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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 Eric Keith Longo on
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Hi Ballroom,
Seems so. I called and was given to a manager who asked for my contact information after hearing what there was to say. I have noted the cert # and we will see I suppose. I have never dealt with them before in anyway.
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Permalink Reply by Joe W. on
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The photograph may be genuine although it has been improperly identified. Splitting hairs? An honest seller would discontinue offering this item and get the story straight. The photo, if original, has historical and monetary value although way less, IMO. A seller should never hide behind a LOA as justification when evidence is later discovered which leads to a different conclusion.
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Is it splitting hairs when the subject is misidentified? It is genuine, but a genuine something-else completely, so what is that determination then? Whatever it is I'd not spend $250 or so for it. Another problem that suggests much undone homework, is that anyone who knows this subject even fairly well, would know to immediately assume the photo is Olympic, even if NY were not visible.
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I think I agreed with you, Eric. They didn't review the subject close enough. Just the photo itself and what was on the back.
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Hey Joe, I missed this. Agreed.
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Permalink Reply by goodcat on
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I assume the sticker is on the back of this photo no?
So now what happens with that? Assuming PSA/DNA admits fault, what kind of reparations will they do?
You know I hate those stickers too, and this is another reason why. What happens when the authenticator gets it wrong and now that darn sticker is there. Even worse when placed on the front
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PSA/DNA is not liable for anything. They can decide to rescind the original LOA and reissue a new one with the correct information. But....they don't have to unless they decide.
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PSA/DNA should be contacted; not the owner/seller. Submit the evidence to them directly. You have a better chance there than with the seller.
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True Joe, but everyone who has read this thread can now "decide" on a few things as well :)
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Maybe I have too much faith in humanity although I believe PSA will, at least, consider this new information. They are human and prone to making mistakes but I do not think they desire to intentionally ignore an error. That would speak bigger volumes about their intregrity than the original mistake.
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This situation is not as subjective as an autograph. You have verifiable evidence of this error.
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True Joe, I just find it disturbing how easily the authentication can be fully dismantled.
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