Counterfeiting Comic Books - Why Don't People Understand?

[14 of spades]

hey all,

 

was at lunch today with the rez people i usually eat with. i brought up the issue of comics, and how there is thousands and thousands of dollars of comics being bought and sold on eBay every day. one of my friends asked "why don't people just counterfeit comic books?". of course, it's a ridiculous impossibility.

 

i mentioned things like - let's say you TRY to counterfeit a book - to give yourself a fighting chance, it would have to be a very recent comic book. once you put your thousands into publishing it, you'd have to print millions of copies to make it worthwhile, at which point, it would be worthless.

 

the only books worth counterfeiting (with time and effort) would be golden age keys. but how could someone come up with the feel and texture of paper that has been oxidized for 60 years?

 

despite my efforts, my lunch-mates insisted it was still "possible" to do - and the conversation became an increasingly annoying thing to be a part of. i told them that they simply have never HELD a comic book in their hands, to see how unfeasible it would be to do.

 

i know counterfeiting a single baseball card is A LOT OF WORK. could you possibly imagine how much effort would be required to counterfeit a whole comic book?

 

anyone else ever involved in such a meaningless discussion?

[drbanner]

Good question...but what the heck is your avatar??

[14 of spades]

what's avatar?

[drbanner]

The little picture under your username...looks like a bucket full of raw chicken parts!?!?

[joe_collector]

I think "counterfeiting a cover and slapping it on a LG book" would be a far more interesting conversation. I've seen it done by amateurs and some are quite good; I can't imagine how hard it would be to tell if a real pro did one.

[joe_collector]

Looks like chicken and veggies (and some white turds) soaking in water.

[OldGuy]

If you drag and drop an avatar into the address bar on your browser you'll get to see it in it's original size, in this case (but not always) bigger. I still don't know what it is, but for what it's worth I think it's something that some people put in their mouth.

[PovertyRow]

Looks like chicken and veggies

 

Looks like shrimp, scallops and squid with baby corn, snow peas and (perhaps) some thinly sliced roast pork in a broth.

[PovertyRow]

Yes, difficult would be an understatement starting from scratch. The most straightforward approach would be to get an existing GA copy and have it scanned (on a drum scanner, not one of our HP deals) with the dots thrown slightly out of focus. Manipulate the resulting negatives (acid etch, opaque, stippling etc) and then try printing it. It would certainly not pass inspection unless the buyer knew nothing about comics.

 

Now IF someone happened to stumble upon some original plates - that could get scary. And IF they stumbled on a cache of old paper (not too hard to do) it could get scarier.

[drbanner]

shrimp, scallops and squid with baby corn, snow peas and (perhaps) some thinly sliced roast pork

 

Now that I follow Old Guy's tip, I see all that, plus possibly some lobster tail, mushrooms, and some sort of dumplings? Mmmm...I'm just glad I'll be going to Stir Crazy 2-nite for dinner!

[Crowzilla]

I agree that the cover thing is a far more likely occurance and wouldn't be surprised if it has happened many times already - especially for some B&W comics.

 

As for making a whole book - sure it can happen. Take a look at the Famous First editions, if DC had printed these the same size as the originals, they would all be worthless today, and no you don't need to print a few hundred thousand to make it worthwhile. If a comic can be printed with a print run of 30,000 to make it in the break even range, that tells you you can do a whole book for $20,000 or under.

Selling one Action #1 will make it a very profitable endeavor.

 

[comicwiz]

Although mechanically, it would require a combination of smarts as well as a labour of love (and not to mention money) as the task would be extremely difficult to pull-off, but not impossible. I believe that given the right resources, and the right people on the job, anything is possible this day and age.

 

A few years ago, I remembered hearing about a major counterfieting ring that worked so well, that the perps were actually walking into banks with the fake dough and getting them cleared without any problem. The way they pulled it off: they bleached original notes of a lower denomination (ie 1's, 2's, 5's) and reprinted 50's and 100's on the notes. I'm not sure if you have ever laid eyes on Canadian currency, but there are numerous counterfiet proof insignia's, emblems, decals, etc. that would make a counterfieter think twice about duping it. Its arguable that the complexity in counterfieting Canadian currency is far greater than duping a Canadian/US passport, and yet, people, somehow, are still able to pull it off.

 

In the case of comics, I would have to agree that the endeavour would have to revolve around a prize book. Now with golden-age inner-guts being newsprint, most chemical cleaners available to restorers would probably put the paper under an inordinate amount of stress during a full bleaching, and may also wash out the aged-appearance of the newprint even if the counterfieters did a stand-out job reprinting it. I would have to assume It would look rather suspicious once created, but given the right exposure to environmental conditions, you could probably accellerate the damage to the newprint to make it appear a aged and then bind the book at that time.

 

Now removing the logisitcal problem of recreating inner-guts, and locating something like a cover-less action 1, and the possibilities would look a little more plausible. As an avid underground comic collector, with multiple copies of varying printings, I still have a hard time distinguishing between a first and second printing Zap 2, as the second printing has a 60 lb and the first print a 70 lb cover stock. So cover stock is the least of concern I think, as it would take a seasoned pro, or a printer to really be able to tell if a cover stock is fake. As well, what you may want to consider is that if the printing technology has been properly covered, what would prevent the counterfieter from working on volumes to justify their endeavour -- ie. 100's of Hulk 181's, all NM+ condition? Its also worth noting that its far easier to locate a high-grade Hulk 181 as a research copy than an Action 1.

 

[14 of spades]

it's soup! the girl i'm seeing now - she's gorgeous! and she likes soup!

[aardvark88]

Counterfeiting sportcards or non-sportscards is pretty easy. Just 2 sides to imprint. The hard part is trying to match the 60s greyish bubblegum cardstock. A printer could reprint entire uncut sheets then trim them or reprint a sheet of hot rookie cards. A card collector may not know exactly how the special card is supposed to look like as he may not have it yet in his colleciton.

[FlComicFan]

there were tons of fake sportcards back in the late 80's early 90's with todays technology its childsplay to dupe many cards. I think a comic could be done and original art would be even easier

[Smokinghawk]

Mark Hoffman--the counterfeiter who scammed the Mormon Church with fake historic documents--used to saunter into libraries with a razor blade and remove the aged blank back papers from books of historic value. He had the right paper, and could even be tested for age.

[diablo508]

Actually, it isn't that expensive "Cry For Dawn" #1 was conterfitted not to long ago...word is the guy produced 500, was busted and most of the comics destroyed but around 200 are still on the market...The better technology gets the easier (and cheaper) it will be to do it.