Don't know if anyone here was following these but 18 of these cards closed on Ebay yesterday. It appears that a Venezuelan tobacco co used the E211 York Caramel images as a base for a tobacco card product. The numbers and images on the cards that were already checklisted as E211 match in all respects; several of the cards would represent additions to the E211 checklist. It was a pretty significant find, if the cards are genuine.
Although the verdict is out until the winners get the cards and have the chance to review them closely, the scans of the cards offered on Ebay were of such high quality that I do not believe they were made from York scans; Yorks are just too hard to find to be able to fake them with that quality. A forger would have to have had access to actual cards, which doesn't seem likely since none of the "advanced" boxing collectors I know have anywhere close to a set of them. My own scan database for these is at around 30 cards and I could not produce a good enough forgery with them to generate the sharp scans on that were used on Ebay.
Does anyone have access to a World Tobacco Index? I would like to see if the cards are listed in there. The brand was "Bigott" (they have a few other sets in the ACC). Here is a link to a card:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=290315970557