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James Stewart Bunch of Photos - Authentic?

I have an opportunity to buy a large collection of photos signed by James Stewart. They were supposedly signed for an air force buddy, but the photos look awfully new. I'd really appreciate any opinions.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Paul on January 27, 2023 at 7:31am

It is funny you know I almost mentioned Bud Abbott!!!

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Permalink Reply by Eddy on January 27, 2023 at 11:04am

It's really laughable if it wasn't so sad.

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Permalink Reply by Scott Paul on January 27, 2023 at 11:34am

Yes it is. I would like to know when these were "authenticated" and what exemplar file they were looking at? I know Kramer would not have passed that one. There are some great authenticators that work for those TPAs, but it makes you wonder if they are limited to certain autographs or are expected to do everyone.

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Permalink Reply by Will McIntosh on January 27, 2023 at 7:17am

Interesting that it has a PSA/DNA sticker. What threw me was that RR had sold a Harvey photo with sketch that is spot-on to some of the ones I was being offered: https://www.rrauction.com/auctions/lot-detail/325489603831286-james...

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on January 27, 2023 at 7:19am

That is from 2012… the period when these were flooding the market.

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Permalink Reply by Will McIntosh on January 28, 2023 at 6:33am

Thanks again everyone for the assistance. To his credit, when I sent the seller a link to Steve Zarelli's blog post, he told me to toss them all out. So, here's a portion of a large cache of Jimmy Stewart forgeries that are going out of circulation, and into the trash.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Zarelli on January 28, 2023 at 7:10am

Wow. Yep. All the same mass produced fakes. Good karma to you. Way too many people try to dump the hot potato off on someone else.

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Permalink Reply by JK on January 28, 2023 at 7:24am

Wow! What a pile!

I must say it's too bad they're all being destroyed. A cross-section of them would make a great forgery reference file. Alot of others by the same forger have obviously been sold into the market.

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Permalink Reply by JMS1223 on January 28, 2023 at 9:32am

Good idea to keep a few of each forgery style for reference but would be a good idea to also write “forgery” across the item so it can’t find its way back onto the market as authentic.

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Permalink Reply by JK on January 28, 2023 at 9:40am

Yes, for sure.

Send them to me and I'll have a rubber stamp made that says FORGERY. Then I'll stamp them all up and send a set or sample to anyone who wants to preserve it for reference. :)

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Permalink Reply by Will McIntosh on January 28, 2023 at 10:39am

I'd be happy to ship them to you.

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Permalink Reply by JMS1223 on January 28, 2023 at 10:48am

What would be interesting but expensive is if I sent a few of these examples to each of the major third party authenticators to see which ones don’t authenticate them and which ones wrongly say they are authentic. Expensive but would be interesting. Maybe just send one to each so it wouldn’t cost as much.

Of course if any came back authentic I would mark them as forgery (on autograph item as well as LOA) so they don’t ever find themselves back into the market.