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Posted By: Paul

David, I agree with you. Also, its not that hard to determine if a Fro Joy is authentic or not when someone with experience has it in hand. I suspect the grading companies shy away from grading them because its a pain constantly having to deal with the barrage of reprints, & the real ones are actually somewhat rare. Below is a few thing to look for. Leon was correct about any type of color is a reprint. The cards must be black & white. Dan was also correct about the clarity. Original Fro Joys have quite a bit of clarity except for two of them- The babe bangs one out, & the babe comes home. Don't remember the card numbers at the moment. Below are scans of a fake Ruth portrait & a real one. Notice the clarity difference when looking at his eyes. Also, the two print defects near the front right/top corner border on the fake is a sure sign its fake. Real Fro joys must also have two things. The box on the back must not have any line breaks near the corners, & they must be printed using a photoengraved technique. There are reprints out there made by Repli-Cards that have more clarity & the solid boxes on the back, but they are not photoengraved. Also, they just don't look vintage. I suppose its possible that photoengraved reprints exist, but this has not been proven that I know of. Even if someone had the original printing plates, they would need to duplicate the ink, card stock, etc...


AUTEHNIC FRO JOY


FAKE FRO JOY- PLEASE NOTICE THE LACK OF CLARITY & TWO PRINT DEFECTS NEAR THE TOP/RIGHT BORDER


REAL PHOTOENGRAVED FRO JOY-PLEASE NOTICE THE PRINTING DOTS DARK RIM


FAKE FRO JOY- PLEASE NOTICE PRINTING DOTS HAVE NO DARK RIM & DIFFERENT CARD STOCK