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Posted By: Ryan Christoff

David,

I appreciate your willingness to acknowledge that your original post accusing REA of selling a forgery may have been made in haste before you'd really given it enough thought to come to a fair conclusion. I don't believe you meant any harm and it seems it was simply a mistake. People or businesses who own up to their mistakes always gain credibility with me.

Unfortunately, there was a clear negative impact (unfairly) on Robert Edward Auctions by the implication of forgeries being sold as real. There is so much crap like that in the hobby today I think we're all justifiably paranoid about it. Or growing wiser.

I just wanted to post that prior to the auction, I discussed with Rob Lifson similar concerns I had regarding an item that I happened to know the history of and believed to be questionable. It was not a simple matter of a fake item, but an authentic one that had been altered into something that would have been more valuable (a postcard back added to an original photograph).

To make a long story short(er), Rob did exactly what I would hope every auction house would: he was open-minded enough to listen to what I was saying, but still examined it himself to come to his own conclusion. Ultimately, he agreed with me and the item was not listed in the auction. Had he not pulled the item it would probably not have been returned as it was not an obvious fraud. But the right thing to do was to return it to the consignor. And that's what was done.

I'm glad to see that David and Rob might be working together as it could only help the hobby to have to credible individuals on the same team, so to speak.

-Ryan