BlueCore.cards

Is your Magic card real?

Upload a few photos and get a graded, marker-by-marker first assessment. Free, explainable, and built for the MTG community.

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This is an automated first screening, not an authentication or a guarantee. Use it to decide whether a card is worth a closer look.

Front

Back

What we look at

Every genuine card is printed to a tight spec. We compare these markers against a Scryfall reference scan and explain each finding.

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Back color

The exact brown hue of the card back. Every genuine Magic card shares one printed brown.

Genuine: A consistent, slightly cold brown across the whole back, identical to any other genuine card.
Suspicious: A warmer, redder, washed-out or overly saturated brown — often the single most reliable tell.

Why it matters: The back is printed to a fixed spec worldwide. Color drift here is the strongest counterfeit signal.

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Back pattern

The fine detail and sharpness of the back's pattern and the central oval.

Genuine: Crisp, evenly inked swirls with clean edges on the oval and lettering.
Suspicious: Blurry, doubled, or muddy pattern detail; fuzzy edges where scans were re-printed.

Why it matters: Counterfeits are usually scans of scans, so the back pattern loses detail a genuine print never loses.

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Green-dot microprint

Inside the green dot on the back, a yellowish patch should hold four tiny red dots in an L-shape, ringed by a solid black circle.

Genuine: Four red dots clearly visible in an L-shape, surrounded by an unbroken, deep-black circle.
Suspicious: The red dots are missing entirely, or the black ring is broken, grey or muddy.

Why it matters: This microprint is extremely hard to reproduce — its absence is one of the most cited community tells.

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The 'T' edge

The letter 'T' in the word 'The' of the 'Magic: The Gathering' text on the back.

Genuine: The bottom and right edges of the T are subtly wavy, while the left edge is a smooth, straight line.
Suspicious: All edges of the T look identical — no contrast between a smooth edge and a wavy one.

Why it matters: Genuine printing reproduces a deliberate edge texture on this letter that counterfeits flatten out.

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Holographic stamp

The oval holographic stamp at the bottom of the card (cards from set M15, July 2014, onward).

Genuine: A clearly defined, light-reactive stamp that shifts as the card tilts.
Suspicious: Flat, printed-on, smeared, or missing stamp on a card that should have one.

Why it matters: The stamp is hard to reproduce. Its absence or a flat fake is a clear red flag on modern cards.

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Print raster

The dot pattern under magnification: genuine offset printing vs. a digital halftone.

Genuine: A fine rosette pattern (overlapping CMYK dots) typical of offset printing.
Suspicious: A regular grid of dots or a uniform inkjet/laser halftone — a different printing process.

Why it matters: Counterfeiters rarely use offset presses. The raster reveals the printing method directly.

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Typography & mana symbols

Font weight, kerning and the crispness of text and mana symbols.

Genuine: Sharp, evenly weighted type; mana symbols with clean, round edges.
Suspicious: Too-bold or too-thin type, off kerning, jagged or soft symbol edges.

Why it matters: Reprints rarely match the original typesetting exactly; small deviations accumulate.

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Border geometry

Corner radius, border thickness and how centered the print is.

Genuine: Even border width and a consistent corner radius matching the era of the card.
Suspicious: Uneven borders, wrong corner radius, or a noticeably off-center print.

Why it matters: Cutting and centering tolerances on genuine cards are tight; fakes drift.

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