Quote Originally Posted by ptdunk View Post

I'm guessing Ink testing is tricky on a little pellet box, can someone remind me of how the U.V paper test works again please? what are the dates affected and will any U.V torch do?

Cheers,
Matt
Matt,

The UV test is based on the fact that UV brighteners were first introduced onto the paper and card making industries in 1950. These invisible dyes convert the invisible UV light in daylight into bright blue/white light and so make white card and paper look even whiter and brighter. They were so popular and cheap that by about 1965 virtually all commercial white card and paper had these in. In fact it is now extremely difficult to find any without them in, so much so that paper with no UV brighteners is used for banknotes, knowing that forgers have a very hard time getting such paper.

So if anything with white paper labels or made of white card glows blue-white under UV light, you can be 100% certain that it was not made before 1950.

On the other hand, if it does not glow under UV you cannot be 100% certain it is a genuine pre-1950 product, because the use of UV brighteners was phased in, but you can be very near certain that it is pre-1965.

You can use any sort of UV pen, but some are better than others. The less visible light and more dark (UV) light it produces, the better it is.
The problem is that it works best in a dark room, so in a brightly lit hall it will difficult to see the glow. You need to do the test in the shadiest area you can find, or put your hand over the object to shade it as much as you can. Here are some examples, photographed in a dark room to enhance the effect.

The first shows a pre-1950 Lanes Cat Slug box, which came with a pre-war boxed Gat pistol, alongside a box of Cat Slugs I bought about 15 years ago. You can see that in the dark under UV light the older box is almost invisible, whereas the newer box glows brightly and so cannot be pre-1950. This does not mean it is a fake though, as Lanes were marketing these slugs into the 1960’s when UV brightened cardboard was the norm.





The next picture shows a selection of pellet boxes of varying ages.





The brightly glowing John Bull box is a definite fake(it is marked as reproduction), whereas the dark box is genuinely old. The same goes for the Beatall pellets, the glowing box is a deliberate fake. In the case of the Marksman pellets, the dark box is pre-1950 and the glowing box post 1950. However the glowing box is not a fake as the pellets are still being made and I bought this box as new a few months ago from a sports shop.


Here are some more examples. The pre-1950 boxes can be easily distinguished from the post-1950 boxes:





Here are a couple of pistol boxes from the same manufacturer- one pre-war the other post 1983. The differences can easily be seen.






So the UV test is by no means the perfect dating tool, but it certainly can be a big help, and for the cost of a few pounds off Fleabay it is a no-brainer.