[Bridwell]

Regarding the 1917 Piedmont pack which was sold in the 2008 REA auction, it looks to me it would be fairly easy for someone to fake that type of pack. They could probably steam open the wax paper wrapper and then steam off half of the tax stamp. That type of pack did not have the thin paper edge seal that earlier packs had, because it was replaced by the wax paper covering starting in the 1915 era. Someone could have carefully opened the pack and inserted a common T206. GAI was mis-identifying many packs as 1909-11 T206 packs which had tax stamps from 1917 or later on them. Apparently GAI did not have much knowledge of T206 packs at that time. I have seen at least 10 different GAI packs on ebay and I don't believe any of them could have had a T206 in them legitimately. Whoever faked the REA pack was hoping to sell other similar fakes at huge prices after the REA pack was opened and made public. REA fell for a hoax, it seems to me. If someone owned 3 or 4 other 1917 packs, they would have a motive to fake one of them and take a loss on it, in order to profit on the others.