Thank you for taking the time to comment on this very serious topic. The fear of counterfeit cards has the capability to erode consumer confidence in the collectible gaming market, and it is an issue we at TCGplayer watch very carefully.

In your article, you mention that “a pretty convincing fake card was shipped from TCGplayer, possibly without their knowledge that it was fake (though probably not).”

We would like to clarify some things for you and your readers. The card in question was not shipped from TCGplayer. It was shipped from an individual seller on our platform – one of several thousand such sellers.

Upon receiving the card, the buyer contacted us immediately, and has been working with us to resolve the issue. We’d like to stress that you are always 100% protected on every order with our Buyer Safeguard.

We have numerous safeguards in place to proactively detect errant sellers or individuals looking to abuse the system. When isolated instances of fake cards do come to our attention, we act upon them swiftly, and have an excellent track record for resolving these types of issues:

http://brainstormbrewery.com/counterfeits-on-tcgplayer-my-experience/

Author Anthony Capece says the experience made him “…more worried about buying from non-TCGplayer sources now.”

In other words, our reaction to counterfeits has been so good, it makes other sites look worse by comparison.

On top of that, you always have the option of using TCGplayer Direct, where the cards are shipped out of our own carefully-managed inventory. This lets us check each card multiple times (upon being received and added to our inventory, and again upon being packed for shipment.) With TCGplayer Direct, we can virtually eliminate counterfeits and cards being of lesser condition than you ordered.

We appreciate you keeping a vigilant eye out for counterfeit cards, and we certainly acknowledge the growing problem they may represent for collectible gaming, but we want to again remind you and your readers that with our Buyer Safeguard, you have nothing to worry about when purchasing cards from TCGplayer.

Thank you very much,
Team TCGplayer

It may be prohibitively expensive to mirror the exact process Wizards uses and that is why fakes continue to look “off”