Yes the "Strawberry Plains" guy is very active again. Just saw a few on his list the other day. Unfortunately, having experience looking at many, many original cartridges is the key. One example, he has (or had) a Sharps ringtail listed. It looked pretty good, but was tied with entirely too much string...like 5 or 6 loops around instead of just one, like on every specimen Dean and have in our collections. Other things to look at are the paper, the crispness of the folds on the tail, the string, and details on the bullet that are unique to that specific round.
