What's the real deal with these Cuban cards?

[ElCabron]

At this point it's the seller's mouth (mouths, actually) that are discrediting the cards as much or more than the cards themselves. That's really unfortunate if these are actually real? For example, Victor chose to chime in, and I guess somehow help convince us the cards are real. He chose to do this by:

(A) admitting that Victor and his father are the ones responsible for the Polar fakes. I believe he was calling himself "Michael" on the board back then. Not a great start, especially considering all the similarities between those cards and these cards, the sales method, the tactics on the board, etc.

(B) bragging about how he bought "the the biggest lot of Cuban card that I saw in my life with Punch,Billiken,etc." I happen to know that there were a number of Punch cards in that group. Why this is bad for you, Ernesto/Victor/Michael/Ana, is that it means YOU HAD ACCESS TO ORIGINAL EXAMPLES TO GET YOUR IMAGES FROM. Add a source for vintage photographic paper as well as printing and you have the exact formula for how to make fake cards and sell them as a previously unknown issue that you "discovered." I'm not even saying that's what happened here, but it's starting to look really, really bad.

(C) Yesterday, in one of "her" rants, Ana passive-aggressively made accusations about people "who use and abuse of the cubans buying cards in 20 and selling them in 2000." It seemed like "she" was directing these comments at me, since there is a long history of this group telling lies making up stories about me. That's another issue that we don't need to get into right now. Anyway, I asked if "she" was saying that "she" paid $20. A few posts later "she" said "Ryan i am cuban, not american like you and i paid good half of the price that i put in auction." I took this to be another passive-aggressive jab at how the Americans pay so little and take advantage of the Cubans, while Cubans like Ernesto/Ana/Victor/Michael are stand up people pay big money for cards, so as not to take advantage of anyone. Well, the total starting price for the 11 cards on ebay is $2,800. This means he/she/they paid $1,400 for them. The only problem with this is that while they have previously said the cards turned up in Spain, Ernesto told me on the phone that he found them in a house in Cuba. So I guess he "discovered" them in a house in Cuba, but that house just happened to be filled with extremely knowledgeable individuals that knew how much to ask for these cards. Which is strange, because in that scenario, that is usually when the paying $20 for a $2,000 item happens. Yes, Cuban on Cuban shenanigans! But instead, I guess he/she/they paid $1,400 to this lucky household just because that's how they roll. Takin' care of their peeps and whatnot. If this find was legit and came from a house in Cuba, the previous owners would have had no idea what the cards were or how much they could be worth. $1,400 is an INSANE amount of money for a household in Cuba. This story just isn't adding up.

I still have more to say, but I'm going to take a break for a bit. What an annoying timesuck.

-Ryan