1909 E90-1 Cy Young — Real/Fake

[steve B]

Originally Posted by whoopi1947

The seller of this card is russelschreibe0 and he has been a good friend of mine for 25 years. I helped him set up his ebay account to sell a collection of cards that belonged to his father in law for a long time. The seller is 90 years old. I took the pictures and did not scan them. You seem to be worried about feedback on his part but check my seller feedback (whoopi1947). I will vouch for his honesty. Have you ever heard of ebay buyer protection program? If there is a problem with an item ebay will insure that it is resolved no matter if there is a 14 day return policy or not, especially if it is misrepresented. You might all be a nice bunch of guys but it sure sounds like a mob with pitchforks and torches. You are welcome to bid on the cards that we have listed but if you are too paranoid just let the other people on ebay buy the cards that you could have. Some of your members have bought some of these cards and we want to thank you and insure you that if there is a problem with your purchase we will make it right.

Good to know all that.

Checking out your feedback, it looks like you sell a lot of different stuff, just like I did when I was actively selling. The first few are mostly cool old industrial type things, another hobby of mine.

That's a good field to be into, especially as a seller. Cards are much tougher. Old machinery and such is hard to fake, so it's not much of a problem.
However in cards........There's a LOT of sellers who specialize in reprints, and while it can be done reasonably, it seems like the majority of them use language that might make a buyer think there's a chance a card might be real. Others simply omit that it's a reprint and a few put them out there as real. And many of them constantly shift accounts, so a new account with expensive stuff gets some extra scrutiny.
Constantly seeing people who don't know better pay hundreds for either a worn commercially made reprint or something someone made on their printer at home leads to some of us keeping the pitchfork and torch right by the front door.

Yes, Ebay has a buyer protection plan, and it works well at times, but going through the process can be a nuisance.

The key as you've seen is really good pictures or scans. There's good stuff with poor scans, but again, many of the less upright sellers hide the clues behind poor cellphone pics.
Really good pictures eliminate the real/fake confusion and give a better idea of condition. I'd go so far as to say that good pictures add a lot to the final price, maybe not much for the less expensive cards, but for the really nice ones it will make a difference.


Steve B