The fakes have perfectly formed numbers, leaves, etc. I close look at genuine antiques reveal imperfectiions galore.

Take a look at the scan below. The points of the spider web all pierce the outer ring exactly the same. In the real chip the web points are not supposed to pierce the outer ring at all. In the real piece it was hit or how close the carver came to connecting the web points at the outer ring. Anything done by hand will have imperfections.

Heck, there are a good number of chips listed in Dale's book that have different codes that should actually have the same code. It is my theory that in large orders more than one carver was used. Each carver may have had his own carving technique which resulted in different looking leaves, twigs, numbers, etc. Dale assigned different codes, which I feel is a mistake.