Fakes and the Market
I do not know about pre war, but the Standard Catalog ( 2011), lists at least two groups of fakes...as fakes. At page 397 it lists "1950s-60s Topps Promotional Samples". These look like small versions of the Topps regular issues but the backs have only a stamp which reads "Promotional Sample, The Topps Co, Brooklyn NY". The cards are 1 1/4 by 1 3/4 and involve someone cutting the pictures out of the Topps Surf books and pastng them on some cardboard
Then on page 1308 it lists "'Pewter' Gallery Ingots, which it says are counterfeits of the Topps Gallery of Immortals and Gallery of Champions, which were replicas of Topps cards for different years ( 1984-91) done in aluminum, bronze or silver. Topps did do one pewter card for each year for one player, but counterfeits of others surfaced on ebay.
Once they were in the catalog, I had to have a couple of examples of each which I easily found on ebay. The Catalog says they have no collectible value, but in my mind, being in the catalog gave them some minor value to me, even though the purpose of the listing is to warn folks they are not genuine.
The 89 Fleer Ripken obscenity card has several variations ( white out, black boxes, black scribble, cut outs, ect.) but has just as many fakes of each, which have become collectibles in and of themselves of sorts
Last edited by ALR-bishop; 09-05-2013 at 09:47 AM.
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