genZOD
Sr Member
I studied art before I switched to my current profession. I still have friends who work in conservation and at large museums. I wrote something very similar to this way back at the beginning of this thread: In the art and antiquities world, authentication is no longer left up to one kind of expert. Sure, they are hard to fool, but they are only looking for details that fall within their area of expertise. An important painting, for example, will undergo forensic tests, a provenance review, and will be examined by experts who have cataloged all the known works of the artist. This approach does two things: 1) Red flags that one expert notices might be missed by another. 2) All artifacts have inconsistencies, but the combined analysis can overcome, explain, or minimize those inconsistencies. Partly because authentication used to be left up to only "art experts", it is estimated that up to 50% of the art in museums and auction houses is fake. Worse, that fake art is harder to spot after it has a provenance trail that includes major museums. It's not that these experts aren't well educated and well meaning, it's just that they can't know everything.
I think Gregatron mentioned that people with first-hand experience with these props are getting older. We’ve lost many of them. As this happens, provenance becomes extremely important. Where and when was the prop created? Where has it been, and how did it get there? Are there documents and photographs of it? Can it be screen-matched? Does it match production stills? If we want to avoid a flood of fakes, it's important to build a catalog of all known props. This should include descriptions of materials and how they age. I miss the old webpage…
It’s not impossible for a long-lost prop to resurface. It’s great when an expert or group of experts gives their opinion. My problem with the last “long-lost phaser” was that the reported provenance was spotty at best and basically missing with no real forensic work reported. Yes, prop making experts (some well loved by the community) said it looked correct, but that should only be part of the authentication. No history, an unlikely story about two long-lost and unknown props coming together to create a “holy grail” prop needs a pretty big pile of evidence to balance it out. Personally, I’d call them “after” production props. At best, they are “Studio of”, as they may have been made by the right craftspeople, but there is no evidence that they were used in a production. If evidence is found, I’d be the first person in line to see them in an exhibit.
Anyway, this new complete phaser may well be authentic. Things are lost and found (3 foot Enterprise!), parts do go missing and items do get restored incorrectly. Hopefully, the auction house will produce more complete evidence. Personally, I think it is more likely that these are real than the last batch. Proof of that requires more than just photos of it now (maybe from Comic-Con), however detailed.
Sorry for the long post. I'm just an amateur replica builder. I like to build things as they looked on screen, not as they really were. That said, the only project I've ever abandoned was making accurate molds for a specific P2 shell. The closer to "real" I got the more time I was spending trying to figure out how to add "tells" so that non-experts couldn't be tricked. Anyway, that zapped the fun right out of the project--so to speak.
I think Gregatron mentioned that people with first-hand experience with these props are getting older. We’ve lost many of them. As this happens, provenance becomes extremely important. Where and when was the prop created? Where has it been, and how did it get there? Are there documents and photographs of it? Can it be screen-matched? Does it match production stills? If we want to avoid a flood of fakes, it's important to build a catalog of all known props. This should include descriptions of materials and how they age. I miss the old webpage…
It’s not impossible for a long-lost prop to resurface. It’s great when an expert or group of experts gives their opinion. My problem with the last “long-lost phaser” was that the reported provenance was spotty at best and basically missing with no real forensic work reported. Yes, prop making experts (some well loved by the community) said it looked correct, but that should only be part of the authentication. No history, an unlikely story about two long-lost and unknown props coming together to create a “holy grail” prop needs a pretty big pile of evidence to balance it out. Personally, I’d call them “after” production props. At best, they are “Studio of”, as they may have been made by the right craftspeople, but there is no evidence that they were used in a production. If evidence is found, I’d be the first person in line to see them in an exhibit.
Anyway, this new complete phaser may well be authentic. Things are lost and found (3 foot Enterprise!), parts do go missing and items do get restored incorrectly. Hopefully, the auction house will produce more complete evidence. Personally, I think it is more likely that these are real than the last batch. Proof of that requires more than just photos of it now (maybe from Comic-Con), however detailed.
Sorry for the long post. I'm just an amateur replica builder. I like to build things as they looked on screen, not as they really were. That said, the only project I've ever abandoned was making accurate molds for a specific P2 shell. The closer to "real" I got the more time I was spending trying to figure out how to add "tells" so that non-experts couldn't be tricked. Anyway, that zapped the fun right out of the project--so to speak.
