I'm surprised there's still any discussion about the authenticity of these cards. If you handle them raw, there would be no question that they are real. We've all seen and handled fake cards. These aren't fake. Also, are the 1916 Herpos also believed to be fake? Or just 1921?

Jeffrey,

Just the 1921.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Brian Van Horn

I think that used to be Charlie Barokas' handle. Haven't seen him in a while. Don't know if he's still active.

Buys & Sells lots of type 1 photos on eBay.

Todd, fair enough. Mustn't grumble about TPG'ers on Thanksgiving Day. I will wait until Xmas. Humbug.

A dealer doesn't have incentive to claim a card they are selling is not real. However, it does happen. I've been a beneficiary of it it happening, a dealer described a series of particularly valuable proof sheets in my tobacco boxing niche as "early reprints". They were not early reprints at all (there has never been any fake or reprint, 1 of the cards in it was unknown to exist until 2006 and thus could not really have been counterfeited long ago, and in hand the items are clearly genuine proof sheets and not fakes after thorough examination).

The claim doesn't dictate the result. A thing is not true or false because someone says it is true or false; it is actually true or actually false. We would never believe a card is real just because the person selling it says it is real; same idea.

Greg,

Thank you, but I can't and won't get around the guy's honesty. That was the impression he left which was honesty and I know the two lawyers in this thread will have issue with the claim and this is meant as no shot at them. The cards are fakes and I don't need to capitalize the word or on the opportunity because they are fakes.

A person can be honest and also incorrect at the same time...


Brian (honestly incorrect on occasion, and even possibly on Thanksgiving)

LOL. Honestly down with a cold on Thanksgiving and had to cancel going to three parties, but.....:D.......the cards are fake.

Happy Thanksgiving

I just cannot comprehend believing everything I hear to be true if that thing I hear was said confidently by someone else. This preference for narrative over any objective analysis, research or reason is why so many falsehoods continue to popularly circulate in the hobby. Perhaps the cards are fakes, but if there is no reasonable case for that and there is a reasonable case that they are real, then reason dictates the answer.

Trying to apply some logic here
 

I hear very clearly that you firmly believe and have formed your opinion from the dealer you spoke to who was being honest. For purposes of discussion, let's say he absolutely was being honest. Unless he produced them (which you didn't mention anything about), then it was his opinion they were fakes. Said opinion which he honestly shared with you and you have taken on as yours. Since then some very knowledgeable, respected advanced collectors have handled and carefully examined them. The 2 most respected grading companies have examined them and concluded they are real. It seems to me that the consensus/weight of highly experienced and educated opinions is they are real. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, it is a bit strange to me why you feel the need to argue an unprovable point (after offering your opinion) where your opinion is at best in the minority and at worst a lone outlier opinion.

It's got nothing to do with being a lawyer to want to even remotely test the credibility of some long-ago dealer; it's just common sense. Does this dealer have a name?

I could be persuaded to believe they are repros, but I would want to hear more...for example, "I remember the dealer's name was Larry, and his son was Jeff. Fritz I think it was." They said they made them in the 80's" or something like that.


It would be an odd card series to decide to fake very well in small numbers, with mostly commons.

Jeffrey,

My apologies. If I could remember the names of every dealer I have dealt with since the 1970s it would be miraculous. Now, for dates and times I am not quite to the same level as the one actress from "TAXI", but......

That said where the guy was from and the person who sold the cards were two different locations. The guy in eBay "as I recall" was from Maryland.

It’s not just lawyers, Brian, it’s pretty much everyone but you.

It was not my intent to cross-examine you– believe me that would be far more rigorous. But since you alluded to my profession, I would say that I instead approached your posts as I would a client in an initial consultation. Generally, I would ask: “what brings you in today–what is bothering you or has happened that you would like to talk about?” Then “how has this affected you and what would you like done about it”? After which I would tell them that we will go into the facts more thoroughly and I will advise as to their legal options, give my opinion as to possible outcomes, and provide some strategies.

Here I did not ask the initial questions, but I believe they should be asked now. Why did you bring your unsolicited opinion about these cards as they are about to be auctioned? What is motivating your actions? I assume you are intending to discourage bidding, or at least you should know that negative comments about the cards could have that effect. So do you believe you are providing a service to the hobby and/or trying to right a wrong?

No one here is challenging that you were told these cards were not genuine by some unnamed dealer at a card show 20 or so years ago. Many or most here would take the word of the dealer making the statements and pass on buying any, although I would like to think that I would have asked him some questions about them, examined them myself, and maybe paid the very few $$$ he wanted for one or two, just for future use to better understand how they were made. Nonetheless, your decision to walk away was reasonable and no one suggests otherwise, regardless if he had an honest face and truthful-sounding voice.

But you don’t leave it there. You continue to matter of factly call these cards fakes based on nothing more than that single encounter. Over and over you make this conclusive statement. Now with the passing of a couple of decades and the essentially unanimous opinions expressed by numerous collectors and hobbyists that these are real, you just dig in, adding a couple of feeble remarks that the design is weaker and the street address of the advertiser is missing as supporting “evidence”. Again I think it’s fair to ask why?

To circle back to the beginning of my post, if a client explained to me what you have put forth, not only would I tell him he has no case in trying to prove these Herpolsheimers are fakes, I would counsel him that continually broadcasting them as such in a hobby forum days before their auction arguably could be construed as an attempt to interfere with the business transactions of others. It’s one thing to recount your personal, one-time experience of 20 years ago. It’s something different to conclusively and repeatedly call these cards fakes in the face of all that has come to light since. At a minimum it’s reckless, and in all events it does not help the hobby.

Todd,

Just like 19 years ago and our communications 18 years ago my answer to your questions in the third paragraph of your response:

The cards are fake. If you want to bid that is your choice.

In 2004 I bid on the Baker for an example of fraudulent.

Brian, do you know a single other collector besides yourself who believes these cards are fake? I'm curious. And don't include the nameless fella from 25 years ago :)

Whether I agree with Brian or not is unimportant. However, I do admire him for sticking up for what he believes despite the opinion being unpopular. Thanks for giving your view on these cards!

I wonder if you would feel the same if it was your card being auctioned and bidders were turned away by someone who doesn't just repeat a story that happened to him--which could easily be discounted--but instead repeatedly and conclusively calls your card fake. Since he admitted his intent was to discourage bidding and/or that he knew his remarks would have the effect, I wonder how you would react. As someone alluded earlier, this country has enough people who go about their lives firmly and fervently believing things that are demonstrably false and who are not only unable/unwilling to admit they may be wrong but who propagates their views by doubling down. You can admire that Jay, but personally I don't find it to be a good look, to put it mildly.

Oh, so watching out for others is not a good idea. Put it off as a resolution until next year? :confused:

Look at the rat bite on this Geo Burns. How or why would a forger institute that? Each card appears to have it's own natural wear.

Bob,

If you want to view the card as authentic, it is your choice.

Happy Thanksgiving

Brian, I just think it's an interesting topic. I think it would actually be a big deal if others were to agree with you. I've bought from you, and know you are knowledgeable on these types of cards.

I have e121's and the like and these don't look off to me. I don't think it's the case, but it sounds like you may have more information that you don't want to reveal, which is fine. I question stuff all the time, but I say, "I do not believe those are period." in case I am mistaken.

The information is revealed in full. The cards are fake. Just remember one thing in addition to what I have stated and this is not "revealing" by me, but revealing of fraud. To pass a fraud off on people not all of the examples are in the same condition. Think of how many frauds come to mind beyond card collecting with that statement.

I too find it a pretty random issue to fake, it would have to be a pretty elaborate well thought out deception, how easy would it be to fake bleed through like that?

It started off fake. I came by the dealer in 1999.. 2004 another party offered the first in lots in eBay. Forget about it for years and, well.....

One person refusing to deal with reason is not going to affect auction prices.

Question everything should always be the motto. But I'm not seeing a shred of any reason or evidence that supports this conclusion being insisted on, while there is significant reasoning that it is real. I'd love to hear an argument that the hobby has screwed up again and they are not real, but that would require some reason and evidence.

A dealer told me this below card was real, and he seemed like an honest fellow, though I can't even recall his name. Therefore, the card is real and no amount of evidence or reason can change my insistence that my reasonless opinion is actual reality. It is real.

Surely we see how ridiculous and absurd this train of thought, for it cannot be called logic, is.

LOL!

Thank you

Happy Thanksgiving

Brian and I have been arguing about this set for years.

They are real.

Brian is wrong but he doesn’t want to believe it.

That is the end of it.

He has never provided any evidence to the contrary other than his flimsy bit of anecdotal stuff like he did here. He has also never handled the cards or indicated that he has and has an opinion himself, just that an unnamed dealer told him they were fake.

I have nothing against Brian and consider him a friend.

But…he is wrong.

If it is bleed through or a wet sheet transfer I doubt it would be added. More a regular problem in printing.

The real question is how would it be done. It is not like almost every town in the US has a building with a lot of paper from that era. Also how would you find old ink? I doubt eBay would have anything like that. Then do the counterfeiters go with readily available easily made commercial rubber stamps? Maybe not but how many really have access to a HAAS CNC machine to easily make the stone "printing plates". Then what, watch a few youtube videos on how easy stone lithography is. That just sounds really far-fetched to me.

If you have a guy who operates as a printer and enjoys collecting cards, he would have access to everything you've stated. Now, a five plus year gap between my encounter and the eBay auctions in 2004 followed by the news of a second grouping in 2019. Uh......hmmm.....nice cycle.

Not the best image, but PSA has new high resolution images of the Eddie Collins card on their cert verification site:

https://www.psacard.com/cert/50067761

Rhett is a friend, but friends disagree.

For those who worry about the lack of an address for Herpolsheimer's on the cards, here are two postcards currently on ebay:

The store was in the heart of Grand Rapids, right next to the Kent County civil war monument that was erected in 1885.

Also, as was pointed out earlier, their advertisements did not include their address. I even looked up the Grand Rapids city directory for 1922 on ancestry.com. It has a Herpolsheimers advertisement on page 63, and it does not have their address on it.

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/H6EAA...l9/s-l1600.jpg
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/gEIAA...NB/s-l1600.jpg

Steve

Here's a postcard for Herpolsheimer's, also on ebay; it was postmarked in 1909:

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/BE0AA...KW/s-l1600.jpg

Steve

Steve,

From page 113 on the Grand Rapids 1922 city directory:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...08085&seq=1131

Monroe and Ottawa Avs (the way Aves is abbreviated on page)

For a population two years beyond 1920's census count of 137,634 it would have been a big help in advertising:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Rapids,_Michigan

I think we have a case of confirmation bias (the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories).

Brian sincerely believes the cards to be fake based on a dealer telling him they were. The dealer did not say what aspect of the cards made them fake, he just said they were.

So the answer to why some cards were first seen in 1999, then sold on eBay in 2004, and then a new set of cards (with different pencil markings on the back) appeared in 2019 and are being sold in 2023 is that it is a "nice cycle" for committing fraud along with a prediction that more cards will appear on the same schedule.

There is nothing inherently "nice" about this cycle. To me it is a random cycle that makes sense for very obscure cards. The appearance of yet another card (the PSA 6 Collins) is answered by questioning why PSA incorrectly labelled it an E121, not by saying the card is not real.

The back design being "inferior" somehow supports them being fake, although it is not stated what is inferior. Is it that the border is less ornate than on the Holsum Bread cards? Well, I prefer a plainer border, so I say the back design is superior. And it is certainly superior to blank-backed and stamp-backed cards, none of which Brian is claiming are fake.

I am still unclear how the lack of an address on the back proves the cards are fake except that it would have been a "courtesy" for Herpolsheimer's to include it.

One could also say the address not being on the back supports them being real because Herpolsheimer's often did not use their address in advertisements, earlier Herpolsheimer's cards did not use an address, some other department store-backed cards did not use an address, and why would an address be needed for a massive store located in the heart of the city where people had been shopping for years.

The fact that the cards are in different conditions is somehow also evidence of them being fake. Even though almost every "find" (except Black Swamp) consists of cards in different conditions. So is every find of multi-condition cards now suspect?

Isn't the simpler answer that the original dealer assumed they were fake because he had never seen cards with this back before? And that instead of thinking he had found uncatalogued cards, he thought, these cards are not catalogued so they are not real?

Michael,

The person who put the price on the cards-not saying the dealer-knew they were false.

I also direct your attention to the advertisement border design. This was a knockoff of Holsum Bread, but a cheap one. It doesn't look like a pattern from the 1920s, but an imitation for the 1970s.

Sorry, the cards are fakes and in the case of fakes to help the con they need to be in various stages of use to help with sales.

First, I saw them in May 1999 and had an honest. Then the same group hit eBay in 2004. A "new" group came to attention in 2019. Waiting for the next group of this fraud in 2034. The fifteen year rule so everyone forgets. 2004, 2019, 2034.

I see quite a few familiar and well-respected names on this thread who are adamant that these cards are real, including several who are very familiar with the E121 set and its variants.

Besides Brian and the dealer that he originally spoke with, are there any knowledgeable collectors who feel that these are fakes?

Okay. I guess this is one of those threads where no one is going to change anyone's mind.

But to summarize:

You think they are fake because the dealer thought they were fake. And the dealer thought they were fake because someone had written prices on the back. And this applies to cards found later without prices on the back which neither you or the dealer has seen in person. And to the PSA 6 Collins which doesn't seem like it was from either find.

I am not an expert on design so I cannot state whether the Herpsolsheimer's borders look more 70s than 20s. But I disagree that cheap is the same as less ornate. If they wanted to be cheap, why have a border at all? Many similar cards have no border and are deemed to be real.

We disagree on the whether the condition is relevant. You are saying that the condition varies because it is more convincing of an actual find. I am saying the condition varies because it is an actual find. I don't think there is a way to prove either one of these to the other person's satisfaction.

I am not aware of a 15-year rule for release of fraudulent cards. Is that a known span of time that has happened for other card frauds? If so it is not a very good rule, because no one forgot!

In fact, the 2004 sale is specifically mentioned by LOTG in their description for the Babe Ruth card (and for several other cards).

Michael,

I agree we agree we disagree. There are now more variables on agree in the last sentence than "Peckinpaugh/Peckinbaugh" to be produced by possibly 2034 with a Herpolsheimer back. Oh, the market value! Mostly by way of manure. Still, there is now the variable of Artificial Intelligence, a person working as a printer and that person's access to the proper paper from the time to put on the fraud not only on the "latter" Herpolsheimer set, but on other yet to be discovered frauds.....err.....umm.....finds. Oh, what the future holds for collecting. Yikes. My delivery of honesty in a completely different way than the dealer in May 1999. It can be possible that it was simply his honesty that delayed the "discovery" (LOL to the reference) in 2004.

Has there been an advertisement found for the 1921 Herpolsheimer cards? It would seem that the company would have advertised it like they did in 1916. Also, have advertisements been found for all other issues of that era or is it very common not to advertise the cards. I will admit I know very little about cards of that era and even less so about how cards were advertised. Also, i'm no expert on newspaper research either.

Whatever the case may be, I have no skin in this game, but was curious about those questions. Having no advertisement does not mean the cards are fake, but it does raise the question as to why not, especially sine they did in 1916. I'm not saying they are fake so please don't bite my head off.

I am unaware of any advertising for the cards, but that is not surprising for the following reasons:

1. I believe it is the exception rather than the rule for baseball cards being advertised in 1920's newspapers.

2. It can be real spotty finding digitalized newspapers for some areas, period. I don’t recall how I came upon the ad from 1916, but notice that is from the Grand Rapids Herald. It is difficult to find any copies of that paper from those years. No doubt the digital archives will improve and be coordinated over time, but for now it can be real hit and miss. As an odd example, I have looked for advertising for Weil Baking in 1916, 1917 and 1921 (they issued the Holsum Bread cards), and can’t even seem to find New Orleans papers, much less relevant information.

3. The advertising from 1916 was all the brainchild of Felix Mendelsohn, who was behind the m101-4/5 style cards. While he might have had some connection to the 1921 cards, he was not the publisher.

4. As noted earlier, there was tumult in the Herpolsheimer family at this time, resulting from the deaths of two top company leaders in 1920. Their advertising and marketing plans may not have been high priority and/or deciding who made those plans may have been internally disputed or unorganized.

I wish people had debated the bsf like this. I'm bidding on the LOTG cards fwiw.

I wish you the best.

Hey,, thanks, Brian. I'm looking at the Charlie Deal at $160 and thinking about kicking it a buck.

What are your thoughts on the bsf? I know my thoughts were "that's not believable." and others were like, "prove it." and I was like "I can't prove it, but I don't buy the whole enchilada. Enjoy them, gang.", so I get where you are coming from.

When they get ready for the big reveal in 2034, I would say go for bigger names in higher grades.

I was thinking about Davenport the same way I thought about and bid on Baker in 2004. To have a card example from a fraudulent set. Not going to do it.

One might consider the baseball card as the advertisement itself.

Gentlemen,

I apologize, but I forgot about my post in this on December 24, 2004 at 7:47 a.m. I forgot, as noted in the post, the dealer indicated to me the cards were produced in the 1970's. Here is the post of messages:

https://www.net54baseball.com/showth...=Herpolsheimer