Are Type I Photos The Only Safe Bet In This Hobby?
 

With all of the recent discouraging reports of fake signed T206 cards, trimmed cards, fake autographs, a rebuilt Honus Wagner T206 card, fake World Series Press Pins, etc. etc..... Are type I photos the only safe bet anymore? Is this the only segment of our hobby that's safe? This and maybe game used tickets. Anything else safe? Or no? Just thinking out loud.....

I think actual vintage baseball cards are pretty safe?

Any place money and desire intersect, fraud will likely occur. There is no totally safe space in collecting of anything.
We all just have to decide how much risk is acceptable in order for us to enjoy our reapective pursuits. The more risk averse one is the less they should collect anything, IMO.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

With all the recent depressing events, it is easy to have thoughts like this :(

How about 8 x 10 type 1s on movie lobby cards? There are lots of great things to collect. And my guess is most mid range vintage cards are fine too. But the ones with pointy corners.....a bit more suspect. (and I own a few)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but "type 1" photos rely on the opinions of the experts. It's not an exact science.

Fake stuff
 

Photos have had their problems, too, with fake photographer and news service stamps, etc. And I think the process of breaking them down into Henry's four types has proven to have its limitations, also. As people have posted on the threads about the bogus signed T-206 and other cards, there were warning signs regarding the sudden appearance and increasing value of those, and after all, they have been exposed and hopefully everyone will learn something from that. In the end, when the dust settles, no matter whether this guy forged ten of these or a hundred, it will represent a very small percentage of the total universe of good ones. Do you suppose there's anything of value that someone out there isn't trying to reproduce or alter to cash in on? I'd guess that right now a "vintage" Superman lunch box is being manufactured as we speak. If all this scares you, stop collecting. If the probability that one or two percent of your collection is fake terrifies you, stop collecting. Or just collect things that have little or no value on any secondary market, you'll be safe then.

Sorry, Leon, those are well known to be repros. Just kidding! (I think.)

This scandal, too, shall pass, and we'll all go right back to oohing and aahing about the stuff in slabs and buying the same stuff we always do and trusting the TPG/As and assuring ourselves that while there's a ton of fraud WE somehow have avoided it and nothing will change. Not a knock on anyone, I'll do the same thing. Human nature.

maybe john rogers will check in with an opinion

Books
 

Baseball books are a great collecting area, with many potential concentration, including history, fiction, poetry, older, recent, instructional, biographies illustrated and many more. You can also read them.

As a photo person, I think, beyond overprints and alterations for grades, forgeries of Pre-War baseball cards is not an issue, meaning that undetectable counterfeits will not happen. Some posters opine about modern printing technology and experts in China being able to create perfect counterfeits, but that's not true.

I also think provenance will become more and more important-- and something I've talked about often here--, because if you can establish that a card, including autograph card, pre-dated the forgery wave, that will be significant. I've often told people to establish the date of their overprinted card in case there is a future wave of overprinting forgeries.

Hard to go wrong with mid to lower grade vintage baseball cards. They can easily be determined to be real or fake and the money just isn’t there to enhance a card to any great degree. This is one of my favorite things about collecting sets like the Zeenut series. Typically lower grade so eye appeal becomes more important than technical grade. Hard to fake those types of cards.

+1. IMHO, undetectable counterfeits of pre-war cards will not be a significant issue. Cards made through different processes at significantly distinct times have always left substantially different footprints. As to autographs on cards or otherwise, there will always be forgers as long as they have significant value. Some really thorough detective work re the latter has/is being done on the other thread!

Best wishes,

Larry

I think alterations and high graded graded cards is likely an issues. But that's not stuff that interests me (collecting-wise).

As someone said, mid to grade cards are nice.

There will be forgeries (and I know of another problem which I've subtly alluded to before), but I think photos are safe if you know what you're doing. News photos are generally safe. For the record, of what I've seen, PSA does a good job with photos. I'm sure there's lots of other memorabilia too that's safe if you know what you're doing. The areas that are more "scary" are autographs and game used-- but I deal in neither.

Hey David
Quick question sort of in line with this thread. Have you ever seen a real albumen print be faked? In other words it is a fake real albumen card? For example, a fake Old Judge that is a real albumen photo and it's fake? This question is about to be more pertinent, to me, soon.

I've seen original albumen photos remounted (I think there were remounted Kalamazoo bats out there-- with obviously different mounts, and a matter of restoration), but have never seen a forgery using albumen.

I know there was questioning about one big albumen baseball photo a while back in an auction. But it wasn't about the photographic print itself-- no one doubted it was original--, it was about the mount. Some thought it was remounted. But it was an esoteric, early photo, not a trading card like an Old Judge. Whether remounted or not, it still had a lot of value.

The good deal with photos is the older they are, the easier they are to authenticate. The older the materials, the older the processes, etc. Also albumens get wear and aging signs distinct to the process and materials. Theoretically, modern photos are easier to forge, because the original and forger-used materials and processes are from the same era.

PSA may do a good job, but the authentication fees are high in respect to declared values. Unless the photo is on the high end of the first tier it is cost prohibitive to get the photo authenticated. I have a type 1 photo that would sell in the $300 range and I can't see any reason to have it authenticated when they charge $50 to authenticate, $30 to encapsulate and the shipping on top of that.

The good deal with photos is the older they are, the easier they are to authenticate. The older the materials, the older the processes, etc. Also albumens get wear and aging signs distinct to the process and materials.

I would never get out of collecting cards, but this is why I love old photos so much!

Are you referring to the 1865 Atlantics CdV?

Yes.

The item did not meet the reserve when it last appeared in the Heritage auction. My guess is the reason is that the leap of faith required to believe the photo was real was too great.

I do not question it is an albumen photo. What I do question is how one can be so sure it is a period albumen photo. I know someone who examined it before it was slabbed. He told me that because the photo was not completely adhered to the mount he was able to inspect a portion of the verso, which appeared to be unsoiled and on paper that looked to be modern and perfectly white in color. Adding to this that the CdV has no known provenance, appears to clearly have been remounted, and shows a clear degradation in resolution from the other known copy, I am surprised you express the confidence you do that the photo is genuine.

We may or may not be talking about the same CDV. I don't know, and am too lazy to look into it.

The one I was thinking of was supposedly remounted from a stolen stereoview, and the remounting was to hide that it was stolen. At least, that's the story someone told me.

But, either way, I'm too busy with work to get in a debate on it, and won't refute anything you say about the HA photo.

So are you implying that you feel it could be a faked albumen photo? I have asked quite a few experienced hobbyists and no one has said they have seen one yet. There is a reason I am asking these questions and it has to do with a card I am getting graded.

It is possible and not rare for there to be a vintage 1800s albumen with an earlier image. Not rare with famous subjects such as Abe Lincoln and Albert E. Lee. They're usually easily identified as later (or period) by the style of the mount. For an example, below is an 1890s cabinet of Lincoln in 1864. Not hard to identify because the dates are in the text.

https://www.sportscollectorsdaily.co...016/04/829.jpg

There is no question that modern albumen prints can be made. You can see photographers working in albumen having a back-and-forth in the following link:

https://www.photrio.com/forum/thread...recipes.12822/

Whether someone could make a modern albumen print that is indistinguishable from a nineteenth century albumen print is another question. Nineteenth century papers tend to be very thin, and I think it would be hard to find modern papers that are that thin. Hard to find—not impossible.

Google says you need exceptionally pure paper to make albumen or the chemicals will react horribly with any impurities and it will ruin the print. The only way for the process to work is for the paper to be modern. Old paper has all kinds of impurities built up and old photo paper still in the original box doesn't exist as far as I can see, and even if it did, I would think the chemicals would be degraded by now and it would make it unusable.

That's why it's probably extremely hard to make modern fakes look old...the paper has to be modern and that's easy to tell.

An easy way to tell for sure would be to get the paper carbon dated, IMO. The carbon dating process is now a lot more precise and a lot cheaper than before. The last time I checked it was like $500-600 for 1 sample.

I’ve printed in salt and albumen, and it’s not at all clear to me what “exceptionally pure paper” is. I don’t think it’s true that the process requires a modern paper.

I don't know...you can Google it. It says it in every article I've read...that you need pure, high quality paper, free of impurities.

I know a lot of art photographers who use old processes. They aren't making forgeries or attempting to make photos that someone would be fooled into thinking was old.

A funny thing was I was talking with a well-known print (ink) artist who does digital collages. I was surprised at how little he knew about digital printing itself-- how to identify laser versus inkjet printing under the microscope, halftone reproductions, blacklight and paper, etc. He just bought a big printer and used it. I also met a photographer from Paris who was having an exhibition, and she said she sent her photos in to be developed by a company. She likely wasn't up to date on a lot of stuff collectors know. So an expert can know more about the physicality of the artwork than the artist him or herself.

Here, I found it for you:

"Paper had to be thin, yet strong when wet. It also needed to be exceptionally pure--the slightest trace of foreign matter would react with other photographic chemicals and cause staining."

https://www.realorrepro.com/article/Photographic-Images

I'd love to know where you can find stacks of old paper that meets this criteria.

This link is almost enough to get me to try albumen printing again:

https://www.alternativephotography.c...umen-printing/

According to the link, Cranes (Kid Finish 32#, Platinotype or Parchment Wove 44#), Arches (Platinotype) and Strathmore (500 Drawing) would all work. My guess is that one could tell the difference between a vintage print and a print using one of these papers. Having said that, I have some theories about how a vintage paper could be made to work. I’m just not sure it’s a good idea to share such theories with a wide audience.

Albert E. Lee?

Yes, the lesser known Lee. Robert’s brother. Was a rifle-maker from Nashville, Tennessee...

Photos of Albert Lee were very collectible back then. It was considered the Paris of Southern Minnesota, and, before they were paved over for a Gimble's, famous for its mineral hot springs and prehistoric tar pits.

Apology accepted :)

Robbie Robertson's original lyric was, "Virgil quick come see, there goes Albert E. Lee."

I am intrigued about the carbon dating you describe. Do you know its margin of error (i.e., in years)? At the price you describe it would seem to make a lot of sense for a CdV such as this Atlantics. But how intrusive a test is it? Would it materially impact the item's potential value by requiring one to remove/destroy the tested portion?

I don't profess to have the level of photographic expertise of others on this Board. But common sense tells me that forgers are busy at work trying to replicate old photos when the potential value exceeds a certain threshold, as certainly would be the case with a CdV of arguably the most important team of the 1860's. If modern pure paper is required to make an albumen image, would it be so difficult once the image has been made and adhered to a period mount to intentionally soil it so as to make it appear old? Did the expert who examined it prior to it first appearing at auction have an opportunity to examine it out of the slab? If he did not, that would seem to me to limit the full extent of what his examination could potentially reveal. SGC did the slabbing. I have high regard for SGC as card graders. But I'm not persuaded ascertaining whether a photograph is a period albumen falls within their expertise.

Assuming the carbon dating's margin of error could establish whether the photo is period, and the testing process would not be expected to damage the image, the current owner of the photo would seem to be in an unenviable conundrum. It did not sell in the HA auction. So potential purchasers would expect the item to be carbon dated. But to do that would require the item be removed from the slab. Once that is done, there is real risk whether a grading company would agree to re-slab it unless the testing shows it to be consistent with a period albumen photograph. So it would pretty much be an all or nothing gamble -- (I) the test removes suspicions as to authenticity, the item gets re-slabbed though this time with a lot more evidence to show it is real and retains its value, or (II) the item flunks testing, is not re-slabbed and likely will be difficult to resell for anything close to what it first sold for.

You wouldn't want to carbon date the average CDV, due to the margin of error and that a piece has to be removed for testing. However, an advertised old paper baseball item was carbon dated at the University of Arizona to definitively prove that it was modern for a court case. Though Man Ray forgeries were discovered by another test on the paper.

If you want to learn how carbon dating and other such highly advanced processes work, I recommend the following book (I'm the author :) ). Spectroscopy-- a non-destructive test that identifies the chemical makeup and levels at the molecular level using a handheld device-- would potentially be very useful for baseball memorabilia, photos to cards to uniforms. Spectronomuy is used to date many things including painting. Spectroscopy is something I see in the future of baseball memorabilia and is even used to determine if aging signs (rust, foxing, etc) is authentic. The devices are expensive, but everything's free after that.

The book also goes into all the issues in authentication-- margins of error in testing, limits of science, etc.

Link

Thank you David. That is very useful information.

how to fake a print
 

Paul,
I've been talking with my photo guru about these different types of paper. Cranes Kid Finish is stationary paper. Cranes, by the way, makes paper for US currency. Now, if you can get find a really sharp chemist and borrow a paper mill for a couple of hours in the middle of the night, well, the possibilities are endless....I once worked in a paper mill, this is the sort of thing we used to talk about.

Strathmore 500 is drawing paper. Maybe both would work for exotic 19th century stuff, I don't know how they would apply to the 20th century. I'm fighting above my weight class, here.

Platinotype, which was produced in France until 1924, was made as a speciality paper from the 1990s until about 2008. Platinotype is the real deal and I would encourage anybody who is ready to go into the counterfeit photo business (if my ideas about finding an amoral chemist and and empty paper mill don't work out) to try this stuff. Problem being, you can't fake the patina. This is the real sticking point, right?

Vintage paper is available on eBay, but you just don't know if it will work until you try it.

All modern white paper has been treated with bleach and would be detected with a black light. It sounds as though platinotype is unbleached.

Lastly, you have more hands on experience that I, and I'm just talking about 20th century photographers (like Conlon), but the paper used throughout the dead ball era was very thin. Is any of the paper you mentioned of that thickness. If a photo passed the black light test, could it pass a micrometer or calipers?

I still think it would be easier to fake "Night Watch" than Cobb sliding into Jimmy Austin. But, hey, we know guys who were buying ink jet photos in the belief they were vintage prints. Everybody, do your homework.
lumberjack

I was arguing against the idea, raised earlier in this thread, that there was something about albumen that made it impossible to reproduce. Having printed in albumen about twenty years ago, that didn’t seem right to me. You just have to experiment until you find the right paper.

There was a major scandal in the photography market fifteen years ago when people began to question the authenticity of Lewis Hine photographs originating from the collection of Hine scholars Walter and Naomi Rosenblum. Some 500 prints were sold as vintage, meaning that they were purported to have been printed and signed by Hine. Tests of the photographic paper, however, revealed that it contained optical brightening agents in the baryta layer that were not introduced until 1955. Since Hine died in 1940, the presence of OBAs meant that Walter Rosenblum might have printed the Hines himself and signed Hine’s name to the posthumous prints. It is hard to convey how shocking this possibility was—the Rosenblums were giants among photography scholars.

The problem with faking a Conlon now is not unlike the problem the Rosenblums allegedly confronted. Conlon died before OBAs were introduced in photographic papers. To forge a Conlon, you need a paper without OBAs. It seems to me inevitable that someone wiłl make one available.

fake Hine's
 

I believe the forgers were also selling museum quality Hine photos, something that was very un-Hine like. That should have raised a few eyebrows. Hine wouldn't have been considered an artist in his lifetime, he was a muckraker, not Ansel Adams. Nobody caught on to that at the time, which is willful suspension of disbelief.
lumberjack

Corey-I don’t think the fellow who bought it in Saco River cares any more. After it didn’t sell in Heritage he told me that he was donating it to the HOF (the repository for all things that can’t be sold—LOL)

I had a modern platinotype and it fluoresced under blacklight.

The Hine photos were proven to be forgeries by a paper chemist. Though the chemist was asked to do the tests because there were suspicions to strong beliefs that they were forgeries. Suspicions from collectors and dealers almost always come first. That's why boards such as this one are so important.

It's also possible they fluoresced under black light. I believe the Man Ray forgeries did, as well as the Hilter Diaries forgery.

There's actually a simple but remarkably reliable test I use for dating photos including modern and unstamped photos (though not the only test). But it's so straightforward that I don't say what it is, so as to not tip off forgers. It's particularly useful for modern photos-- say of George Brett or a supposed rookie Ken Griffey Jr-- where they can otherwise harder to date. It doesn't pinpoint year, but if you have a supposed original rookie year of Griffey you can be confident that it's period versus recent.

Thanks for the link, David. I've downloaded the 198 pp PDF version of your book and look forward to reading it (and yes, I still have the Ruth we discussed. I am planning to have it forensically examined next year by an expert with a good track record in Michigan--been a bit sidetracked lately with other matters having a higher priority).

Best wishes,

Larry

Duly note that I think most fakes-- including baseball cards and normal ephemera--, are easily identified without the highly advanced scientific tests. Radiometric dating and such are usually done with priceless museum relics or part of academic study. I'm sure all the authentic and questioned Vermeers and Michelangelo paintings have had all the tests on them.

If you collected meteorites or moon rocks or ancient Chinese ceramics or had a historic baseball artifact, I could see how a normal collector might want those tests done. But no one needs radiometric dating to authenticate a T206 or ACME news photo.

In fact, some of the more effective tests are the ones collectors already do. Simple stuff like blacklight, checking for gloss and texture, measuring thickness, and holding a questioned card next to some real ones are very effective tests. A test doesn't have to be complicated or expensive to be effective and important. A bunch simple tests used together can be greater than one expensive nuclear physics test.

Though I readily admit that, beyond knowing how the ink and paper tests work and knowing the basic stuff average collectors know, autographs are outside of my area of expertise. Not something I've focused on or been interested in, and I never present myself here as an autograph expert.

Wouldn't degradation in resolution be a tell tale sign of a fake? If when putting side by side two images and noticing clear differences in resolution, I'm curious what could account for that other than the photos were not printed at the same time and from the same negative.

I remember some time ago considering buying a rare sealed record album. The first few "experts" I showed it to thought it was good. I then went to a person highly regarded as very knowledgeable in this area. He compared the album to an original he had and one could instantly tell the one I had was a fake. There were clear differences in the focus of the printed letters, as well as subtle differences in color tone.

In the case of the Atlantics CdV, the only known original I am aware of is located at the Library of Congress. Its resolution is noticeably sharper than the one sold by Saco Auctions. It also might have had different cropping. The best spin I can think to put on this is that the CdV was a period pirate CdV (a period copy printed from a different negative than the original), which on occasion turn up. When they do, the ones I have seen are not printed on mounts from the studio that produced the original, but instead on generic CdV mounts with no studio or copyright info on the verso. The most prominent baseball example I can think of is the 1867 Harvard BBC which is depicted in Mark Rucker's CdV book. As I recall, it had a blank verso. Some years later another turned up, this one having the typical studio and copyright info on the verso. The image is also known in yearbook size, as the 1867 Harvard yearbook contains a book-sized image of the team. So likely the pirate CdV was struck from the yearbook image.


If the Atlantic CdV was a period pirate, that would be relevant info to a prospective purchaser because it would not a first generation CdV. While it would still be valuable, IMO its value would be significantly less than if it had been a first generation CdV. What makes me believe it is not this (aside from the lack of provenance) is that it appears remounted, and the mount it is on is from the studio that is known to have taken the image. That appears to be a clear attempt to deceive, in contrast to pirate Cdvs that are printed on generic mounts with no studio or copyright designations.

If that's the case, then a large percentage of Old Judges are fake, because most have degraded and blurry images with poor registration.

I've seen a few glass negatives at auctions and most have some wear and tear from being handled constantly -- fingerprints, dirt, scratches, stains, etc.

Plus, the negatives were exposed out in the sun, with the constant flow of harsh UV rays. Over time the negatives probably got lighter and the image therefore got darker and blurrier.

I remember reading a story that Mathew Brady's glass plate war negatives were liquidated and purchased at an auction. The man who bought them used them to line the roof/ceiling of his greenhouse. Imagine that. After a few years the glass plates were practically transparent due to the UV exposure.

Resolution is very relevant to identifying an original versus reproduction. However, some processes, including albumen, can fade with age. The other problem with more modern photos is that they can be slightly blurry due to the photographer not having it in focus.