Authentication and Forgery Alert: Forgeries, in my opinion, Exposed!!!

In the fight against forgery, authenticators often communicate about skilled forgeries that have hit the market. All of these forgeries originate with the same source. Many of the images are from Steve Grad of PSA/DNA. If anyone else has other examples please post them. Some of these forgeries are very devious even incorporating what would appear to be authentic letterhead or genuine old album pages. The good news is that we failed this material and prevented it from entering the market. I would love to hear an exchange of ideas on this type of forgery and questions regarding how the items were manufactured. More to come!

Tags: Houdini, Lou, Marilyn, Monroe, Ruth, babe, capone, forgeries, gehrig, presidents, More…dna, psa

0 members like this

Next Post >

Comment

You need to be a member of Autograph Magazine Live! to add comments!

Join Autograph Magazine Live!

Comment by john reznikoff on September 24, 2010 at 11:03am: Bill,

be carefull not to give out too much info regarding how theese were accomplished as we dont want anyone else to get any bright ideas. Yes the Monroe hair comes from the same source, I have his certificate too.

Comment by Bill Panagopulos on September 24, 2010 at 10:59am: John and Markus - The images in Markus' post are not consistent with the work of the NJ forger and his associate in the midwest unless they have REALLY become very sophisticated. I've never seen them accomplish forgeries of Italian names unknown in this country, though the work is similar in feel.

I am quite certain, John, that the Monroe hair letter you have is also not their work - the signature is too amateurish. The checks, ie: Capone and Grant, are dead-on. With the checks, their modus operandi was as follows: the forger bought a number of authentic (but valueless) accomplished checks from the New York Merchants Bank (I believe that was the name). They then "washed" the payee's name off the check, and wrote-in the name of a famous person in its place. Examples included Robert E. Lee and Al Capone. They then endorsed the check on verso - the Lees were near flawless, the Capones pathetic (see above). They then covered recto and verso with authentic-appearing ink stamps and cancellations to cover their alterations, but these stamps often used type fonts that didn't exist at the time the checks were written. Eventually they started just cutting-off the endorsements as apparently they learned they had been found-out.

One partner typically buys the "base" material, such as old, blank postal covers, letterheads, baseballs, stock photos, etc., often on eBay, and sends them to the forger who does his handiwork. The pieces are then sold privately or put in auction with vague, bogus provenance that is near impossible to disprove.

I've seen this material appear in smaller auctions all over the U.S.

Comment by john reznikoff on September 24, 2010 at 7:05am: Markus,

I believe these forgeries are "free hand" . They are accomplished by a skilled and practiced forger. I do not know who the forger is but believe they can all be sourced to the name in the certificate in my second scan . I am also convinced that this forger user a tracing method which may be done by using a type of projector that projects the image of an authentic signature onto a peice of paper which the forger then copies over in ink. Dont ask me why...Ill save that for the court room.

Comment by Markus Brandes on September 24, 2010 at 1:15am: Those forgeries are scary !

Is there a machine used similar to the long pen in combination with high quality reproductions of the basic ?