So the majority of PlayStation games were released with an official product hologram stuck to the bottom left of the case front. It was almost certainly a response by SCEE to fight against the rise of mod chip usage and the sale of bootleg copies of PlayStation games. As a collector, you’ll want to ensure that the copy of the game you have is legit and as prices rise, the likelihood of counterfeit copies hitting the retro market will only increase.
There is one thing I’ve started to see in the PAL market this year and that is reproduction holograms. I was intrigued to see the quality of these and to work out how to spot them in the wild.
These appear to be coming from a single French eBay seller at the moment. I’ve not been able to trace them to Chinese markets, so they may be European-made, or there’s a source I haven’t found yet. The fact there’s only one known seller suggests they either have the means to manufacture these themselves, or they’re getting them directly from a supplier somewhere.
To start with - these do look pretty good. To the untrained eye, they will likely fool you. But a couple of things caught my eye even from the eBay listing that gave them away.
Quick Reference: How to Spot Fakes
- Diagonal Feathering - runs from bottom left to top right across the whole hologram
- No SCE Logo - the square SCE logo cannot be isolated at any angle
- Missing Twelfth Row - the “Official Licensed Product” background text only has 11 rows instead of 12
Feathering
The first thing I spotted was a diagonal feathering effect going from bottom left to top right across the whole hologram. It is most pronounced on the square SCE logo.
Notice that there is a slight feathering effect on legitimate ones - though this is very faint and completely horizontal.
Sony Computer Entertainment Logo
I tried my best but the reproduction holograms do not properly show the SCE square logo.
The SCE logo can be seen isolated from the PlayStation logo at certain angles on the legitimate holograms. This is not possible with the reproduction holograms - at all angles, the PlayStation logo is visible. There is no angle where I could even see the SCE logo apart from the ghost-like image as above.
Official Licensed Product
There has been a lot of work that’s gone into this hologram though. This is the second PlayStation hologram design where the “Official Licensed Product” background was changed.
The original design had this text angled about 30 degrees from bottom left to right. This was replaced with a second design where the text was completely horizontal.
Around 13 rows were visible on the original design, whereas twelve rows are visible on the second - the twelfth line being cut off.
A key detail that these reproduction holograms noticed was that the ninth and tenth lines were lined up exactly. All the other lines offset each other to create a pattern.
The reproductions have this which is subtle!
The second thing they also get right is the pattern itself. The first row is lined up to have “Official Licensed” centered above the logos. Additionally, the 10th row is lined up slightly differently to center “Licensed Product”. Another nice piece of subtlety they nailed.
However! There is a mistake here - there is no twelfth row in the reproduction. This row is not very visible on legitimate holograms but it is there, and these reproductions have a space at the bottom where it would be.
Wrap up
So there we are - they can easily be spotted if you know what to look for:
- Diagonal Feathering
- Lack of SCE logo
- Missing Twelfth Row
These can all be hard to spot in some images/angles/lighting conditions so it may not be possible to gauge the legitimacy of a hologram from just photographs.
One thing to acknowledge is that the original, diagonal design has not been replicated (yet!) so we might be able to assume those are legit by default.
If you spot new variations of fake holograms appearing, I’d be interested to hear about them. To check whether a specific game release should have a hologram, you can verify on the site database.