Collecting Historical Items and Fraud

Greetings All,

I have been following several threads on the forum recently dealing with faked historical material ending up for sale. This topic, I find, is equally fascinating and distressing. But, I would like to get some impressions from those who do collect historical aviation items (of any kind) as to the prevalence of fakes on the market. Would you consider such to be widely seen, not so often, or only rarely (in your experience)?

I have been involved for years in the related activity of vetting period photographs. I can say without exaggeration that this problem of outright fraud relating to the ‘doctoring’ or faking of historical photographs or images has become so overwhelming that… well… I struggle for an adjective. “Shocking” would hardly cover it– I think “astounding” would be more to my thinking. I note with great interest Andy’s (Tangemere1940) comments regarding the technical excellence of some of these fakes. This parallels recent developments in faked photographs wherein the skill level demonstrated by the fraud manufacturing these has risen to such a level that some fakes cannot actually be sussed out on technical grounds. Indeed, there have been cases of late where the fake was detected only because the creator was (thankfully) unfamiliar with the behaviour of period photographic emulsions, and produced an image which was quite impossible for the alleged time-frame.

Frankly, I find this level of skill (as applied to forgery) to be frightening. I wonder if this is what we are seeing now with regards to the collection other types of historical aviation-related material? Any comments here, chaps?