Fantasy N&W RPO tag

[NW Mailing List]

Hello, all:

It appears that there are several RPO/REA/Mail tags being marketed by a seller.  An example listing is https://www.ebay.com/itm/ANTIQUE-NORFOLK-WESTERN-R-1227-U-S-MAIL-RAILROAD-BRASS-BAG-TAG-RPO-J36/174602003138?hash=item28a71722c2:g:njUAAOSwSotgBiBR and others can be viewed by searching for other seller's items.

This is not a reproduction; these are fantasy items of which originals never existed.  My opinion is that the craze and high prices for brass baggage tags have spawned a garage-production line of sheet brass that has been hand-lettered with steel punches, then aged with acid or buried in the ground for a while to make them appear to be metal-detector finds.  If any of these sell, they are certainly a good return on time and materiel invested.

In the "for what it's worth" buyer-beware category,

Frank Scheer
f_scheer at yahoo.com
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