First and foremost, card doesnt have MTG font. Fake as hell.
Second, Italian is not a natural choice for fakers because of the market demand and big buyers in Italy, but because of Italian mafia running printing business with their Chinese accomplices all over the place. They fake money, cards, passports, whatever you can imagine. I would not touch these cards with my hands since I know they are fake. It doesnt matter which tests card passes, I know for sure that after darksteel and mirrodin started to be faked massively, other cards were piece of cake to make.
Send a scan of back and front and upload to imgur. There is a difference if a card is printed in Belgium or USA in terms of back. As well, aging, storing, and humidity can cause smearing of color and therefore darker back too. It is nothing off. It looks a bit orange, but scan would help. I wont make stupid conclusions like Rudy from Alpha for every single discoloraation on cards haha. What kind of pattern of glue you get when you shine a light? From my experience, Revised cards should have grainy pattern. As well text in text box at front should not be excessively pronounced. What is the weight of the card? Fakes can pass all tests you did above, so scans can tell more. My best bet is rosettes and alignment of all elements in the card to make final conclusion
Card is fake, but not because of the white dots. Dots, though very dimmed and grayish are always there in black border when you use loupe on normal legitimate cards. Beveling and alignment of borders is the thing that makes this card fake. If you compare alignment with the original card scan, you should see obvious misplacement of borders, mana symbol, art box, set symbol, etc etc, which happens when the cards is reconstructed with software. It is a chinese fake.
Be very careful when explaining why card is fake. Rosettes can vary, colors can vary, feel of card can vary, etc etc, but card can still be legit.
Black color is not printed as separate layer, no rosette pattern, sticker was peeled off and put from other cheaper card. As well, it has yellowish shade around black borders, digital artifact from photoshop. Amateur fake. Cheap digital print
Absolutely fake. Red tone all over, jagged black border lines which should not be there or modern cards. I stay away from Italian cards because I doubt mafia has its fingers in printing these since long time ago. Especially Legends set. Font is not right anywhere on this card, just everything is off as a whole.
Overall, Darksteel and Mirrodin are most counterfeited modern sets by far and by luck if you bought cards in that era, you can compare and see what I am talking about. As well, you need to check rosettes on that card, I know from personal experience that these sets dont have very pronounced rosettes.
No chance a factory cut, even fake printing factory will ever look like this. Even though quality control was bad back in the days, I doubt they would ever let this to be put in booster pack.
Washed out colors are notorious for Revised, Chronicles and some other early sets so that should be fine. But not the black color, it cannot look faint like this. Ever.
Card is 100% fake. The font and letter spacing on the right card is way off. Letters look thinner. Main tell. These are Chinese gen 9.0 proxy. I bet card smells like plastic. I got these in my hands since I live in that part of the world.
As well, shadowing effect above card name box is too smeared and looks like oversaturated yellowish photoshop homemade mass production proxy. Still a long way to go to make it right in Shenzhen print shops.
I did my DD and some tests for cards which are Rainbow Vale from Fallen Empires, Undiscovered Paradise from Visions, Maro from Urzas Saga. Here are my 600 dpi scans
From the perspective of rosette patterns it agrees well with standard guidelines, either I have one type of basic rosette on card, or mix of rosettes due to angular offset of CMYK colors which are all legit and described in link
Cards feel right, weigh right, have solid black lines (you can see underlying dots instead of rosettes, not rich black, pass light test with flying colors etc etc.
I am pretty much experienced with catching most fakes but what catches my eyes are some bad prints on cards throughout years. Especially these in between 1994-1998.
All border lines are solid black, however they are not always fully continuous like on Rainbow vale picture frame and sometimes the border is missing and opposite side border line can be more thicker, sometimes there is beveling near top of cards black border (especially on my Undiscovered Paradise). Card frame on edge of card is a bit lighter because of card age and UV light exposure
I would like to know what do you guys think of this issues. Could problems with these dashed lines on older cards occasionally come from printer and toner issues because I know at these times quality control was not as good. I know that on post 2001 cards, I havent seen these issues. As well my card black frame seems OK with typical solid black frame (if you enlarge 60 times under jewellers loupe you can see typical grayish dithering without rosettes any other colored dots inside black frame rosette which is legit on all post ABU cards).
What printing/offesting problems have you encountered on your legit cards, I am pretty sure no one has collection of all great looking cards and has some bad apples. I tend to believe that mz cards are not HQ fakes but just lousy lousy legits?
Second, Italian is not a natural choice for fakers because of the market demand and big buyers in Italy, but because of Italian mafia running printing business with their Chinese accomplices all over the place. They fake money, cards, passports, whatever you can imagine. I would not touch these cards with my hands since I know they are fake. It doesnt matter which tests card passes, I know for sure that after darksteel and mirrodin started to be faked massively, other cards were piece of cake to make.
Be very careful when explaining why card is fake. Rosettes can vary, colors can vary, feel of card can vary, etc etc, but card can still be legit.
Overall, Darksteel and Mirrodin are most counterfeited modern sets by far and by luck if you bought cards in that era, you can compare and see what I am talking about. As well, you need to check rosettes on that card, I know from personal experience that these sets dont have very pronounced rosettes.
Washed out colors are notorious for Revised, Chronicles and some other early sets so that should be fine. But not the black color, it cannot look faint like this. Ever.
These cards are 100% fakes. All of them
As well, shadowing effect above card name box is too smeared and looks like oversaturated yellowish photoshop homemade mass production proxy. Still a long way to go to make it right in Shenzhen print shops.
I did my DD and some tests for cards which are Rainbow Vale from Fallen Empires, Undiscovered Paradise from Visions, Maro from Urzas Saga. Here are my 600 dpi scans
https://i.imgur.com/2UVPmf9.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/DgvH2u8.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/KO79EAA.jpg
From the perspective of rosette patterns it agrees well with standard guidelines, either I have one type of basic rosette on card, or mix of rosettes due to angular offset of CMYK colors which are all legit and described in link
http://the-print-guide.blogspot.com/2009/04/rosettes-everything-you-didnt-realize.html
Cards feel right, weigh right, have solid black lines (you can see underlying dots instead of rosettes, not rich black, pass light test with flying colors etc etc.
I am pretty much experienced with catching most fakes but what catches my eyes are some bad prints on cards throughout years. Especially these in between 1994-1998.
All border lines are solid black, however they are not always fully continuous like on Rainbow vale picture frame and sometimes the border is missing and opposite side border line can be more thicker, sometimes there is beveling near top of cards black border (especially on my Undiscovered Paradise). Card frame on edge of card is a bit lighter because of card age and UV light exposure
I would like to know what do you guys think of this issues. Could problems with these dashed lines on older cards occasionally come from printer and toner issues because I know at these times quality control was not as good. I know that on post 2001 cards, I havent seen these issues. As well my card black frame seems OK with typical solid black frame (if you enlarge 60 times under jewellers loupe you can see typical grayish dithering without rosettes any other colored dots inside black frame rosette which is legit on all post ABU cards).
What printing/offesting problems have you encountered on your legit cards, I am pretty sure no one has collection of all great looking cards and has some bad apples. I tend to believe that mz cards are not HQ fakes but just lousy lousy legits?
I am open to discussion.