Category Archives: fake patches

Scammers Are Usually Dumb, But Its Getting Funny Now

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As expected, the 2009 Ultimate Baseball jumbo patches are quickly becoming the most easily faked cards on the market. Because there is a square window with no swatch protection (like a cardboard overlay or design like this one), scammers have been able to easily remove the existing patch without a problem.

People like Aruba202, along with others, have taken it to a laughable level unseen since the release of the jumbo patches in 2005 Prime Patches. His patches are so ridiculous that I actually found my wife chuckling at how bad they were. I have posted on this subject before, but its getting too funny to ignore.
Here are some of their greatest “hits”:
David Ortiz “World Series” Patch – These patches are never real, and most people have caught on. That didnt stop this douche from going to the well one more time. I LOLed.

Tom Seaver “Mets Logo” Patch – For this product, Upper Deck took great care to match the pic on the card with the patch on the card. Aruba didnt get the memo.

Mariano Rivera “New Yankee Stadium” Logo Patch – When a team has no patches on their jersey, scammers go nuts when they have the chance to exploit a new sleeve patch. This one has already been sited as having a one color patch that was covered up by this new patch by overlapping it. Here is another for sale, sold by the same seller originally.
Carl Crawford “World Series” Logo Patch – Here is another laughable WS patch. What is even funnier is that people think these are real enough to bid on them.
Chipper Jones “Anniversary” Patch – Chipper has some amazing patches in this product, but this isnt one of them. The guy also has a fake Flacco SP authentic, and a couple fake rookie premieres for sale. Im not falling for it.
Cal Ripken Jr. “Anniversary” Patch – I am saying this one is fake despite the appearance of other similar REAL patches like this in the product. The guy has sold questionable patches in the past and this is a particular patch that scammers have been faking for years.
Really, im not sure if I would even think about buying from this part of the product simply due to how many ones out there that I couldnt even confirm. Who knows if cards like this, this, this, this, this, or this are even real? Some look to be on their third or fourth sale, and others are sold by people with no questionable history. With Upper Deck baseball in the hobby’s past, there will surely be no way to prevent further faking at all.
At least things are getting entertaining now.

Some People Dont Know How To Be Good At Being Bad

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GUEST POSTER: Voluntarheel

Buy one jersey, make a bunch of fakes. That seems to be the modus operandi for the faker elite. From what I have found, these guys pay very little for jerseys and turn them into their fake swatches. Some just buy the singular patches. But it seems Mr. Turtle_crazy_va can only pinch 4 fakes off of his loaf. How do I know this? Well just take a look at what he is selling at the moment.

Not only that, but he has also sold 8 other Kevin Kolb LOGO SPA RPA’s in the last 3 months. Must have only gotten enough money to buy two jerseys.
Go ahead and add turtle_crazy_va to your ‘do not purchase’ list, maybe even your ‘do not pee on if on fire’ list as well. You know, if you have one of those. I do.

Stay Away From These SPAs

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While I was out, Heel posted on the makeup of what an SPA scammer is all about. He mentioned a guy, ufjumper7, who is starting to make waves as quite possibly the dumbest faker in recent memory. Usually, scammers use two accounts to complete their fakes, one to buy and one to sell. Obviously ufjumper didnt get the memo. Must not have had a cover sheet, I guess.

Over on FCB, a good break down of his purchases versus sales was discussed, further cementing what Heel originally posted. Here are some of the examples:

LeSean McCoy BEFORE – 1 color patch, same sig, same number.

LeSean McCoy AFTER – Ridiculous patch, same sig same number.
Mark Sanchez BEFORE – 2 color patch ( a good patch ruined), same sig, same number.
Mark Sanchez AFTER – Logo patch, same sig, same number.
Matt Stafford BEFORE – 1 color patch, same sig, same number.
Matt Stafford AFTER – 4 color patch, same sig, same number.
Also, as I failed to mention in the original draft of this post, the guy has bought close to 30 versions of redemptions from the guys who havent signed yet. I think its safe to say what is going to happen with those.
Is this really what we have come to? Scammers arent even trying anymore. I hope this guy gets crapped on by a dog today, a nice runny one, that would only be a portion of what he deserves.
h/t Wheeler

The Real/Fake Line For Ultimate Baseball is GONE.

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The patch cards in Ultimate Baseball are one of the main reasons why the product was so successful. They are also to a point now where the line has been blurred past the point of where one can tell fake or real. Although there are people who have undoubtedly faked these cards, there are also so many real logo patches that its almost impossible to tell.

Check out these cards that have been posted and sold on eBay over the last couple of days. Some I can tell, some are way too hard to determine.

Carlton Fisk – The patch is weird on this, too weird to consider it to be fake. It still makes me uncomfortable.

Paul Konerko – I dont trust this guy at all. There is already speculation around the boards that all are fake, and this card definitely looks that way.

Brandon Webb – A great patch, but it does look real because the window looks good and has non-patch material in the window.

Tom Seaver – 100% fake, this guy has already been covered on this blog before and his cards arent even questionable. UD was meticulous in matching player pics with uni swatches, which disqualifies this card all the way.

Roy Ozwalt – Another questionable patch, but too tough to make a sure determination.
Brandon Phillips – A cool patch with too much detail to seem fake, but again, this is a cheap pickup to fake if needed. Im not sure.
Carlos Beltran – another patch from this seller that is almost 100% fake. Just look at the separation between the swatch and the patch. Like he slipped it in over the crappy swatch.
Basically, Ultimate was the one set that needed a database, and its too bad it wasnt done ahead of time. Its just too easy to fake these cards, and it brings back memories of the faker favorite set of the century – 2005 Donruss Prime Patches. The difference between Prime Patches and this, is that its easy to tell fakes from that set because of card labeling, but Ultimate is ALL patches so its almost impossible.
I would employ a few rules that should start becoming applicable soon:
1. Dont buy Ultimate Patch cards where the logo patch takes up the whole window. Its not worth the risk.
2. Look for window damage. Its tough to get a patch out of the card without nicking the edges of the swatch window.
3. Avoid NEW patches. The jerseys that UD used seem to be at least a few years old, and the new sleeve patches from last season are easy to come by on ebay.
4. Avoid World Series, Commemorative, and All Star Patches. Its too easy for scammers to sell you on your salivation over such a unique patch. Its almost unheard of for any of them to be real.
5. Avoid sellers who have a ton of logo patches for sale. This is pretty much the case for everyone regardless of the patch card, as scammers will sell a never ending stream of crap to make maximum dollars.
Let me know if you have any questions about authenticity and ill do my best to scope it out.

Anatomy of a Scammer – 2009 SP Authentic Edition

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NOTE: I will be out starting today, but there should be a few new posts done by some of the people who graciously offered to help out in my absence. Here is the first one from my friend Voluntarheel, one of the more boring and not hilarious people that frequently comments on the site. He once entertained over at his own (now sadly defunct) blog, and this is his not-so-triumphant return to the blogging world.

-Gellman
Fakes in SP Authentic are nothing new. Gellman has written about it more times that I can count. However I wanted to look in depth at all the moving parts that go into being a Crowned Prince of Taintsburg. I found a good example in a current Matthew Stafford SP Authentic Patch Auto. So let’s elephant-walk through this together.

  1. Too-good-to-be-true Patch. This Stafford patch is crazy. It is supposed to be the middle of the nine on his sleeve. I have never seen a patch like this in any product with small patch windows. It doesn’t fit the typical SP Authentic patch style either.
  1. Bubbling on the too-good-to-be-true Patch. If you look close, you can see on the right side, some bubbling of the patch. This is a classic sign of patch manipulation.
  1. Private listing. I have a few simple rules about dealing with eBay sellers. One non-negotiable is that I NEVER deal with sellers who run private auctions. It is the #1 tool of shill bid artists. It also prohibits you from contacting the buyers after they leave feedback to tell them they probably have a fake on their hands. Why would you ever trust a seller who hides who is bidding? In other words, why would you trust this douche selling the Stafford.
  1. Price jumps well above other similar auctions quicker than usual. Yeah, this auction had that too.
  1. Hidden serial numbers. What really drove my attention on this auction is the crop job on the scan. Notice anything interesting? Yeah, they cropped out the serial number. And they also failed to mention the exact number in the description. This is interesting in that this year Jeff started the SP Authentic Project with the idea to log every patch auto in an effort to keep a record of accurate patches and serial numbers. This crop sidesteps this site and is a fairly new twist in the ever-adapting underworld of fakes. The Stafford isn’t the only one he has done it to. Pretty much any patch he has replaced, he has cropped the scan to eliminate the number, including the Sanchez he has up for sale right now.
  1. Seller has a history of crazy, Crazy, CRazy, CRAzy, CRAZY patches.
  1. The Seller is too stupid to cover his tracks in his feedback profile. This Marino he is selling now can be found HERE with a worse patch. He has also managed to snag an impressive amount of redemptions for Harvin and others while also picking up 1 color patch autos of some more. I would expect some otherworldly patches for his Harvin cards coming soon. Also, the 1 color Stafford he bought HERE, I’d expect to see an upgrade in a few weeks.

Any of these points taken separately, with the exception of #7, doesn’t mean that any card is an absolute forgery. However when things start to snowball like it does here, then alarms should start going off like Dwight Schrute’s Gaydar.

So hears to you ufjumper7. I hope one day this catches up to you in the form of Najeh Davenport mistaking your face for a laundry basket.