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Beatles full signed color photo

Hello,

I bought this a few days ago in an auction.

It is an full color intact pull-out photo included in an 1964 UK-magazine called „Scream“.

I‘m very interested to know what you think about it, thank you.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on April 21, 2024 at 2:09pm

The style of the photo in the OP and the "With the Beatles" are above my paygrade. I STUDIED them, and I couldn't figure out why they were "questionable." They looked GREAT to me.

Detecting great, and pervasive, forgeries can often take years. Frank Caiazzo discovered the forgeries of the most successful Beatles forger, Joe Long, (I don't know if he forged them or had them forged) in 1993 or so. Long had been selling forgeries—and fooling the most reputable dealers and auction houses—for more than 10 years. It took a lot of courage for Caiazzo to do that. Caiazzo got a ton of grief over it, and many or most people didn't agree with his opinion at first. This was before my time in the field, but it's a well-known part of autograph history.

It can take years for great forgers and forgeries to be discovered, and forgers often get better over time, and change certain aspects of their style that have become telltale characteristics.

Speaking of Joe Long, has anyone compared characteristics of his Beatles forgeries to the autographs that we're discussing here?

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on April 21, 2024 at 3:09pm

This was said to be Long's work:

[Removed by Moderator]

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Permalink Reply by BallroomDays67 on April 21, 2024 at 3:24pm

That looks like a SoCal forgery.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on April 21, 2024 at 3:40pm

I agree with Ballroom. I'm going to remove that one ,Eric.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Keith Longo on April 21, 2024 at 4:34pm

I'm sorry. I got it from a thread where it had a Frangipani cert and was called out immediately - I can't find it now.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on April 21, 2024 at 4:58pm

No problem! I just didn't want to put it with the Joe Longs.

I removed it.

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Permalink Reply by Steve Cyrkin, Admin on April 21, 2024 at 3:48pm

Here's a link to a Joe Long discussion with exemplars that should be reliable. If anyone sees ones that don't look like Long's, please LMK:

https://live.autographmagazine.com/forum/topics/the-joe-long-forger...

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Permalink Reply by Trazom1 on April 21, 2024 at 4:19pm

I defintely agree with you, Steve. The main pieces under discussion look great by usual criteria. This was also attested by numerous experienced observers in their initial comments.

And I also strongly agree with Eric Keith Longo...If technology has gotten to the point that fakes can be generated with a pen, using genuine autographs as templates while tweaking their features a bit, then we can only trust exemplars that have an ironclad, fully-documented chain of ownership going back several years or prior sales record. A “backstory”, however detailed, or someone's opinion may not be enough! A corpus of high-tech fakes generated from numerous genuine signatures that have in each case been very slightly but convincingly modified would be virtually indistinguishable from genuine autographs…even to the eye of a recognized expert. I guess we should then be skeptical of any items that look perfectly genuine but aren’t supported by clearly documented provenance and/or prior sales history.

On the other hand, well-documented pieces should become much desirable and valuable.

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Permalink Reply by a pug called eva on April 21, 2024 at 11:16pm

Again, you make some very good points Trazomi1.

I also believe that provenance is more important than some people have suggested in other discussions and that pieces with solid provenance should carry a hefty premium.

Even knowing when an item was last sold is part of an item's provenance and could help in determining whether it is more likely to be a fake. By way of example, if a Beatles item was last sold in the 1990s we can probably safely say that it was not produced by a machine. At the same time, more forgeries were probably slipping through to the top auction houses back then. So if the autographs in question look like beautifully typical examples they are more likely to be real but if they have atypical traits or traits that have been seen in the work of major forgers then they are at least slightly more likely to be fake.