TOPIC: Alert! Fake Tokens...

Update.

I'm traveling as a chaperone with Drake's 8th grade class trip so I only have my cell phone. Pardon the silence. I am sorry for the short first post but I was headed out the for to prep for trip.

After speaking with my token helper and reviewing our token verification process, I think we failed to follow best practice procedures. I completely trust all parties involved and I decided to go ahead and allow the transmution. I am not 100% certain of anything at this point, so it it best to honor the transmution.

To be perfectly honest, this entire thing was handled very poorly by me. I should have waited until I returned to deal with this serious matter in a deliberate manner. I should have realized that many things would have been set in motion once I communicated with the person. It seems this is another case of yours truly allowing a tight schedule to cause me to handle things poorly.

We have set in place better procedures moving forward, and I will take a more measured pace when dealing with this issue in the future.

My apologies to all parties involved. This happens so rarely that it was handled very poorly by me. All parties involved have my complete trust while the procedures we followed do not.

No worries Jeff, I'm sure we all appreciate the early heads up despite the fluster. Hopefully you can back trace the issue to its source and the rest if us can do our best to be mindful if how much you must have on your plate this time of year planning for gencon.

Jeff -- I don't think anyone doubts you always try to do your best for TD and the community around it. It's a unique and special place that I'm happy to have found! As Picc says No worries...haven't ever met a perfect person and doubt I ever will, we all make mistakes and sometimes handle things wrong, especially when we are busy. It takes a bigger person to admit to there mistakes and apologize, thanks for that.

Parties that have been directly involved in this, a bit of anger is natural, and probably some relief as well now. I would urge you to forgive, apologize to other if needed, and move past it.

Community -- this is still a good warning. This years rapid ticket sales is evidence that TD is still growing in popularity. With that there will always be some people looking to take advantage of others. So I would say stay vigilant. If something doesn't seem right, don't stay quiet, but respectfully call attention to whatever is going on.

Everyone smile only 68 days till GENCON!

When you smell smoke, the safest thing to do is pull the alarm. Sometimes you cause needless panic. Other times you prevent a tragedy.

I'm glad the alleged victim was made whole, but that shouldn't stop the search for the alleged perpetrator(s). I'm sure tokens worth thousands weren't even imagined when they were first designed. Maybe it's time to consider and implement a few simple security features for the rarest ones.

Jeff Martin wrote: I should have realized that many things would have been set in motion once I communicated with the person.

I think this was actually perfect timing to remind everyone to watch out for fakes, as token trading ramps up for GenCon. The silver lining is that we (the community) have just re-evaluated the feasibility of fakes entering our ecosystem and how as a community to quarantine them. All of that is good.

I know there are other threads on proposed anti-theft features.
My favorites to add to URs and up would be:

• Adding RFID tags encoded with the token's name and year.
  • but they maybe too thick to fit you under the image sticker?
• Adding serial numbers.
• Really cool would be adding foil / holographic year set icons.
  • Or just metallic paint for the icons / boarder ring.

I'll say this:

If you ever get a token from me, sale or trade, that proves to be fake, I would request (no, demand) that you report it to your local postmaster. I'll work with the authorities to trace it back to its source. It's their job, not ours, and you'll be made whole one way or another. And hopefully, so will I.

I think most reputable traders would say the same.

I think making a comparison between providing pictures of how to not box tokens and not showing pictures of fake tokens is a false analogy. I think the likelihood of someone seeing a poorly secured box and being inspired to also poorly secure a box is infinitesimally low. Whereas the odds of seeing how a token was faked and being inspired to improve the process are somewhat better.

I can say definitively that I will never counterfeit a token, or even make proxies. Not because I have iron-clad morals that I would never think of bending but because I'm too damn lazy. You should all be grateful for my lack of work ethic.

Either way, just like people know what to check for with money, if we are expected to know what a fake is we need to know what to really look for. All of us that have bought lots of tokens from TD, have seen how up and down the quality is over thousands of tokens in the same year, plus if TD reuses tokens they receive back that could be fakes. How are we to defend against that without some knowledge. It's impossible.

commanderFuron wrote: Either way, just like people know what to check for with money, if we are expected to know what a fake is we need to know what to really look for. All of us that have bought lots of tokens from TD, have seen how up and down the quality is over thousands of tokens in the same year, plus if TD reuses tokens they receive back that could be fakes. How are we to defend against that without some knowledge. It's impossible.

Agreed, we don't need to know every trick (if there are some), but something would help. For example, if I were to buy a RoSP, I'd check the registry first to help make sure it is legit.

As a reseller, if I unknowingly sold a counterfeit token, I'd have no choice but to refund my buyer. But since when I receive the token I can't be sure it is legit, that basically opens me up to a lot of liability, and if I purchased a large lot of tokens that ended up being counterfeit it could definitely force me to shut down my store and/or face personal financial hardships.

1. No one is going to bother to fake a red-minus, except maybe Decoys, so putting every token under the microscope is pointless. I'd only worry about URs-plus. Pawn shops stay in business in spite of selling stolen stuff. They just take reasonable precautions and make things right when they're caught, I mean found to have been taken advantage of.

2. I was talking to someone once who was at a dinner with a high-ranking Treasury official. (Or maybe it was in a book or something.) Turns out he started out in some department where he identified counterfeit currency. She asked where he got all the forgeries to study and he told her "nowhere." He only studied real bills, so when he came across a fake one he knew it was wrong. There are too many ways to make a fake so you can't learn them all, so it's counterproductive. You see a fake and might say "that looks familiar, it's probably ok."

Or, picking mushrooms. There are people who learn what the poison ones look like and assume the rest are edible. The title for these people is "the late." You have to learn a few safe ones and only pick those.

I think the same probably goes for tokens. So while I'm curious to see the fakes, I don't think it would ultimately help. It's more important to focus on what makes a token genuine.

Brad Mortensen wrote: There are people who learn what the poison ones look like and assume the rest are edible. The title for these people is "the late."

LOL, but also great advice!