One of the easiest ways to spot a fake T206 is by looking closely at the name and team caption. This is because fakes and reprints often have the caption printed in black ink. When the ink is obviously black, it’s an open-and-shut case. Unfortunately, it can often be tough to tell what color the caption is printed with. This is something I haven’t seen discussed very often. My buddy Pat Romolo came up with this idea for an article, and I thought it was a great idea. The caption comparison graphic above is courtesy of Pat. All of those cards were scanned on the same scanner, with the same settings.
On an authentic T206, the caption is always printed in brown ink. However, the shade of brown can vary quite a bit, as can the boldness of the font.
As you can see from the graphic above, some captions are printed with very bold, thick lettering, while the letters on others are a lot skinnier. Some captions are printed with such a light shade of brown, that it looks more like gray to the naked eye.
When you are first getting started buy raw T206s, there are two main things to look at when trying to determine the authenticity of the card. First, look for those “crackle” lines. Little lines in the surface of a card. Many fakes have these lines, while no legitimate T206 ever will. Second is looking out for black ink in the caption, as that is a major red flag.
But what happens when the ink used for the caption looks more like “CAMNITZ” above than “DOOLAN”? Over the years I have seen a number of scans or photos on ebay where the caption looked like it could be black, but the rest of the card looked authentic. In those situations I take a closer look at the card as a whole before making a decision.
If a T206 has a light gray-ish looking caption, and then an ebay seller takes a bad scan or picture of it, those two things can conspire to create the illusion of a caption printed with black ink. This happens very infrequently, but it’s worth thinking about. If everything else about the card looks good, there’s always a chance it’s just the scanner settings or a bad photo. If the card features a common player, it’s even more likely to be authentic. However, if it’s a raw Cobb, my advice would be stay away, or seek advice from a friend who is in a expert at determining authenticity of raw T206s.
