I just want to know once and for all THE ABSOLUTE way to tell a card is fake!

I've heard it's the Stars, the Hologram and how smooth the card is, and I just don't know who to believe!

The best way i find is:

They are printed on generic holographic paper rather than having the pattern of the holography match the images.
The holographc square present with authentic cards is either printed simply in black and white or is missing.
The text on the cards seems to have been written by someone whose native language is not English and may or may not make sense.
The printing of the art is muddy and some images show obvious evidence of Photoshopping.
The printing of the back of the cards is of poor quality and in one case the logo is wrong.
The logos in the upper right-hand corners (front of card) are wrong.
The formatting of the cards is idiosyncratic and does not follow the format of the originals faithfully

As I've recently discovered:

Any card claiming to be "1st Edition" should have a Gold Hologram in the bottom right hand corner as opposed to Silver!

I got a load from this place in Burton's Arcade in Leeds City Centre and the cards are otherwise fine they just don't feel right; they feel kinda cardboardy, whereas all our other fake and our real ones feel smoother, these feel sorta rough and coarse!

Well for me, put the card up in the light and if it sees thru, its fake.

Heres whats u do..

u get a real version out a pack

and look at the difference

last time i checked it wasnt that hard to do..
lol jokes

mainly the stars look different

But yeah

There are many convincing fakes out there, you have to play it by eye to know for sure...

Look up pictures of the original if you don't have another, good quality images and compare everything...

Also, look out for typos and mistakes...

If there is a mistake on one card, it would be on hundreds of others because they mass-print them...

The Burtons' Arcade ones were pretty convincing, but out of me and my mates I was the first one to actually notice they felt wrong!

I got a Structure Deck from Forbidden Planet and they felt a little cardboardy, but nowhere near as bad the Burtons' Arcade ones! I asked someone anyway and they said that they were most likely fakes, so I don't use them at all!

We only EVER use fakes now as reference or training or as substitutes for ones we don't have yet such as Dark Magician of Chaos, my three Red-Eyes Black Chicks and my other two Red-Eyes Black Dragons -- I already have one real, but only one and it's Joey's!