I've examined these thoroughly. I've compared examples of the amateurs with those of Almendares players and compared all of those to examples of Romeo y Julieta boxers. I looked at them with a 30x loupe and under a black light. I made high resolution scans. I measured each edge of each card. What I'm saying is that I spent some time examining these. I was really hoping I'd be able to form some sort of definitive opinion regarding authenticity, but I had no such luck. The end result is that I am about exactly 50/50 on whether or not these are real. There are numerous red flags, but none that make me say they are definitely fake. But there are enough that give me serious doubt about them being real. But they could be. The one thing I can say is that it is much more likely that the amateur cards are real than the Almendares ones. The one thing I'm fairly confident about is that we're not going to get any better answer about whether or not these are legit. If anyone feels comfortable with them, they might want to go ahead and pick them up. Personally, I would not want them in my collection.
I'm intentionally avoiding going into great detail about some of the red flags since I'm not looking to write a manual on how to help scumbag forgers get better at making fake cards.
So, to sum up: The might be real, and they might not.
-Ryan
|