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Posted By: hankron

Taking a unusual chance, I once placed a before I go to bed bid and a bit suprised to find out I won on eBay an leather jacket that supposedly was worn by a significant woman on the cover of a magazine. It was obviously the same 'design' of jacket as on the magazine cover, but what do I know about these things. After I won it I was able to contact via email the jacket's designer in London. I asked her about it and what were her thoughts (I showed her pics including of the labels). She said matter of factly that it was the jacket on the cover, as the jacket was custom designed and made for the photo shoot and only one was ever made. Sounded good to me.

My second 'provenance' story was when I bid and won a super duper desirable photo by a famous photographer of a pet subject. The seller knew the photographer's name but did no know much else-- he mispelled the subject's name (to my advantage as a bidder) and sold mostly antique furnature and stuff. When I got the photo, the photo looked legit (legitmate looking image and photo paper) but there wasn't the photographer's stamp or anything on it. I emailed the seller and asked where he got the photo. He said the photographer had recently skipped the country without paying his back rent on his appartment. To help pay off the debt, the contents of the appartment were auctioned off to the public. The eBay seller said he knew little to nothing about the photographer, but, as a full time furnature dealer, frequented those types of auctions and was the winner of the the contents of the photographer's appartment, including the photo. That answered that .... The funny thing is that about a year later, I met the photographer. He was a nice man and we had a brief, pleasant chat, including about photographs. I never said a word about the 'appartment' photos I owned.