[drcy]

I don't see it being a modern fake, in that it's an obscure process that few baseball collectors are familiar with. You generally don't forge items the potential buyers are ignorant about. Note that even Lelands didn't realize what they had. Plus most forgeries are something simple to make (ala, all those digital baseball card reprints). The orotone process is expensive and difficult. It's not something the normal person could make.

There are modern made orotones, including of Edward Curtis's famous images of American Indians, but the modern versions themselves are expensive, due to the laborious process and gold. The modern made Curtis orotones often sell for over $1,000.

Before he took it apart, I said that if it was a fake, it would most probably have a reproduction image of the player on a piece of paper placed behind the glass. But he took it apart and the back was gold as with a genuine orotone.