[molenick]

I think we have a case of confirmation bias (the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs or theories).

Brian sincerely believes the cards to be fake based on a dealer telling him they were. The dealer did not say what aspect of the cards made them fake, he just said they were.

So the answer to why some cards were first seen in 1999, then sold on eBay in 2004, and then a new set of cards (with different pencil markings on the back) appeared in 2019 and are being sold in 2023 is that it is a "nice cycle" for committing fraud along with a prediction that more cards will appear on the same schedule.

There is nothing inherently "nice" about this cycle. To me it is a random cycle that makes sense for very obscure cards. The appearance of yet another card (the PSA 6 Collins) is answered by questioning why PSA incorrectly labelled it an E121, not by saying the card is not real.

The back design being "inferior" somehow supports them being fake, although it is not stated what is inferior. Is it that the border is less ornate than on the Holsum Bread cards? Well, I prefer a plainer border, so I say the back design is superior. And it is certainly superior to blank-backed and stamp-backed cards, none of which Brian is claiming are fake.

I am still unclear how the lack of an address on the back proves the cards are fake except that it would have been a "courtesy" for Herpolsheimer's to include it.

One could also say the address not being on the back supports them being real because Herpolsheimer's often did not use their address in advertisements, earlier Herpolsheimer's cards did not use an address, some other department store-backed cards did not use an address, and why would an address be needed for a massive store located in the heart of the city where people had been shopping for years.

The fact that the cards are in different conditions is somehow also evidence of them being fake. Even though almost every "find" (except Black Swamp) consists of cards in different conditions. So is every find of multi-condition cards now suspect?

Isn't the simpler answer that the original dealer assumed they were fake because he had never seen cards with this back before? And that instead of thinking he had found uncatalogued cards, he thought, these cards are not catalogued so they are not real?