Jay
I have spoken with the owners at length and they are not willing to budge on this issue and here are the reasons. They do not believe that the testing is warranted, they do not feel that the testing is safe, and they feel that they have gone above and beyond what has ever been undertaken by any auction hall.
First, the testing that has been done and the opinions of the established experts in both sports collectibles and 19th century photography are rock solid in our opinion. It is unheard of for auction halls to go to multiple experts in order to make bidders feel better. SGC is an established expert in sports collectibles, specifically the older stuff and Paul Messier is a world renowned leader in his field of antique photography. Both have authenticated this item, and Paul's quoted stance, gained today and shared with you all, further solidifies our position that the item we are selling is real and is what we say it is.
The testing that Messier lists in his report is testing that the auction hall is not willing to support. As I have said all along, we consider it a damaging test. Whenever you alter(even in the smallest way) an antique item, it is not longer right and as it was. In business you have to weigh risk vs. reward and in our opinion the risk of the item being damaged or destroyed or altered, is not worth the reward of confirming what we already know which is that this is an authentic item. When Paul Messier inspected the binding agent under heavy magnification, he could clearly see a distinct sheen to the agent which is uniquely associated with the sheen caused by the binding agents used in authentic 19th century albumen prints. This is caused by the chemical makeup of that agent. All examples in his collection showed the same distinct sheen. I mentioned these things in conversation with him today and he agreed that this sheen is the key element in the binding material. To allow a customer to potentially damage or destroy a valuable item, to quantify results that have already been determined by a photography expert, is foolish and risky. We have no doubt that the results of such as test would show that this is an authentic albumen print from the 19th century, but we are not willing to risk damage to the item.
Lastly, we have been signing up a steady stream of bidders on this item as their fears have been removed by the work we have done on this item. If you do not feel comfortable enough to bid on this item then I guess you won't be able to bid. I think it would be unfortunate that you will miss out on a fantastic piece of history, but you gotta follow your own instincts on this.
Aside from that I hope I have answered your questions the best I can.
Troy
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01-15-2013, 06:12 PM
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