[Runscott]

Okay, just checked the mounted Alexander sold on RMY. I can almost guarantee (without having it in hand) that the print, mount and cropping are 100% vintage and authentic. However, the handwriting and Conlon signatures are fake. It also has the bad stamp Ben described - Ben assures me it is 100% a fake stamp.

The stamp always had me perplexed, as it made no sense that Conlon would have put ANY stamp on a mounted photo, or that he would even have mounted the photo the ways these were mounted - almost certainly they were glued to a mount by the 'journalist' who did the cropping, just to make work easier. The cropping was beautifully done, and is a great example of such work. The only scenario that I could imagine was that Conlon had sent prints to the news service and when they returned the prints, mounted, Conlon added a stamp so they would be identified if sent out again. Obviously, the real scenario was that some jerk added a fake stamp at a later date, in order to help sell the photo as a Conlon. The same jerk also added fake Conlon signatures to loads of authentic Conlons that only had Conlon's handwriting (no signature), or that had no Conlon info - again, to add value. The fake Conlon signature on the Grove neither adds nor detracts from value - no different than someone writing 'Conlon' on the back to identify the photographer, although this is obviously an attempt at forgery.

That's all I know, and all I have to say about this.

Jim - send it back or keep it, but no sitting on it.