Ruth FroJay, Help Needed

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Posted By: Gary Weatherhead

A local flea market dealer (the flea Market here is open 6 days a week) has two cutout FroJays that are black and white. How can I tell if they are real or two of the many forgeries of these cards? I would describe him as a dealer of coins and any kind of junk you can imagine. Says he was a card dealer in the mid to late 90's and they are leftover from that time along with a group of cards dating primarily from the late 40's through new stuff.

I had a loop with me but didn't bother to take the cards out of their holders and examine them for print dots.

Any help appreciated.

Best
Gary

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Posted By: barrysloate

It's really difficult to tell, and most are fake.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

The vast majority of Fro Joy Ruths are reprints, so unless you really know what you're doing it's best to pass. If an auction house like REA, Lelands or Mastro is offering them, one can assume them to be real.

For a short chapter with microscopic pictures on the printing used to make the original Fro Joys, see below. The chapter also gives you a brief look at how science is used to determine the age of printed items.

http://www.cycleback.com/baseballcards/sixteen.html

The practical problem for collectors is that few have seen in person a real Fro Joy, so they have nothing to compare to, not even a memory. For an avid Pre-War collector, identifying reprint Ruth Goudeys and T206 Ty Cobbs is easy, as Goudeys and T206s are plentiful and they've seen lots of real ones. They know what real ones look like. The issue with the Fro Joys isn't so much that the black and white reprints are so close to the real ones, but that few potential buyers have ever seen a real one in person so they don't know what a real one is supposed to look like.

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Posted By: Jimmy

There is a big difference in color, the real version has a cream color look and the reprinted versions are white. If they are all in color they are reprints from the 1980s. They do not even grade these cards anymore

Jimmy

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Posted By: Steve f

Gary, if they're labeled FroJay run like Hell.

I enjoy the real Fro-Joy strips, but I'm an armpit collector.

David once wrote, "My opinion is that collectors should be unusually careful in purchasing Fro Joy Ruths. People shouldn't be purchasing them from anyone off the street. Personally, I would never state that a Fro Joy was genuine without looking at it under the microscope."

Words a vintage collector should live by.

Jimmy, SGC and PSA won't... BVG will grade these, I have two out there being slabbed now, hopefully

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Posted By: Jimmy

I am very surprised Beckett will grade these, I did not know as I only deal with SGC and PSA. Fro Joys are one of the toughest issues to buy

Jimmy

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Posted By: Rob L

The quickest way to get an idea whether the card may be real is to look around the box on the back of the card. The corners are supposed to connect. Every reprint that I have seen does not have the corners connected.

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Posted By: davidcycleback

There are different types of reprints, so I don't know that there's a uniform rule. There are white and sepia reprints. I looked in person at some reprints for someone once. Beyond the microscope, they fluoresced brightly under a black light (proving the stock was modern) and the boxes on back had breaks as described in above post. Assuming there are no scratches or scrapes on the lines, breaks in the boxes is a sure sign a Fro Joy is a reprint. I don't know that the breaks appear on all versions of the reprints.. The cards were also handcut from a sheet.

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Posted By: Paul

There's no line breaks on the back of the Fro Joy Repli-Card reprints.

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Posted By: Anthony

PSA will still grade them- a friend had his set graded about 4 months ago.

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Posted By: Steve f

He's got darn good luck then. Mine were duds;

http://tinyurl.com/2fmq6f