Please help with my old judge acquisition

Bought these at an antique store with some other cabinet cards mainly AMERICAN INDIAN portraits, please help me to let me know if they are authentic, I know one of them is 10,000 Kelly but can't make out other names besides hutchinson, they have a weird texture to them, all varying sizes, kind of discolored a bit. thanks ahead of time I am a fan of this forum I read it often, but never felt the need to post a topic thanks

Welcome and thanks for posting. Could be quite a pickup on your part here! There's nothing about the scans that screams "fake", but it's gonna be tough determining authenticity based on those scans alone (they're a little blurry). Any chance of getting clearer scans of even just a couple of them? Also, if you could give us the measurements of a few of them that would help as well.

ps. I could be wrong, but the player on the left of your first scan appears to be Mike Tiernan, and the player on the right of your last scan appears to be Jimmy Ryan.

pps. When you hold them between your fingers, how thick are they?

I'm familiar with the Native American stuff, so if you can post some of those, that will go a long way in helping determine if this group is legit or not. As Ben said, nothing so far screams out fake. It's looks like a bunch cabinets you'd find in an estate sale

Jay

Can't say those back scans are too encouraging, I haven't seen them with that kind of toning before. But then again I haven't handled too many N173's in the past. Just based on what I've seen over the past decade though, it's unusual. Anyone else care to chime in with an opinion or two?

The only thing that worries me is the inconsistency of the wear from cabinet to cabinet. The OP told me that he would post some of the Native American cabinets in a day or two. That should tell us a lot me.

Jay

I measured them out and they are a bit smaller then 3 inches high and 2 inches accross, I know that the n172 are roughly this size and the N173 are about twice as large, and I thought these were N173 based on my research, but now after researching the sizes they cannot be they could only be N172, does anyone know if this is possible thanks mike

cicerofan78 wrote:I measured them out and they are a bit smaller then 3 inches high and 2 inches across

With those dimensions they're definitely fake, no question about it. Sorry Mike. Hope you didn't spend too much on them.

Sorry to tell you that they are definitely FAKES. I own the original of these. Notwithstanding that they have been made to look old, the fakes have been manufactured in the past year.

Just wanted to add that Ben was correct about Tiernan and Ryan.

As fake as a $3 bill.

You wouldn't happen to also be the user blessed_collectibles or m-n-m_sportscards or ba8226 on ebay are you? There has been a sudden flood of this garbage recently and I'm not buying your "I found them at an antique shop" line. For once, I would just like a crook to admit he is making this s*** in their basement. If you have spent any time at all on sites like this one you would know that they just don't pass the smell test (look like crap, wrong size, etc., etc.) so I am calling foul here. I have a feeling you were hoping to find a bunch of dunderheads (that's for you Jay) stupid enough to try and pass them off on.

I hope I am wrong but I have a feeling that I'm not.

-Rhett

pro9 wrote:Sorry to tell you that they are definitely FAKES. I own the original of these. Notwithstanding that they have been made to look old, the fakes have been manufactured in the past year.

Now that you mention in E, I remember when you won that N173 lot. The wear on some of those cards (like the Ryan) is very distinctive. I knew those cards looked familiar.

rhettyeakley wrote:I have a feeling you were hoping to find a bunch of dunderheads (that's for you Jay) stupid enough to try and pass them off on.

I agree Rhett, this situation smells bad. And unless cicerofan78 comes back on with a some sort of an explanation, I'm also inclined to call foul here as well. I'm guessing we won't see or hear from him again.

fisherboy7 wrote:I'm guessing we won't see or hear from him again.

Looks like this will hold true. In retrospect, this post seems to have 'scam' written all over it. Maybe I/we should be more sceptical in the future when people come on here posting fakes?

I'm one of the biggest skeptics out there, but we need to treat everyone with respect until proven otherwise. That's a big reason many people are here.

Jay

Completely agree with you Jay.

I am not siding with anyone here, but, fake Pre-WW1 cards and related material do show up in estate sales, country auctions, etc.
all across America. As someone who has spent a great deal of time paging through these sales, I've seen a number of fake pieces. These fake pieces represent a large variety of sets (T3s, N172s, N173s, etc.) and even advertising pieces (Old Judge posters, Bond Bread related posters, etc.). I used to think that these venues were amongst the last truly clean, untainted sources for buying pieces but I've had to rethink that.

Besides the fact that the size is wrong with the above N173s, and Elliot owns the originals, they were poorly printed and are over-saturated, leaving them almost purple in color. They're very bad, very obvious fakes.

Jay, I understand exactly what you are saying, but this stunk to hig heaven. I'm all for respecting new posters and those that know me know I am not one to ever give a new poster a hard time for anything, but this seemed like an obvious case of someone trying to pull one over on the community. This same type of reprint w/ all the same characteristics have hit ebay w/ a vengeance over the past month or two and it was just "too coincidental" to me. I am very open to new finds and they do happen (like the PCL collection recently shown on the N54 forum & the Skydash find) but when I am pretty sure a nube is attempting a scam in an area where people I consider friends frequent I'm not gonna give them a free pass. Just the way I see it.
-Rhett

Rhett, I agree with you. Sadly, I haven't spent any time on eBay looking for anything in a very long time so I really am out of touch with what the scammers are up to over there. Scammers need a good beat down any time they show up and there are too many knowledgeable people like yourself on this board for a scammer to get away with anything for too long.

Jay