2nd
most-seen counterfeit card, per a grader of twenty-one years
CGC puts it well: once you know how counterfeits are made, you can spot most of them immediately.
Almost none are produced from scratch with proper plates and separations. They are photographs of photographs. Run an image through a copier, then copy the copy, then copy that. Each generation loses detail, and the losses appear in predictable places.
Everything below follows from that single fact.
Look at the lettering first. On an authentic card "Wayne Gretzky" and "Edmonton Oilers" are printed in solid ink, sharp and smooth. On a copy they break into a pattern of small dots, and the black border pixelates where it should be continuous.
That one test catches most of what is circulating.
Two tests, and both are hard to fake from an image of the front.
The language. O-Pee-Chee printed for Canada, so the reverse carries English and French throughout. Topps is English only. A forger working from a front photograph has to source and reproduce the back as a separate job.
The stock. O-Pee-Chee stock is noticeably brighter than Topps and fluoresces much more intensely under a blacklight. A UV torch costs almost nothing and takes a second.
Authentic examples are usually rough, sometimes fibrous, because of how O-Pee-Chee cut them: a dull blade, a stack of sheets, and no clamp holding them steady.
Modern equipment produces clean cuts, and reproducing a torn edge convincingly on all four sides has proved close to impossible.
So a suspiciously clean edge deserves a second look. There are innocent explanations, including cards cut early in the run before the blade dulled, and cards taken from an uncut sheet. But clean is the exception on this issue.
Every authentic O-Pee-Chee carries a small yellow mark on Gretzky's left shoulder, and for years its absence was treated as proof of a fake.
That logic held while fakes were low-generation copies, because fine detail vanishes in reproduction. It no longer holds. Beckett records seeing a counterfeit that carried a smaller yellow dot, and another guide warns in capitals that some fakes have it.
Once a tell becomes the first thing every buyer checks, it becomes the first thing a forger reproduces. We have written about what the mark actually is and why it exists, which is more interesting than the test it used to support.
The obvious advice is to buy graded, and it is good advice. It is not complete advice.
Two things happen. Fraudsters crack authentic cards out of genuine holders and reseal fakes inside them. And they manufacture counterfeit holders outright, copying the label, the fonts and the security features.
At one recent show a dealer reportedly paid twenty-eight thousand dollars for cards in slabs that all turned out to be counterfeit.
And checking the certificate number is not sufficient on its own, because forgers reuse real numbers taken from public listings. The lookup returns a valid page and the card in front of you is still wrong.
PSA says so themselves. Their verification page states plainly that "verification of certification numbers ... does not eliminate risk", and that criminals do counterfeit grading inserts using genuine numbers.
Three things, in order of usefulness.
Compare against the cert page images. PSA publishes front and back photographs for many certificates. That turns the lookup from "does this number exist" into "is this the same physical card". Match the print dots, the edge nicks, the centering. A reused number fails this immediately.
Check the weld. A holder that has been opened and resealed shows edge frosting, micro-cracks, flex, or a seam that pops. Sonic welding is difficult to counterfeit convincingly.
And sanity-check the grade against the card. If the label says 9 and the card in the window has a soft corner, believe the card. On this issue that check is easier than most, because you already know what an authentic rough edge looks like.
One professional grader, after twenty-one years in the job, reports seeing exactly one fake Topps Gretzky.
He describes himself as stumped by it, since he sees counterfeits of cards worth under twenty dollars. The honest answer is probably that forgers go where the money is, and the O-Pee-Chee carries the premium.
Which is worth knowing in both directions. The Topps card is a genuinely safer purchase, and that is part of what you are buying when you pay less for it.
Sources. The copy-of-a-copy origin of most counterfeits, pixelation in place of solid ink, and the lettering test are from CGC's counterfeit alert and Sports Card Monthly. The twenty-one-year grader who has seen one Topps fake, and the OPC ranking as the second-most-seen counterfeit, are from Sports Card Monthly. The purple print dots in the authentic blue border and around counterfeit lettering are from Rookiecard99. The bilingual back and the brighter, more fluorescent stock are from All Vintage Cards. The rough-edge characteristic and its cause are covered in our own piece on the cutting. The counterfeit carrying a smaller yellow dot is from Beckett's guide; the capitalised warning is from Sports Card Info. Cards being swapped inside genuine holders, counterfeit holders, the twenty-eight thousand dollar show incident, reused certificate numbers, SecureScan images and the sonic weld tells are from All Vintage Cards' 2025 PSA fraud report, figoca and PreGradeCards. PSA's own wording on the limits of certificate verification is from its cert verification page. The one-in-four figure is the 2025 Jordan rookie submission rate in PSA's fraud report, quoted for scale rather than as a Gretzky figure. The Gretzky-owned T206 Wagner as certificate 00000001 and its later trimming are widely documented. Checked on 20 September 2026.