1921 Herpolsheimers graded w/o mark

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by G1911

One person refusing to deal with reason is not going to affect auction prices.

Question everything should always be the motto. But I'm not seeing a shred of any reason or evidence that supports this conclusion being insisted on, while there is significant reasoning that it is real. I'd love to hear an argument that the hobby has screwed up again and they are not real, but that would require some reason and evidence.

A dealer told me this below card was real, and he seemed like an honest fellow, though I can't even recall his name. Therefore, the card is real and no amount of evidence or reason can change my insistence that my reasonless opinion is actual reality. It is real.

Surely we see how ridiculous and absurd this train of thought, for it cannot be called logic, is.

LOL!

Thank you

Happy Thanksgiving

[rhettyeakley]

Brian and I have been arguing about this set for years.

They are real.

Brian is wrong but he doesn’t want to believe it.

That is the end of it.

He has never provided any evidence to the contrary other than his flimsy bit of anecdotal stuff like he did here. He has also never handled the cards or indicated that he has and has an opinion himself, just that an unnamed dealer told him they were fake.

I have nothing against Brian and consider him a friend.

But…he is wrong.

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by rhettyeakley

Brian and I have been arguing about this set for years.

They are real.

Brian is wrong but he doesn’t want to believe it.

That is the end of it.

He has never provided any evidence to the contrary other than his flimsy bit of anecdotal stuff like he did here. He has also never handled the cards or indicated that he has and has an opinion himself, just that an unnamed dealer told him they were fake.

I have nothing against Brian and consider him a friend.

But…he is wrong.

Rhett is a friend, but friends disagree.

[Steve D]

For those who worry about the lack of an address for Herpolsheimer's on the cards, here are two postcards currently on ebay:

The store was in the heart of Grand Rapids, right next to the Kent County civil war monument that was erected in 1885.

Also, as was pointed out earlier, their advertisements did not include their address. I even looked up the Grand Rapids city directory for 1922 on ancestry.com. It has a Herpolsheimers advertisement on page 63, and it does not have their address on it.




Steve

[Steve D]

Here's a postcard for Herpolsheimer's, also on ebay; it was postmarked in 1909:



Steve

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by Steve D

For those who worry about the lack of an address for Herpolsheimer's on the cards, here are two postcards currently on ebay:

The store was in the heart of Grand Rapids, right next to the Kent County civil war monument that was erected in 1885.

Also, as was pointed out earlier, their advertisements did not include their address. I even looked up the Grand Rapids city directory for 1922 on ancestry.com. It has a Herpolsheimers advertisement on page 63, and it does not have their address on it.




Steve

Steve,

From page 113 on the Grand Rapids 1922 city directory:

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?...08085&seq=1131

Monroe and Ottawa Avs (the way Aves is abbreviated on page)

For a population two years beyond 1920's census count of 137,634 it would have been a big help in advertising:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Rapids,_Michigan

[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?

[Brian Van Horn]

Michael,

The person who put the price on the cards-not saying the dealer-knew they were false.

I also direct your attention to the advertisement border design. This was a knockoff of Holsum Bread, but a cheap one. It doesn't look like a pattern from the 1920s, but an imitation for the 1970s.

Sorry, the cards are fakes and in the case of fakes to help the con they need to be in various stages of use to help with sales.

First, I saw them in May 1999 and had an honest. Then the same group hit eBay in 2004. A "new" group came to attention in 2019. Waiting for the next group of this fraud in 2034. The fifteen year rule so everyone forgets. 2004, 2019, 2034.

[glynparson]

This is the dumbest thread I think I have ever read. They are fake because some guy told me they were. He offered no proof but he said they were so he’s right because he said it like 25 years ago. Screw the opinions of several incredibly knowledgeable pre war card experts who have owned examples and handled them raw. I’m going to believe some dude who’s name I can’t even remember. What a truly asinine position to take. I mean seriously there are plenty of things I disagree with Leon and Jeff about but this sure as hell is not one of them. You have offered zero credible evidence that these are fake absolutely none. Just constantly repeating the same vague bs isn’t proof.

[scooter729]

With so many views on this, I may as well chime in that I'm always in the market for 1916 Herpolsheimers. Real ones preferred, but my group of fakes looked real enough to fool PSA, so will consider good fakes. Back printing on your fakes should be inconsistent as well.

[Brian Van Horn]

Originally Posted by scooter729

With so many views on this, I may as well chime in that I'm always in the market for 1916 Herpolsheimers. Real ones preferred, but my group of fakes looked real enough to fool PSA, so will consider good fakes. Back printing on your fakes should be inconsistent as well.

Scott,

At no point were the 1916 Herpolsheimer cards pointed to as fakes. The 1921s are the ones.