Ruth FroJay, Help Needed

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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.