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Authenticity is Everything
Do You OWN Research. DON'T Trust TPG Blindly. Details & Dates DO MATTER. KNOW Your Subject.
Hello All. PSA/DNA "Titanic" Underwood and Underwood press photo, date stamped April 19, 1912 (just 4 days after the sinking). Listed for $10,000. Unsold thankfully (I think). Neat, huh? Wow!
Unfortunately, that is obviously the just completed New York Chelsea Piers sitting right out the promenade windows on the left. It has been previously published as such. So...absolutely 100% sister Olympic in NYC, 1911, perhaps her Maiden Voyage. Now, I have been advising authors, researchers, modelers, publishing my own work in this area, dealing to collectors and selling to museums in the UK for only 17 years, but I am fairly certain the point was that Titanic did NOT reach her White Star Line Pier 59 in NY, which is IN this photograph? That negative number just sitting there...this also leads somewhere if one doesn't recognize what is right out the windows... ;) And as I mentioned, it has been published.
This is why I do my own research and why I don't buy if I can't "see" it myself. This is why I believe dates and details are extremely important. Know your subject. Buy with your own eye. Perhaps one can argue the cert is "just" for the print as published and the very incorrect subject title does not come into play... - some sort of "we are just a venue..." or some such nonsense. I think otherwise. Subject must be correct!
Below I have tinted the structures that serve to positively identify New York in green (it was green). This combined with the fact the the image was originally published before Titanic was fitted out (linked below) eliminate any other possibility. You can see these structures in my pier candid above it you look closely. How long it takes to change a database I do not know, but this is something else to remember every time I see those darn stickers:
Photo in question published as Olympic Jan. 1911 & Dec. 1912
And something special for me below - a very rare and literally unique hand-tinted candid photograph taken aboard the Adriatic, which took the very last living Titanic survivor, Millvina Dean, back to England with her mother and brother. Her father was lost. She signed this for me just before she died early in 2009. It was among her last autographs. I selected this image deliberately for the content - this would be where she and her mother and brother sat going back home. I like to imagine that is her mother and her looking into the camera seated center (this photo is a bit later - C. 1920). I have never seen anything like it - just common post cards, usually modern reproductions. The rest of these colored images were sold to and published by liner researcher and author Mark Chirnside, whose excellent books and articles I have advised and supplied images for going on many years. His work on Olympic is regarded as superb. Some of the Olympic photographs I identified and authenticated have been published by him. Some came from the same album as the pier photo above. I was contracted to do the color restorations of the Cunard liner Aquitania for his Aquitania: The Ship Beautiful. It was the first time 30 or so true color Kodachrome images from the late 1930's to 1951 have ever been published. A great honor for me.
EDIT TO ADD:
I'm back at home and have more time than I did when I posted. I decided to do the obvious and look for the image online - and it is there, misidentified at several websites. It is common then and now to mistake one for the other. Olympic was much more photographed for obvious reasons, and it was just easier to use the image at hand after the disaster, as in this instance. With a bit more poking (under 3 minutes in all), I just found the image in question online correctly identified as Olympic; originally published in Modern Sanitation, DECEMBER, 1911 vol. 8, No. 12 (Page 446-451) and JANUARY 1912 Vol. 9, No. 1 (Page 12-16).
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by terrier8HOF on
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not quite the same thing, but I have seen this Roger Maris photo being represented for years, as his 61st home run, but if you look closely at the catcher, he has an Orioles away uniform, meaning this is likely home run #60. #61 was against Tracy Stallard of the Boston Red Sox. They had blue block "BOSTON" on their chest.
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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on
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I hope PSA don't charge much for that certificate. They are confirming next to nothing - just that the characteristics of the photograph are "consistent" with a Type I photograph. Big deal.
It doesn't take an Einstein to tell whether a back-stamped/sniped press photo is from the period. If there are no stamps and no snipe and the paper stock is not obviously from a later period it can be much trickier.
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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on
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Absolutely, Eva. They are indeed confirming next to nothing. I do not know what this service for photo "authentication" costs. Too much I think.
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That is pretty much the same thing! Have any been certed as such? Amazing this continues in any event.
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Permalink Reply by michelle on
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so how did you get in touch with her Eric? thats quite a moving story and it must have been really emotional for her signing it .
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Hello Michelle,
Through a mutual friend. I was very lucky - I have been interested in this since 1976 and never got around to writing. And it didn't seem possible back then - I had no contacts. Then, I was able to. Thirty years later, on its way back to me it burst through its mailer and was lost - empty busted package. I was crushed as another would not be possible. Then one day the next summer I believe, it was there in the mail in an unmarked white envelope! The strength of return addresses and honesty. Here she is when she signed it :) A lovely lady of great character.
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Permalink Reply by marc e on
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I don't trust tpa's . they get it wrong all the time and I say all the time
there using examples from who what where and under what circumstances was it signed
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Agreed, John. I know you don't. I have never submitted anything and even dislike the term. Submit. I have owned one PSA item, by chance, and that is long sold (slabbed, no sticker). And, of course, I HATE THE STICKERS! I try to say that as much as I can. Vandalism! I will NEVER buy or sell anything with such vandalism/damage/free advertising.
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If you sell without third party authentication people gripe, your stuff sits, they all want guarantees...
I like the advice here- dont trust it just because it is a TPA.
The main thing with this hobby is to get educated and use the TPA as a confirming tool.
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I am very fortunate to authenticate and sell rare materials w/o any certification and w/o any problem to collectors, researchers and museums.
The advice was not "don't trust it because it is a TPG". I believe I said something more like "don't trust blindly, do your own research" etc.
Education is certainly the way to go. What the TPG confirmed here, as mentioned earlier, is just about nothing, it is misleading and potentially financially harmful.
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