It's Halloween, and threads are disappearing!

[David Atkatz]

I'm gonna tell one little story here. Self-serving, to be sure. But true. And an example of how I would expect to be treated if someone was concerned about the authenticity of one of my pieces.

Just a little story from a mean-spirited, nasty, unhappy, caustic, and bitter man.

A few years ago I noticed that a Dwight Frye autograph being sold on eBay was no good. (Dwight Frye played "Renfield" in the original Dracula, and "Fritz" in the original Frankenstein. He died in 1943, long before the "monster craze" of the late 50s and early 60s. His is the rarest, and most sought after horror autograph.)

How did I know it was a phoney? Because it had been cut from a piece I used to own. And how did I know that mine was no good? Because a stranger contacted me, and showed me a scan of the original it was copied from. (The "original" was an autograph catalog page--two photos of different items appeared, and the signatures from those items had been copied on to my single first-day cover.)

So I contacted the seller, and I sent him a scan of my piece, and a scan of the original. I explained how the dealer who sold it to me insisted it was real. (And I told him who the dealer was. Was that "betraying a confidence"?) The dealer had given me a refund, but kept insisting it was real, and that he was going to cut the signatures apart, and sell them separately. That was a few years before, but wouldn't ya know it? This guy had obtained his piece from that dealer.

Had I not seen the original catalog page, I would still think my piece was real. And every horror autograph expert I showed this stuff to said the same thing: were it not for that catalog page they would be fooled.

So... Was Jimmy fooled? Am I fooled? Could be. But before I believe that, I expect a little more than "I used to know the guy that forged it 20 years ago, but I can't say his name (or the name of the dealer who tried to sell me his stuff," or "I know it won't pass Jimmy today, even though it already has."

I guess I'm just funny that way.