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Posted By: Ryan Christoff

Frank,

I'll try to post further about these fakes if I have more time, but maybe this will help:



Left is from the yearbook/program.

Right is the fake card.

Notice the 2nd "A" in "COCAINA."

They did not type new text or need to find the correct font in order to reproduce these. They made them directly from the yearbook/programs. No doubt they used period paper and did a good job. But which image is clearer to you? Which text is darker? Which one looks original and which one looks copied, then dirtied up to look old?

Also, the premiums and booklets you mentioned are commonly seen and not new discoveries. Even the Ansco cards, which are NOT one-of-a-kind, were known about privately long before they became available publicly. If Trinidad y Hno had made cards like these, we'd already have seen them. They'd be common.

Isn't it also odd that they used images from nearly every yearbook? Clearly those images are great to make fake cards from, but you'd think a super-rare newly discovered issue would only have been issued in one year, but apparently it was made over several years, somehow distributed, and not really collected (with the exception of one tight-lipped hard-core collector who kept every example from every year and hung on to them as a collection) or even known about by any of the most advanced collectors in the hobby.

Oh, and while the seller is good and would probably not have been involved in the creation of these forgeries, I can tell you that he does get some of his material from someone involved in the perpetration of the "Polar" fraud.

I'm sure I'll get a ration of crap from the guys in Cuba again for pulling their covers, but fake garbage like this really drives me crazy.

I should probably be done posting about why certain Cuban cards are fake. Might as well let the wishful thinkers of the world collect fake cards if they want.

However, if someone ever contacts me privately and wants to know if I think a card or issue is real, I will still always respond with my opinion. Whatever that's worth.

-Ryan