asked our friends in the NBA Filipino BST to provide me more samples and boy did they heed my call.
With the help of our friends, especially Sir Chino Yap who provided me this image, I can now confirm that there’s a dot in the middle of T and 6.
So I asked around more and people confirmed that there’s a dot in the middle.
So I guess that’s it! One thing to look at if you want to spot a fake is to check the font size and PAT number and look for the DOT in the middle of T and 6.
The hobby is getting bigger and bigger and more and more people are taking advantage of it. Please stay vigilant and always be careful when purchasing stuff online.