1990 | Sports Card Info

How To Spot A Fake Emmitt Smith 1990 Score Supplemental Rookie Card

Posted on April 17, 2023 by sportscardinfo

Legendary running back Emmitt Smith’s most popular rookie card comes from the 110-card 1990 Score Supplemental Football set.

The 1990 Score Supplemental Football set was issued in factory set form only to Score’s dealers. No hobby boxes with packs.

Cards are designed to look like the regular 1990 Score Football set, except they have blue and purple borders.

Included within this set are rookies and players that switched teams during the off season. Its like an Update or Traded set you see from Topps.

Despite being released during the height of the junk wax era this card continues to hold quite a bit of value. Especially those examples that are in nice condition. Having colored borders makes it easy for chipping to occur.

A few counterfeit/unauthorized reprints of this card recently popped up.

You can clearly see the differences between an authentic card and a fake. Fakes have a blurry and grainy look to them. The color is off. In some cases the font isn’t quite correct and difficult to read.

People use the word “reprint” or the letters “RP” on their listings in an attempt to fool you into thinking that card came from a specific manufacturer. Places like eBay don’t know how or just don’t care enough to learn how to distinguish between the two. The people making these homemade cards are fully aware that passing them off as the real thing could come back to haunt them. Calling them reprints might not bring in the same amount of money, but it still allows them to move their hoard of counterfeits. Its a horribly abused wording loophole.

One of the best ways to tell if your card is authentic is by comparing it to another card from the 1990 Score Supplemental Football set. Specifically one that doesn’t have much value and wouldn’t have a reason to be faked. Score used the same printing method for all of the cards. The print pattern of an Emmitt Smith #101T should look the same as the other cards from this set under a magnifying glass.