Part 4: Fake Sketch Cards

In Part 3 I said Part 4 was the one I'd been sitting on. This is it.

The series so far: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

A real sketch card is one of the best things you can pull. Somebody sat down, picked up a pencil or a paint pen or a brush, and made a tiny original piece of art on a card the size of a business card. Nobody else has that one. That is the whole magic of it, and it is why I love them.

It is also why people fake them.

Here is what fake looks like. Two eBay listings from one seller, biggreekbreaks. Same title format, same $299.99 or best offer, both marked 1/1, both credited to a maker called "Sketch Munchies." Item numbers 336015917302 and 336015924891. And two different Deadpool sketches.

A real one of one is one piece of art that one person made by hand. When a seller has a steady supply of them, same style, same price, same wording, that isn't an artist at work. That's a process.

I'd already been looking at this brand for over a year. Sketch Munchies showed up on Whatnot in June 2025, and I posted about it on Instagram after running images from the stream through Google. A Mystique card matched an artist's ArtStation page. A Jean Grey card matched someone else's fan art. A Spider-Gwen card matched an image labeled as made with DALL-E 3. And one artist, Bella Rachlin, told me that a piece from a private commission she drew showed up on a card. (REPORTED. I'll show where each of these comes from further down, and what it does and doesn't prove.)

I captured both on the night of Oct 13, 2026. The strip across the top of each screenshot shows the URL and the exact time. Same title, both $299.99 or best offer, both Print Run 1/1, both Manufacturer "Sketch Munchies." The title on each says Series 1, but the item specifics say Series 2. (VERIFIED)

That Instagram post was where it started, and it didn't stop there. Over the next year the same kind of listing kept turning up on eBay and elsewhere, so this summer I started tracking it properly. By the end I had a spreadsheet with 59 rows, a folder of captures, and a very clear picture of how a corner of this hobby works. Some of what I found is sloppy. Some of it looks organized. A lot of it uses the names of real artists, real companies and real grading services to do its work.

Same labels as the other parts. VERIFIED means I saw it myself and have a dated capture. REPORTED means someone else published it. ALLEGED means someone claims it and I could not confirm. I am not a lawyer, and I am not telling you any one seller is committing a crime. I am showing you what the listings say, and where the listings and the facts do not line up.

First, what honest looks like

I don't want anyone walking away from this thinking every sketch card on eBay is fake. Most are not, and a lot of the people selling them are artists or collectors doing everything right.

So here is the baseline I measured everything against.

A real, official sketch card is pulled from a licensed set. The company that made the set (Topps, Upper Deck, Rittenhouse) put it in packs, and the artist is on that set's credit list. If you want to check a card, the first thing to do is find the artist on the checklist for that exact set. I did this over and over for the research, and it is the single fastest test there is.

Then there is the aftermarket, which is where an artist sells their own work outside of a pack. That is allowed, and it is great. The catch is that an honest seller says so. "Artist proof" or "artist return" or "commission" in the title, the artist named, and no pretending it came out of a box of cards it never came out of.

I used a few sellers as controls so I wasn't just hunting for things that looked wrong. One seller, alpau_5274, lists E.M. Gist sketches as honest aftermarket pieces. Another, illust888, sells blank artist proof stock and calls it exactly that. And I checked two real artists, Percival Kholoma and Beh Yong Yee, against their own work so I knew what a real artist's page looks like next to a copy.

The pattern for honest is boring in a good way. Real name, real set, real credit, and a title that says what the card is.

If you want to see what a good seller looks like, I'd point you to my friend's eBay store, ThingsWEcollect. Disclosure: she's a friend, and I'm not paid for this. She's also the lucky22 I mention later, and I've looked up to her as a collector for a long time. I trust her because she's been in the hobby longer than I have and gives a lot back to it. She's an honest seller who knows exactly what's going on with fake sketch cards, and it shows in how she lists. She even has a Marvel sketch card category you can browse. Use it as a comparison when you're looking at a listing that feels off.

This isn't new, and I'm not the first to write about it. In 2009, Cardboard Connection ran Buyer Beware: Counterfeit Sketch Cards, about artist Brian Kong reporting an eBay seller who copied his artwork and sold it as one of a kind. In 2020, The Sketch Card Blog sorted altered and faked cards into types in Fakes, Jams & Remarks, and in 2018 it explained how artist proofs and returns work, including that blanks sold on purpose can get drawn on and resold as pack pulled. What's different now is the scale, and the fact that anyone can hit "list" from a phone.

Everything after this is what happens when one of those pieces goes missing.

A word on blank artist proofs

One more thing before we get into the bad stuff, because it's the part people argue about.

Blank artist proofs are real cards from the same stock as a licensed set, with nothing drawn on them yet. Plenty of people sell them, and selling a blank is not automatically wrong. A seller who lists a blank as a blank, in plain words, is doing what an honest seller should. There are also good reasons to buy one. An artist you love can draw on it for you, you can sketch on it yourself, or you can build a custom piece for your own collection.

It's also a gray area. Some blanks may not have been meant to reach the market at all. If an artist turned in their sketches and the leftover blanks went somewhere they weren't supposed to, someone is selling something they probably shouldn't, at least ethically, even though no rule stops them. Artist proofs used to be common. Most manufacturers don't make them much anymore, and Topps is ending its artist returns for new projects (I covered that in Part 3). What happens to a blank after it's sold is mostly out of the seller's hands. It can end up somewhere harmless or somewhere that isn't on the buyer's side.

The number on the back of the card matters here. On modern Upper Deck sets there's a code on the back, something like MM43. Artists have told me this code lines up with the manufacturer's artist list. If an artist forgets to sign, or the signature gets messed up, you can give Upper Deck the set name and the code, and they can tell you who drew it. I'm not sure whether Topps does the same thing, so I'm not going to claim it. (REPORTED. This comes from my conversations with artists, not a listing I read the code off.)

That's the problem with what I call the Thumbtack pattern. Here is how it appears to work. Someone gets real blank sketch stock from an official set. They put art on it that may well be AI generated. Then they sign it "Thumbtack," a name that was never on that set's artist checklist and, as far as I can tell, belongs to no real artist. The card itself is genuine, which is what makes it convincing. The art and the signature are not. (ALLEGED. The cert records and listings are verified, but I can't prove how the art was made, and I haven't held one of these cards.)

The back of the card is where it should fall apart. The code on the back should point to a real artist who isn't Thumbtack. I can't find any connection between whoever did the art and the set. I haven't sized what they've made, but the incentive isn't hard to see. A blank costs very little, and a signed "1/1" sells for a lot more. If you're looking at one of these, ask the manufacturer to match the code before you pay.

So my ask isn't for blank sellers to stop. It's for everyone in the chain to stay honest about what the card is:

• Sellers of blanks: say "blank artist proof" in the title, and say it was not pulled from a pack as a finished sketch.
• Buyers who customize one: list it as a custom or commissioned piece, name the artist, and don't call it an official set card.
• Buyers of a finished card: ask where the blank came from and who drew on it, and treat "real card stock" as proof of nothing about the artwork.

The tells

Once you know the baseline, the problems stand out fast. These are the ones that kept showing up.

Signatures that don't make sense. One group of eight listings shipping from Shanghai (I call the pattern aligned_stars) carries a signature that reads as the Chinese characters 三千, which means "three thousand." A number is an odd thing to sign a painting with. It could be a pen name, and I can't rule that out, but I searched Chinese and English sources and could not find an illustrator using it who is tied to Marvel sketch cards. If you know of one, tell me. On the listing I looked at hardest, item 158158274968 from danbar.6qmsfn6, it was the only credit I found when I first logged it. That listing has since ended (bidding closed Aug 15, £250), and the page no longer shows the signature, so treat that detail as my August record, not something the new capture proves.

Artist names that read like a menu. On Sketch Munchies cards, the artist line is a signature in Chinese characters. When I ran a few of them through a phone translator during a live stream in June 2025, the "artists" came back as "Colorful chicken legs," "Gardenia," and "salmon." (REPORTED. These are machine translations from my own screenshots, so treat them as a rough guide and not a certified translation. Chinese is hard to translate from one line of handwriting, and I'm not calling any single result certain.) A real artist's name is a name. A flower, a fish and a chicken leg are what you get when someone needs something that looks like writing.

To be fair, a signature in another language does not make a card fake. Some legit sketch artists sign in their native language, including in Finding Unicorn sets and sometimes in Topps sets too. That's exactly why my buyer checklist later on doesn't stop at "does this signature look odd." It sends you to the set's artist list, the artist's own pages, and a way to ask them directly. A strange name is a reason to check, not a verdict.

Art that already exists somewhere else. In the same post I ran three of the cards through Google's image search. A Mystique card matched an ArtStation piece by the artist Douglas Bicalho. A Jean Grey card matched fan art by Berto Martinez, and a version of the same image on an AI character site. A Spider-Gwen card matched an image labeled as made with DALL-E 3. (REPORTED. These are visual matches from my June 2025 screenshots. They are not proof of how any card was made, and a match can point in either direction.)

A grade that was never a grade. Four sellers in what I call the Thumbtack pattern used a CGC style condition grade to make their sketches look vetted. Certificate numbers 6121766003 and 6121766004 are the ones I traced. On CGC's own certificate lookup, 6121766003 is a 2023 Marvel Masterpieces Spider-Man graded 7.5, with the first variant field reading "Aftermarket Sketch Card" and the second reading "Thumbtack." 6121766004 is a Wolverine from '22 Fleer Ultra Avengers graded 8, with the first variant field reading "Artist Proof" and the second reading "Thumbtack." Both were graded on Feb 12, 2026. (VERIFIED, CGC certificate lookup.) So CGC recorded the name, which makes it look vetted, but neither record says anything about who drew the art. A condition grade tells you about the cardboard. Corners, edges, surface. It does not tell you who drew the picture, and I have found nothing showing CGC authenticated an artist on any of these. If a listing leans on a slab to prove the art is real, that is the part to question.

Physical clues, when someone actually checks. My friend lucky22, a Whatnot seller who is also the person behind the ThingsWEcollect eBay store I mentioned earlier, got a couple of Sketch Munchies cards and looked at them herself. They didn't show what real marker, paint or pencil leaves behind. There was a little work on the top and not much else. Real marker, pencil, and paint on card stock usually leave texture, grooves or both. That is one person's firsthand report (REPORTED), and I'm including it because it is the sort of check anyone can do with a loupe and a good light.

None of these alone proves a card is fake. A bad listing can be an honest mistake. What worries me is how often I found two or three of them stacked on the same listing.

Brands I couldn't match to a real product

This is the part that made me laugh and then made me mad.

A lot of these listings borrow credibility by naming a set, a studio or a brand that sounds official. When I went looking for the actual product, there wasn't one.

Sketch Munchies. Not a licensed brand. I found 13 or more seller accounts using the name across 7 franchises. It even has its own website, officialsketchmunchies.com, and an Instagram. A site and a feed make something feel like a real company. They don't make it a licensed one. The site lists Series 1 as sold out, Series 2 as released and Series 3 as coming soon. It names nobody behind the brand, shows no prices, and never claims to license the characters. As far as I know, the brand still sells on Whatnot. Two of the Deadpool "1/1" listings from the top of this post carry this name.

Rivals Japan Studio and Marvel Rivals. Four sellers listed Marvel Rivals "sketch cards" as if they came from an official release. There is no such release. The two real Marvel Rivals card sets, one from Kakawow (Phantom) and one from Card.Fun, have no sketch cards in them. They are not on either checklist, so any sketch card claiming to be from either set is fake. Full stop. Checklists are one of the best tools a buyer has, especially with import sets like these. If it isn't on the checklist, it isn't from that set. As for "Rivals Japan Studio," I could not find it anywhere except in those listings. One thing to keep straight: Topps's new Marvel Neon (out Oct 14, 2026) has a real sketch card insert, and it also has Marvel Rivals image variation cards. Those are two separate things. The Rivals cards in Neon are printed cards, and the sketches in Neon are their own insert.

Holodeck Hobby Studio. On listing 117231000751 from grumpylam, the Manufacturer field says "Marvel." It isn't Marvel. That one field changes how a search filters and how a buyer reads the whole page. That listing has since sold (Sep 20, $99.95), and sold pages no longer show item specifics, so the Manufacturer detail is from my August log.

unyx-art. Another seller, another set of listings that never names a set. Its sold titles follow one template: character, franchise, "Hand-Drawn Sketch Card 1/1 Artist Signed," then a name. None of these are official pack pulled cards. No set is named, so there is no checklist to find them on, and none of the artist names are on an official checklist for any Marvel, DC or Star Wars set. Anyone can put a name in a listing title. That doesn't make them an artist on the set. The same names also show up on Marvel, DC and Star Wars cards alike, and most of the sales are recent. Going by eBay's sold data, I'd size it at roughly $15K or more over three years. (ALLEGED pattern, from listing titles and eBay sold data. I haven't held one of these cards.) I think this is fake junk, and the pattern is the reason. If one of these names is yours, I'd love to hear from you.

TRAIL. This one is different from the others, and I want to be fair about it. TRAIL looks like a small homegrown brand, not a fake dressed up as a licensed set. The cards are real physical things, panels cut from comics and sealed in a case, and they sell cheap. The sold listings I found were mostly $1 to $15 on auction, from sellers shipping out of China. What bothers me is what TRAIL borrows. "Comic Clippings" is the name of a real insert that Upper Deck puts in sets like Marvel Beginnings and Marvel Ages, and Fleer Ultra Midnight Sons has its own version. Those cards carry their own checklist codes, like CC-MP28, and the numbered ones usually sell for $25 and up. The TRAIL listings put "Marvel" and "DC" in the title and use a card number in that same CC style. TRAIL is not Upper Deck, and I haven't found a TRAIL checklist anywhere.

Then the details stop adding up. Items 188415835114 and 127721429159 are two different comics, but both pages show the same card number, CC-MP1, and the same 1/5 numbering. The one titled Inhuman: Attilan Rising #2 has item specifics that read Superman, DC Universe. That looks like a copied template, not a checklist. TRAIL also credits its artists by first name only. One more thing worth knowing: a four card TRAIL lot sold on Aug 27 from gecards_shop, the account I tied to the JO50 pattern. (VERIFIED, eBay listing captures from Oct 13 and sold results. I'm not claiming the two are connected, only that the same seller shows up.) If you want these, buy them as what they are, unofficial comic cuts, and don't pay prices meant for the official ones.

The sold lot, captured the night of Oct 14, 2026. The strip across the top shows the URL and the exact time.

Marvel Midnight Suns and Original Justice Company. The titles have typos. "MAEVEL." "Reveivedahang-drawn." Real manufacturers proofread. Mostly.

A card that says it comes from a licensed product should be on that product's checklist. Fake brands are never on a checklist, because nothing exists to put them on. You can disprove a lot of these in about two minutes.

Follow the money

The biggest pattern in the whole spreadsheet isn't about any single card. It's about where the cards come from.

Take the one I call GGC Studio. I found 209 or more results when I first looked, and eBay's sold data shows 7,285 sales under the name in the last three years. Sketch-style cards from a China-based source are listed at $0.99 to $3.75. The same kind of card then appears from US accounts at $70 to $350.

Somebody is buying at a couple of dollars and selling as hand drawn collectibles at up to a hundred times that. Whether the US resellers know what they're buying is a separate question, and I want to be fair about it. Some of them may be downstream buyers who got fooled first. I can't see inside anyone's head. I can see the price gap.

Add it up across the listings I documented, and the combined asking price is over $31,000. That is asking price, not sales. So I went to eBay's sold data and counted what actually sold under these names. Here is what I found.

That's about $295K in sales across seven names, and that's just me looking. It tells you how big the market is, not that every sale was a scam. A lot of the GGC Studio sales, for example, are listed openly as custom art. For scale, eBay sold roughly $3.3M of sketch cards in the last 90 days alone. In that same 90 days, the names I measured sold about $80K by my estimate, which is roughly 2 to 3% of it. A small slice, on one platform, and I only found one corner of it. Fanatics, Heritage, Goldin and Whatnot aren't in any of these numbers.

It doesn't take a mastermind either. Find a cheap source, pick a name that sounds official, borrow a few real artist names, and type 1/1 in the title. Do that across a dozen seller accounts and a few franchises and it starts to look like a machine.

I can show you the pattern. Who's behind it, I can't, and I'm not going to guess.

Here is a coincidence I can't explain. One of the signatures on a Sketch Munchies card translated to "Gardenia." Separately, when I looked at the listings of a different brand, one of the artist names that kept showing up was "Gardenia Yang." It may mean nothing. Common words get used as names, and a translator turned a few characters into an English word. But if it isn't a coincidence, it would suggest some of the same people are behind more than one of these brands. I have no evidence of that and I'm not claiming it. I'm putting it here because it's easy to check for anyone with the right access, and I'd like someone to check.

Asking price vs. what happened

I didn't expect this part. When I went back and captured these listings (screenshots from Oct 13, 2026), a lot of those big asking prices had quietly dropped, or the listings had ended for much less.

Item	Seller or pattern	Asking when I logged it	Where it landed
407039680028	gecards_shop (JO50)	$8,000	Sold Sep 5 on an accepted offer of $3,500
407006596693		$2,000	Ended at $1,250
267726608305		$349.99	$280
177811675692		$89.99	$60
178159612735		$250	$170 (still listed)
198274659729		$650	$500 (still listed)

To be fair to everyone, one of my honest control listings dropped too, from $2,500 to $1,999. Prices move for a hundred ordinary reasons, so a drop alone proves nothing about a card.

But it does change how to read that $31,000 number. It's what people were asking, not what anyone got. When a one of one with a famous name on it sells for less than half the ask, or sits and gets cut again and again, that tells you something about how real the demand was.

One more note on the $3,500 sale. A real buyer paid real money for it. That's the kind of buyer this whole post is for.

The artists on the other end

Every fake sketch card has two victims. The buyer who overpays is one. The artist whose style, name or actual drawing got used is the other, and they usually find out last.

Sketch artists are not getting rich off this. I covered in Part 3 how thin the pay can be. A fake that undercuts the real thing on price, or that puts their name next to something they never touched, hits a person who is already working for very little.

Bella Rachlin is the case I can speak to most directly. I messaged her on Facebook Messenger, and she confirmed that the artwork on one of the cards in my Instagram post came from a private commission she drew for a client. (REPORTED. That is her confirmation to me in a private message, and I haven't published her messages.)

Think about what that means. A private commission is not something posted for the world. Somebody had to see that image, copy it, and list it as an original. I find that wild.

Douglas Bicalho is the other artist in this. The Mystique card from my June 2025 screenshots matched his ArtStation piece. I haven't talked to him, so I can't say how that image ended up on a card. If he sees this, I'd like to hear from him. (REPORTED. That is a visual match from my own screenshot, not a statement from him.)

If you're an artist and you've seen your work or your name on a listing you didn't make, there is a short list of things worth doing. Screenshot the listing with the URL showing. Save it on archive.org so it can't be quietly deleted. Report it to the platform through its IP or counterfeit process, not just the generic report button. And tell other artists. That last one matters most, because these accounts are very hard to find one at a time.

Where the AI question lands

In Part 3 I asked where you'd draw the line on AI in sketch cards. Here's where I landed after this investigation: I think AI is behind a lot of these cards.

That's not a hunch. When I ran cards from the Sketch Munchies streams through Google's image search, a Spider-Gwen card matched an image labeled as made with DALL-E 3, and a Jean Grey card matched the same image on an AI character site. Other cards weren't generated at all, they were lifted from real artists, like the Mystique that matched Douglas Bicalho's ArtStation piece, or the private commission Bella Rachlin told me about. So there are two methods, copying real art and generating new art, and I'd bet some sellers do both. (REPORTED. These are visual matches from my own screenshots. I can't test every card, and I'm not going to pretend there's a tool that can, but I don't need one to see the pattern.)

Here's why it matters. A fake sketch card used to take a person to copy a drawing, trace it, or flip someone else's art. That takes time, and time put a ceiling on how many fakes one seller could list. Cheap generated art and a cheap print source take that ceiling away. A seller who can put out a new "one of one" every few minutes, with a real artist's name attached, isn't a hobbyist. That's a business.

Where's the line?

Fan art is a big part of why people love this hobby, so I want to be careful here. I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not saying every unlicensed card is a crime. Three questions sorted most of what I saw:

1. Does the buyer know what they're getting? A listing that says "custom art" or "fan art" and is priced like it is honest. A card made to pass as an official pull, with a story about a set that doesn't exist, is not.
2. Is the art actually original? Traced, copied or generated from someone else's work isn't fan art. It's their work with a different name on it.
3. Does the packaging claim to be official? Marvel and DC logos, series numbers, "congratulations, you've received a one of one." That is what turns a fan drawing into something dressed up as a product, and it's the part rights holders tend to care about most.

There's a middle ground with cheap knockoffs too. If you see a $10 piece you like, you know it's a knockoff, and you think it's cute, that's your call. Reproductions and prints priced like reproductions and prints are fine by me. The problem isn't the knockoff. It's a knockoff sold as the real thing, and how much money that moves.

Ways to collect sketches you can feel good about

• Pack pulled sketches. Pulled from a licensed set, so the artist and set can be checked. This is what you want if resale value matters.
• Artist proofs (APs), also called artist returns. For a long time, companies like Topps and Upper Deck gave sketch artists a share of cards to draw on and keep or sell themselves, and as far as I know some smaller companies still do. Topps is ending them for new projects (I covered that in Part 3). APs are also the stock fakes get built on, so an AP is only as good as your homework. Use the checks in the next section, and ideally confirm it with the artist, or buy from a recognizable artist whose work you can verify. Done that way, an AP is a legitimate part of a collection.
• PSCs, or personal sketch commissions. Reach out to an artist you like and work with them directly. You know who made it, the artist gets paid, and nothing questionable ends up in your collection. A PSC won't carry the same resale value as a pack pulled sketch, but if you're worried about something lurking in your collection that doesn't belong, it's the cleanest way to know it's safe.
• Honest customs, reproductions and prints. Labeled and priced as what they are, they're a fine way to enjoy a character you love.

Before you buy a sketch card

Save this one. It takes about ten minutes.

1. Find the set. If a listing says it came from a specific product, open that product's official checklist. No sketch cards on it, no sale.
2. Find the artist. Is the name on that set's credit list? Does the artist have a real page, portfolio or social account showing the same style?
3. Read the signature. A real name you can look up. Not characters that mean something else, and not the name of an actor or a writer. Real sketch artists can also claim a page on SketchSheet, a free tool on my site Crackwise. A claimed page is a good place to check a name against. (Disclosure: I built Crackwise.)
4. Read the title and item specifics. Does the Manufacturer field say Marvel or Topps on a card the company never made?
5. Search the image. Run a reverse image search (Google Lens or Google Images) on the listing photo. If the same art turns up somewhere else, like an artist's portfolio, a fan art post or an AI image site, work out which came first. A match doesn't prove a card is fake, and no match doesn't prove it's real. It's one more clue.
6. Check for AI. Run the photo through an AI image checker, or ask an AI model whether the art looks generated. Treat the answer as a clue and not a verdict. These checks miss things and also get it wrong the other way, and skilled human artists do get flagged, so use it to decide what to look at next.
7. Be careful with slabs and authentication. A condition grade is about the card, not the art. Check the certificate number on the grader's own site. Even a graded or authenticated card isn't proof on its own, so do the other checks too.
8. Search the seller. The same card type listed at far lower prices from another source? Dozens of results with the same look?
9. Ask, and track down the artist. Message the seller, or better, the artist. Make sure they're a real person with a real page, and ask where the card came from. Real ones are usually happy to confirm a piece.
10. Pay in a way that protects you. Use the platform's own checkout. Don't move the sale off the site.

If a card passes all ten, you're in good shape. If it fails two or more, it's okay to walk away.

If you find one, report it

Blocking a seller or just walking away helps you. Reporting helps the next buyer. It takes about ten minutes, and the order matters.

1. Capture it first. Take a full page screenshot with the URL and the time showing, and save the listing on archive.org if you can. Listings get edited and deleted fast.
2. Don't buy one to prove it. Don't message the seller to argue, and don't call anyone out in a live stream. You will get a lot of noise and no evidence out of it.
3. Report it to the platform. On eBay use the report link on the listing page. On Whatnot report the seller or the show from inside the app. Pick the counterfeit or misrepresented item reason so it goes to the right team.
4. If you bought one, dispute it. Use eBay's Money Back Guarantee or Whatnot's buyer protection, and do it inside the platform's window. Keep every message on the platform.
5. File a federal report if money was lost or if the cards shipped by mail. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center takes online fraud reports, the US Postal Inspection Service handles mail fraud, and the FTC collects consumer fraud complaints. Expect no updates. These agencies collect reports and decide on their own what to pursue.
6. Contact your state attorney general. Every state has a consumer protection office, and most take complaints online. PIRG keeps a list of where to file in every state. These offices can look into complaints and contact businesses, and a stack of complaints from different people in the same state is how a pattern gets noticed.
7. If it uses Marvel, Star Wars or other studio characters, tell the rights holder. Disney's anti-piracy team takes tips at tips@disneyantipiracy.com. Other companies have their own brand protection pages.
8. If it's your art, say so loudly. Artists can file through eBay's rights owner program (VeRO), and a short post to your followers helps other artists check for their own work.
9. If it's costing you money, talk to a lawyer. If you sell cards or sketches, fakes undercut you too. Whether that gives you a claim against a seller or a platform is a legal question I can't answer, and a short consult is a good place to start.

No single report is guaranteed to get anything taken down. Several of them at once, from different people, with dates and screenshots, is what gets noticed. If you do report something, tell me. I'm keeping a running list of what works.

Reporting is one way to help. The other is talking to me, and it's a big reason I put this on my own blog where you can answer back. I only found one corner of this, and I can't see the rest from here. You can. And if a seller I named wants to correct something, tell me and I'll fix the post and note the change.

What I'd love from you:

• If you're a sketch artist and you've seen fakes of your own work, reach out. You're the people who can say for certain what's real.
• If you bought something that fits any of these patterns, I want to hear about it, and you should dispute it with the platform.
• If you work at a platform or a card company and want to talk, my door is open. sanamslabs@gmail.com.

I keep coming back to this. One person's spreadsheet turned up about $295K in sales under a handful of look-alike names, and that's only what I found. I'm an engineer by day. If I were a supervillain, this looks like the easiest side hustle going: a cheap source, a convincing name, a live stream full of hype. That is exactly why I think it keeps happening. The best thing any of us can do for the hobby is report it when we see it, and use every avenue we've got to help shut it down.

Somebody sat down and drew a real one. Pay them.