Unbelievable (?) Buy at Athens Flea Market
 

My buddy (who knows very little about sports cards) sent me these pics from a deal he bought Sunday at a flea market in Athens, GA. I will see them in person tomorrow.

He’s going to be disappointed when authenticity is examined.

mother lode! I wonder if any of them are real?

Interesting
 

Some look fake but a bunch look pretty good….. need to send them in. Did he get a good deal on them???

The vast majority do not look good... some obvious reprints

+1

Maybe a few of the 50s cards? It's hard to tell on some of them. I think when holding them it would be easy to tell.
.

Hmm always the oil stain look…


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Majority are reprints, but there are a few real ones in there. The cheaper ones unfortunately.

That is a pretty large collection of very obvious fakes. Hope it was crazy cheap or at least a few turn out to be real.

Fake as the day is long. Perfect centering is usually a dead giveaway, followed by muddy print coloring.

I told him a BUNCH were going to be fake, but would be able to tell him more once they're in hand. I think he said he paid $500.

It’s like an April Fools Day joke 8 days late!

Haha. Well played.

All fake. Unfortunately, your friend is out $500. I was a bit unsure about the signed 1985 Star Miichael Jordan, but you can see from this link here (Link), it is just an Etsy reproduction. Better to just stick with ebay and their authentication guarantee program.

Definitely not all fake.

I'm most curious about the 1950 Jackie. It looks decentish from here. The '53 Topps Jackie as well looks possible.
Both could be easily disproved if I had a better pic.

None of the pre war cards look good.

Others that look possibly good to me are
Aaron AS
'55 and '57 Aaron (big maybe)
'60 mantle (big maybe)
Ruth look n see
Both Mays All stars
'56 Mays (big maybe)
Fleer koufax

I'm quite certain the all star Aaron/Mays and the Ruth look n see are genuine.

Would be easy to tell in hand, also these pics are pretty bad. Need good close up pics outside of plastic with no glare. As well as back photos.

I second this. Be prepared to get your feelings hurt. Hopefully he didn't pay a lot.

The Honus Wagner with the Ty Cobb back is 100% real. No question

If you are thinking of putting a black light to them, have your eclipse glasses handy.

Agreed, all the pre war are Etsy fakes.

All reprints, but the seller's price was that he had the decimal in the wrong place. He had, mistakenly, an extra zero before the decimal. All might be worth $50.00 together. :D

Unfortunately, the Ruth Look N See is a fake also, and I don't have high hopes for the Aaron and Mays cards either. Here's the Etsy reprint for the Look N See Card: Link

Yea looks like you are right, his Red cheek seems to be a good indicator. On the real one it is much closer to a natural looking light hue. While on the fake it does look super off like a deep red.

Ouch, this may hurt quite a bit then. These are all Etsy cards, looking at the print, wear patterns and numerous other items I personally don’t think a single one is real, none. Even the Fleer Koufax is a 98 cent Etsy card.

I think he fell into dangerous waters and likely got scammed for the full lot which cost the seller about 80 bucks at most and a hours work selecting his order. I won’t beat on it, pass on my sympathies.

collection
 

nice, they look pretty good

Pretty good day at the flea market…for the seller. :(

I don't see even one card that I feel comfortable with.

I prefer and collect raw cards. But this, wow.

Dave lol

Hopefully he didn't spend too much on a bunch of pretty bad fakes.


Whenever you find a collection for sale always ask yourself the following question...

"Where have all the Carlton Willey's gone?"

by this I mean other than in a Major Auction House where would you ever find cards spanning 4 to 5 decades without a single common (like Carlton Willey) player in the bunch?

It just never happens in the wild and should immediately make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up that something isn't right.

Very true. But the swap meet seller did throw in a token 'Carlton Willey' with the E92 Bridwell (or perhaps the card has a T206 Piedmont back).

Brian

A little more information concerning the thought all are fakes. i do not feel one can know that for sure from a bunch of low res photos on a website, but what do i know. That is why I ask. Am willing to listen and learn.

#1 is that the stocks are almost all completely wrong at even a quick glance. These are not good fakes requiring detailed examination. The Wagner/Cobb is a card that does not even exist at all. There are numerous other indicators regarding the wear, aging patterns, color washout etc. Some of them, if you look them up on Etsy, are also clearly a copy of those fakes and that was the origin source.

Any time we have a thread like this, a number of folks will ID the fakes that are less egregiously bad or are at an angle that doesn't highlight the stock problem as real. The Fleer Koufax, the Look N See, they are also fakes just slightly better or at an angle that doesn't as clearly highlight the wrong stock problem.

These cards are fake, but the buyer can probably sell them for a considerable profit and pass it. A lot of these routinely hit $100 on eBay from people who don't do research.

In the words of Potter Stewart, “I know it when I see it.”

There is also the "how stupid is the dumbest person" problem. To assume that a decent percentage of these are real, you have to assume that a seller at a flea market knows just enough about sportscards to know they are worth hundreds of dollars, yet too stupid to do even 2 minutes of research to see how valuable his wares might be. Also, assuming the pictures represent how the cards were presented at the flea market, the seller either had card collecting supplies (sheets and card savers) or went to a card store or online to acquire them to protect them. Again, if you have a level of knowledge that such cards may be valuable and need protecting, I doubt you just package them up in a lot of 100 cards with no research at all what is even an approximate value. It would have been slightly more believable if they were found loose in an old cigar or Hostess Ding Dongs box.

Finally, I go back to the "dumbest person" problem. I know nothing about women's fashions. If I inherited a closet of shoes, I would have no idea of their value. But, if I saw names I had heard of before printed on the shoes, I would at least Google for 3 mins to see if they are worth anything. Typing "Babe Ruth autograph value" pulls up a Google result page where nothing is under $15,000. I am not just tossing that in a lot of other names I have heard of and slapping a $500 price tag.

So many perfectly centered cards! And from issues where centering is almost always a challenge.

This collector must have had an amazing eye for centering, and must have been incredibly picky about the pieces they kept, even decades before anyone really focused on centering very much. The collector must have been related to Snowman.

Or they could just all be fakes that happen to have perfect centering. Take your pick.

When surrounded by rabid wolves, you don't hold out your hand to hope one is nice enough to let you pet him. 90% of the group should be obvious fakes to a moderately knowledgeable vintage collector. Do you stake your money on someone who obviously loaded the group with fake flash that they then somehow mistakenly provided a real card? I wouldn't take that bet in a lifetime.

I will not give away more methods than I am comfortable with on a public forum, however I am very comfortable saying the remainder are also fake. Obvious markers that are well known are the general fuzziness of reprints, the artificial aging is all poorly done, and not a one of these post war items is not perfectly centered by the counterfeiter. There are innumerable other signs, but it's unnecessary to add,

If you have any belief in one of these cards I would suggest an Etsy search for the card and you can find the reprinted card with the exact same printing fingerprints shown (registration, centering, coloring) in a couple minutes. Granted the seller added a little sandpapering and additional aging on many like on the Star Jordan here,

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1678253...search_click=1

...However, they can all be identified. It's kinda weak that the scammer likely ordered them all from the exact same source...that's very little effort.

Taking bets on whether this flea market dealer has another pot-o-gold at the end of the rainbow when he sets up next week, with remarkably similar looking cards.

:cool:

It was actually a woman and I THINK she brought the box to the guy who has a permanent spot there selling mostly records/comics/magazines.

I'm obviously not condoning this but it's actually a pretty good TAKE THAT hustle to get someone who knowingly is taking advantage of you (or so they think).

Unfortunately feelings don't enter into it. I get fooled online occasionally, it happens to the best of us, which is why I only said I don't feel comfortable with any of them. I could literally go card by card and tell you what my concerns are though, as could any number of other members. Of course a lot of times when you make the effort to help someone out, the concerned party just gets mad and tells you "you don't know what you're talking about." To take a lot of time and effort (and describing the problems of each card would take a LOT of time) to help someone only to be lashed out at, isn't high on my list of priorities.

Also, when over half of them are obvious fakes why would the remainder be real? That would make no sense.

My personal fave is the T206 Wagner with Ty Cobb back :)

My personal fave is the T206 Wagner with Ty Cobb back :)

I used to know a renowned hobbyist back in the day who would patiently listen to folks’ stories about how they came into a collection and then briefly flipped through the cards - usually (but not always) reaching a conclusion that they were no good. Many of the things he looked at were obscure issues and I asked him point blank how he could be such an expert on so many varied cards - before the days of the internet were mainstream.

His answer was so simple it was brilliant. He knew the major issues well enough to know what to look for - but not the obscure ones. So he went by a few simple rules. If the cards he knew well were fake 1 he assumed the others were too. If he didn’t really have a handle on any of the obscure issues - at least he knew what the stars and rarities were. If a random collection was packed with those and few to no commons - he assumed it was fake … and he was almost always correct.

Any time that you see a Leaf card with true white in the name that doesn't match the border, it is the sure sign of a fake. What cracks me up is that we used to "age" reprints when I was a kid, took a lot of pride in it, and I think some of those might be better than the ones in the pictures.

That said, fakes are getting REALLY good now. I took a flyer on a Ramly that I found at an antique shop and it is 100% fake. My spidey-sense was screaming that the T204 and a Sports King were both fake based on the stock and weight, but for $20 a piece I thought I would take a flyer. As soon as I got home and took another look at them I realized that I had burned $40. Bring a loop, go with your gut. If it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck...

THAT is awesome!

I imagine most of our collections contain Cobb and Ruth and no Carlton Willeys.

I guess someone is happy, regrettably not gonna be the buyer though.

I have every Topps Carlton Willey card. His 59 is my favorite.

I know I have the above hobby trifecta!


Brian (not my Willey, because I can't seem to keep mine in my pants when I am ready to scan it)

The autographed #106 '33 Goudey Lajoie is just pathetic, the worst one in the lot IMO. The original was auctioned off in the Copeland Auction and has found a few new homes since then.