Wrong Bands on Year of the Pig Siglo IV Box?

[Tstew75]

I need some help. I acquired a box of Cohiba 'Year of the Pig' Siglo IVs from a personal collector a couple of years ago & recently decided to let them go, so I auctioned them on BR in December. They sold, all was well.

The person who bought them from me just contacted me & said the box has the wrong bands. I did a little digging & every box I've seen online has the newer 'Standard Band E', but this particular box has the older 'Standard Band D'.  This was the only box of these I had ever seen in person, so i definitely had zero experience with these. 

Question is, are these fake or it is possible some boxes had the older bands?  I do know some of the other 'Year of' releases from around that time had D Bands- a good example is the 'Year of the Dog' Secretos. 

Any help would be appreciated. Happy to post more pics if needed.

[ATGroom]

These boxes were just standard Siglo IV repacked in Spain.

So, for this to have happened, it implies that there was a 5+ year old box in inventory at Tabacalera in late 2018 and whoever was doing the repacking didn't put that much thought into it. Seems plausible enough to me.

That said, have never heard of this on another box. If there are other boxes out there it is probably only a handful, and I'd say this is more in the zone of 'factory error' than anything so it will likely be impossible to get an answer from anyone if this was a real thing or not. I guess it comes down to the paper trail from your original source. If there are any other irregularities on the packaging that would probably shunt it more into the counterfeit direction.

[Tstew75]

After lots of emails & community feedback it was finally decided that these were fake, I refunded the buyer-

Be extremely careful on all the 'YOT' releases (re)packed by Imperial Tobacco with no serials & box codes. They are seemingly hard to fake b/c of the intricate bands, numbered box, etc. but apparently not. My guess is someone on the inside in Spain has access to real boxes/bands, and slipping some boxes into the stream. Lots of unknowns these days, lesson learned.