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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).

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Now here is a copy for sale that has the NY piers Photoshopped out - appears some folks selling this as a cheap reprint know...if this doesn't suggest it is more or less common knowledge that the ship shown is Olympic I don't know what does. Not one collector I know could make this mistake even with the removed piers - where are Titanic's window screens etc...

"Adjusted" copy w/o NY Piers

Thanks Eric, for some reason I do not see the item when I search (I search Titanic postcard, SS Titanic and RMS Titanic every week) but your link took me to it.

A very dubious looking listing with no added details and a borderless (cropped) image of a remarkably well preserved 105 year old press photograph.  The fact that the seller only seems to have baseball-related items otherwise is also odd. Maybe the seller has some connection to Yee or PSA.

The reprint is also incredible - as is the fact that you found it. Why bother to re-touch for the sake of $5 a piece? Can't believe they are selling hundreds a month. I guess the reflections in the opposite windows show the piers anyway.

I know about the Titanic window screens but I couldn't say whether they were on this particular part of the ship or not. I also don't have a clue about the piers in New York and how they differed from those in Belfast, Southampton, Queenstown and Cherbourg. I'd be surprised if PSA know much about these things either.  

Hi Eva, That is why I was so pleased to find what I did not dare hope for - an original publication date for the Olympic photograph (Dec 1911 & Jan 1912) that predates Titanic's completion. It ends any discussion. 

I have sent all materials in and was told on the phone they were forwarded to Mr. Yee. I see no change in the current listing or the database so far, and I have not I been contacted. I offered contact with any number of experts in just Olympic who will recognize this error immediately. Among the folks I know such a certificate is not impressive and I am not sure many care at this point. I do.

 

Hi Eva,

I made this so you can see what I am looking at. 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 Jan. 1911 & Dec. 1912 (Titanic not ...

Hello again Eva, the link below shows a remarkable photograph taken in the 1980's before these piers were torn down. I remember them. Click on it. Compare this structure linked (scroll down) with what is seen out the promenade window in the PSA/DNA certified photograph in the main post above:

The Chelsea Piers

Excellent work Eric. It seems pretty clear that the ship is in New York and of course the Titanic never made it there.

Basically it seems that the authenticator was not qualified to identify ships and, as such, should not have included the name of any particular ship under the "subject" caption. Alternatively the authenticator could have stated clearly that the identity of the ship had not been verified.

Thank you, Eva. Indeed - one could stick with "by far the most likely" and have got it right - Olympic has been, once again, substituted for Titanic. This has been done a hundred times in a hundred years. Tat this substitution is part of the story now for 20 years or more is very disturbing. As mentioned, the photo is of some interest, but the subject is wholly and factually incorrect. Knowing your subject can save your neck. 

Indeed. Item might have sold :( This is where too much reliance on papers can get you! I wrote PSA all last week to no effect. I provided factual proof - no opinions. The photo "in question" was, after all, published before Titanic was even complete - apart from NY being IN the photo as shown. I know other researchers wrote in and called as well.

One more image. New York Pier 34 photographed from the Carpathia after rescuing Titanic's passengers and bringing them to New York. Once again these same pier structures in the photograph certified as "Titanic" by PSA/DNA are plainly visible and identified. The first but of Olympic I ever bought came from this seller:

New York Pier 34

Hello All. I just realized I never updated this. Last email back from PSA (2/6/18) states they essentially just copy the blurb on the back. As I read it the "subject" is merely a restatement of what is printed on the Reverse. Wow. I would have thought the Subject pertained to...the subject? They don't see any problem here. This speaks VOLUMES!

That is indeed incredible. So if they had a daguerreotype of a middle-aged man with Abraham Lincoln noted on the back they would state the subject to be Abe Lincoln?!

My guess is that a good condition Lincoln dag could be worth $100,000 + and a dag of an unknown man around $100. Quite important to get the subject right in such a case!

On that note, and if you have an hour or two to kill, check out this scholarly analysis of a Lincoln dag:

 http://www.lincolnportrait.com/lincoln_conclusion.html

I just realized, reading over this response about the photo in question - the PSA certificate states and specifies "PRIMARY Subject". Any wiggle room was been removed by the addition of this "clarification" in my opinion. 

Thanks for link Eva :)

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