I’ve become obsessed with spotting fakes since buying a fake card and I’ve gone down the authentication rabbit hole as a result.
If you don’t have a jeweler’s loupe and the best you have is your phone, can you be confident that the rosette pattern on a card is correct through seeing these little cross looking patterns (seen in the multiple images below)? It seems the answer is no. I read an article put out by CGC (link hereinbelow) and they were showing images of fake cards that had these same cross patterns.
The example rosette patterns you can see in the Google Image below looks nothing like the pattern I see on my cards to my eyes. I was thinking the pattern would be more circular but perhaps you can only see the true pattern through a loupe? Is there anything else, other than the shape of the pattern itself, that shows authenticity in the rosette pattern? Is there an angle the pattern needs to follow?
Rosette pattern (clear-centered rosette) is not on its own an adequate means to authenticate trading cards created using sheet-fed offset printing. The lack of observation of clear-centered rosette (or dot-centered rosette in cases of genuine phase shift caused by misregistration or screen-angle or frequency mismatch) is merely a means to establish inauthenticity (i.e., absence of rosette/characteristic is more useful than presence of rosette/characteristic). At this point in time, sheet-fed offset printing is readily available and practical for counterfeit operations creating fake trading cards. Hope this makes sense.
To directly answer your inquiry, for microscopic authentication hierarchy you can examine these:
I will link my comment containing authentication and analysis.
Excerpt:
A scary good counterfeit trading card can be created using sheet-fed offset printing, reproducing the visible characteristics of vintage Pokemon cards including CMYK rosettes. Even the best counterfeits created using sheet-fed offset printing will fail to have use the same inks, cardstock, or manufacturing process as the original WOTC cards. These materials likely no longer exist or are not obtainable. The printing plate and screen angles will not be the same. The elemental composition of the ink will not be the same. The elemental composition of the cardstock will not be the same. It is not enough to look for a clear-centered rosette. I give a ton of credit to Rattle for his microscope videos, however we are at a point where these clear-centered rosettes are readily reproduced by counterfeiting.
One of the very few true authentication methods is chemical/elemental analysis through X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometer and/or Video Spectral Comparator (VSC). These devices are extremely expensive.
Rosettes are not consistent, cards were printed in 4 regions and change over time. Some form additional patterns. Recognizing ink angles is possible without a loupe or phone if you spend enough time but it’s definitely tricky. Using a phone with flash or a separate flashlight is pretty helpful.
Here is an example of a circular flower pattern that forms sometimes.
