1927 Yankees team ball forgery

[batsballsbases]

David my friend and you know you are 99.5% might be a good average to hang your hat on but that .5% ended up costing you alot of money!

[David Atkatz]

Originally Posted by batsballsbases

David my friend and you know you are 99.5% might be a good average to hang your hat on but that .5% ended up costing you alot of money!

True enough! But that's the risk any collector, of any collectable, takes.

[barrysloate]

With any transaction the buyer must utilize as much information as possible, and provenance is a very important tool, in some cases the most important. But Travrosty makes a good point that every bad piece will have a story to go with it. So it's important to assess and verify provenance. Having someone say, I know it's old because I bought it from an antique dealer is not acceptable provenance. But there are some very great pieces that have resided with families for generations, and the story behind them may be a critical piece of the whole puzzle.

[David Atkatz]

It's not just "not acceptable provenance," Barry. It's not provenance at all.

In the fine art world, the key element in passing a forgery is manufacturing a provenance. That is not making up a convincing story, it is physically manufacturing a paper trail that "proves" the piece's age and history.

[barrysloate]

Agreed David, but I can't tell you how many times I have been offered reproductions, usually advertising pieces, and when I tell the seller the piece is a modern repro, he tells me that's impossible because he purchased it at an antique store. That's the kind of story Travrosty was calling out.

[David Atkatz]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Agreed David, but I can't tell you how many times I have been offered reproductions, usually advertising pieces, and when I tell the seller the piece is a modern repro, he tells me that's impossible because he purchased it at an antique store. That's the kind of story Travrosty was calling out.

I quite understand that, Barry. But in calling that story "provenance" he shows a (common) misunderstanding of wha t provenance actually is.

I suggest you read "Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury, and Aly Sujo. Here's the publisher's description (emphasis added):

Filled with extraordinary characters and told at breakneck speed, Provenance reads like a well-plotted thriller. But this is most certainly not fiction. It is the astonishing narrative of one of the most far-reaching and elaborate cons in the history of art forgery. Stretching from London to Paris to New York, investigative reporters Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo recount the tale of infamous con man and unforgettable villain John Drewe and his accomplice, the affable artist John Myatt. Together they exploited the archives of British art institutions to irrevocably legitimize the hundreds of pieces they forged, many of which are still considered genuine and hang in prominent museums and private collections today.