From <em>Akalabeth</em> to <em>Xenobia</em>, many rare PC titles are now considered elaborate scams.
Read the whole story
Read the whole story
Inside the $100K+ forgery scandal that’s roiling PC game collecting
- Thread starter JournalBot
- Start date
I have Ultima 1-4 on 320K floppies I might be inclined to donate to their cause. They are copies, obviously.
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Yep, a collector feigning ignorance about packaging is pretty galling.
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The linked documents are pretty interesting, some of the scammed people have real copies to compare with. And some faults are just baffling, coffee stains obviously printed on from a pixel image...
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This isn't really all that difficult, and some of the ways have been outlined in this great article.
Art forgeries, for example are ALWAYS for one-of-a-kind items. People don't tend to forge the 1247th screen print of something.
But for all collectors out there, the simple things to check are the ink and paper/cardboard involved, and always make at least one full disk image backup of your floppy/tape.
Screen printing is a technology that has changed significantly since the 70s, both in the ink used and in the process/alignment/crispness of edges you'd expect.
And with photocopying... that's where it gets REALLY easy. If it's a colour photocopy, it has a dot pattern on it that identifies the copier used. If it's black and white, you can compare the ink and the edge fuzzing and the fade patterns to copies from the same era -- it's really really difficult to forge a 1983 photocopy with modern copying equipment as things have just improved so much.
So all you really need is a camera with a good macro lens, and you should be able to spot most forgeries due to things that it's really hard to fake today unless you have a bunch of functional but cheap (because the original developer bought cheap stuff) equipment from the era where the originals were made.
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Yeah, I find the urge to collect stuff fascinating. If it's your thing fine but it's funny to see people get worked up over what amounts to crap. Fine wines you're not going to drink are in the same category.
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Things I've collected:
pennies (ended up trashing my collection accidentally while attempting to clean it)
rocks (specific rocks; each one has a story associated with where I found it. So it's really the stories I'm collecting)
software (functional software that still works via emulation. I'm not into collecting media or boxes, just interesting bits of code that do interesting things... once again, with a connected story).
Maybe I should start collecting forgeries. They sound like they often have more interesting stories associated with them than the original objects being forged. Cheaper to collect, too.
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I wonder who is even collecting these at this point in the game, considering most gamers pirated heavily during the time period when these games were out and they would have bought what they needed by now.
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It's a bit more complicated than that; reporting I've seen elsewhere (Kotaku, I think?) indicated that some of the discs etc were blank, but Ricciardi probably thought he could get away with it because the age and media type of these games are such that they will have fallen prey to Bit Rot, the degradation of data over time, and become unreadable, or the owners may not have had the hardware to attempt to read them, or dare not risk using the discs to check the software he sold. And he wasn't technically wrong, he did get away with it for years.
Only the suspicions kept adding up until finally someone took a deep dive into what was actually on the media. And in the case of Bit Rot, it would strike relatively randomly over time, and there would still be legible data in some of the sectors in legitimate, aging media. However some the copies provided were entirely blank, there was no data on there at all. Or to put it another way, a decaying 1 bit may become a garbled mess on the media (not a 1, but not a 0 either)... but for everything to be 0,0,0,0 meant it was either always blank or had been deliberately reset to blank.
Now this is speculation, but one reason for using cracked copies is to put nearly identical data onto the media, in case someone does bother trying to run it or look at the structure of the media. In the example of cassette tape for example, you could play it in any recorder and it would screech like normal computer data, and to a layman it would "sound" legitimate. Why would no one want to look closer? Well, again for years no one did, but I'll come back to this shortly...
It's possible that Ricciardi became aware that people were starting to get suspicious, so he looked for simple cracks that had no loading splash ("Cracked by Fairlight!" etc) so he could fake the appearence of the data people were looking for on later forgeries; Why not use the original? That requires effort and, if he has ancient copies himself, he may have Bit Rot himself or risk damaging his own investment if he tries to copy from them. If every copy he sold all had identical bad data in the same sectors, it would be a blatant fingerprint that he, or one specific individual at least was the one forging them.
And some of these titles are exceptionally rare, finding the uncracked, 100% original archive version might be tricky. So the lazy, but efficient route was to copy back a cracked, online archived version onto the media. He could be sure it would run if someone actually tried to do that from the fake media. Indeed if he was really lucky, the natural aging and obsolescence of the media he copied too might randomly Rot itself and hide the crack data. This is especially tempting if you know people aren't checking that often anyway and will sit on it for years...
What caught him out again though was the data was still so perfect people were able to pull all of it off the media again and spot they were cracked versions, in the still 100% legible code they could look at, and not the original.
But he still got away with even this for years too. So, to get back to the reason why?
The Ultima crowd in particular are a complex mix of early tech adopters who imagine themselves CEOs of their own home businesses, because they had the money to afford the monstrous cost of home computers back in the 1970s, and dedicated even fanatical fans of the "Lord British" IP in general who grew up playing the games. I've detailed this often with my own experience of working on Ultima Online, and the mixture of scams and shitshowery that came from the last "Lord British" product, "Shroud of the Avatar"... and there's a deep, deep train of thought within the community that is prone to wanting to believe they've got a piece of Garriott, and desperately wanting to believe in its value, either as childhood "Playing on the Apple ][" nostalgia, or specifically as a piece of bubble inflationary investment opportunities..
And even with the most material, cynical motivation, you don't declare you've got a fake until you're certain the price of the asset you're sitting on isn't going to grow regardless...
Until enough suspicion around Ricciardi stuck that the entire market started to question the value of everything in it, there was a financial incentive, and an emotional need to not look at what was actually on the discs. Now there is, and the imaging tools and code comparisons are being pulled out because the confidence in Ricciardi specifically is gone. And he's really not that clever of a forger at all.
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As a bonus, you legitimized yourself as an avid trader which explains your big collection of originals.
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Reading the interview, he seems to respond to being caught in lies with more lies, and by accusing the interviewer of unfair attacks. He doesn’t offer evidence, but does appeal to pity, assuring us that he is the victim. He never offers to return anyone’s money.
These are all hallmarks of compulsive liars that I have dealt with in the past.
These are all hallmarks of compulsive liars that I have dealt with in the past.
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Am having a real hard time understanding the appeal of collecting, essentially, old floppy discs.
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Part of what is at play here, and elsewhere, is that people who buy forgeries are often highly motivated to believe they are authentic. No one wants to believe they were duped, and everyone wants to be able to sell their investment in the future for more than they paid.
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You couldn't have it as a child. You could, but sold it and have since regretted it. You can touch it, feel it and in the case of older games, especially these ones, they have both an existential, material history in the age of the products and they came with little books of history and lore for the product itself. The Ultima games came with actual trinkets; I still have my Amiga original of Ultima V, with the cloth map and metal "Codex" medallion. I used to sit and navigate the game with the cloth map on my knee... I can still recall being in the underground caverns when my mother arrived out of the blue to tell me my grandfather, who was a miner in real life, had suddenly passed away.
So I understand this kind of collecting, although I don't deeply engage in it. Buying the odd little toy off eBay every now and then.
What I don't understand is knowing that people have this kind of emotional attachment, and rather than it humanising them to you, seeing it as a weakness to exploit and which allows you to then rip them off.
Which is what the entire Shroud of the Avatar project was built upon; "Lord British" is just straight out making an NFT based game next. Sigh. But anyway...
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There's at least three distinct groups of collectors: One is the ones collecting as an investment. The 2nd is the ones who have it as a hobby, they want complete sets, the rare stuff etc, and mainly sell to finance other purchases, like to complete as set etc. The third is... Dunno what to call them. The ones that want specific items for specific reasons. Like nostalgia, being a huge fan of a specific character etc.
I'd like to say group 1 can't exist without 2 and 3 (the 90s comics bubble etc), but the modern art world kinda proves me wrong, since it's almost all group 1 nowadays.
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Celery Man
Ars Legatus Legionis
You could also make the argument that, without anyone collecting them and giving them value, a lot of those games and their packaging would just end up as more trash in the dump. Collecting is a kind of recycling, if you want to look at it that way.
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This fits my experience. My dad and his brother were collectors. After my dad died, I was contacted by a lot of collectors who were interested in what the two of them had collected; this we expected. What we didn't expect was that a lot of the collectors were also interested in my dad and uncle's research. I wound up selling the research for an amount that surprised me.
A lot of the collectors expressed that "it would be a shame if this research was lost," I think hinting that they wanted us to turn it over to them for free. I had brief thoughts about trying to make it available to the community, but I was obligated to sell it if I could, so I did.
It was a fascinating insight into collector communities, though. There were some in that community who were known for building their collections by swooping in and buying the collections of deceased collectors from the bereaved at a steep discount. We heard from a few of them. The whole experience pushed me personally toward minimalism.
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My first thought was that this guy discovered that he had been scammed himself, and found out by loading the disk and finding the cracked copy instead of the original. It might have been a short step from that disappointment to "Well, why shouldn't I sell this onward and recoup my loss? Who is to know that I loaded this and saw the crack screen?" And once that sale succeeded with no consequences, a similarly short step to "And why shouldn't I do it again? I can make a copy as easily as that original scammer. It hurts nobody; my first fraudulent sale wasn't detected and the buyer is just as happy as they would be with an authentic product. I should make it as identical to the last one as possible, so that I can shift blame to my original fraudulent supplier."
As an aside, I had so many floppies with bad sectors back in the day that I'm a bit surprised that any of these disks can load at all.
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I was an avid user of 80s-90s computers (Commodore 64, Apple II, DOS-era PCs), and am pretty familiar with the printing processes in use at that time until now (letterpress / offset / laser / inkjet, screen printing, 4-color vs spot color, color separations, screening angles, etc). I grew up in a family-owned print shop, around equipment and processes from the early 1900s (Linotype - molten lead to create letterpress type) up to the early 2000s (digital printing presses - oversized laser printers). A few fake IDs may or may not have passed across my desk in the mid 90s. I seem to be uniquely qualified to chime in on this situation.
Some of the evidence presented (in this PDF linked from the Big Box group's announcement) seems pretty damning:
Exhibit 2.1 / 2.2 is one - The Ultima back cover photo. The original looks correct for a commercially-printed item from that era - half-toned/screened art. The white areas aren't less than ~10% black, and the darkest areas aren't more than ~90% black. (Any more/less, and you risk all-white or all-black splotches unless the ink coverage is dialed in PERFECTLY on the press. This is why photos in newspapers/yearbooks/etc look a little washed out. The contrast is reduced by ~20% to make them reliably printable.) The forgery is almost certainly scanned from half-toned art, cleaned up, and printed with a modern process. The original cover (front+back) would have been created via 4-color offset printing. Any modern short-run color printing process (inkjet, laser, etc) would look dramatically different under a loupe or microscope. I think it would be almost impossible to recreate the nuances of a 4-color offset process without the difficulty and expense of actually creating printing plates and printing out many copies on an actual offset press. Getting good color registration, ink uniformity, etc can easily waste 50-100 sheets at the start of a printing run. Offset printing makes sense for 500-50,000 copies, not 5-50. Forging something in this manner would make sense for thousands of pieces of fake currency, not a handful of copies of a game manual cover.
Exhibit 1.5, 2.5, 2.7 - all appear to be photocopies or scan+reprint. Look at the (C) and the line-art logo. They look exactly like what you would expect from a photocopy - lines aren't as crisp or clear.
That said, assuming it's not obviously a modern printing process (easy enough to see under a microscope), this could be a legitimate reprint. It's not unheard of for original license holders to no longer have the original artwork or color separations, and have a printed copy re-scanned for future runs. We would need to know more about the company and item. Did they change ownership? Was the product re-released a few years/decades later?
Some are less obvious. Let's discuss:
Exhibit 1.6, 1.7, 2.10 - these Disk labels should be super easy to evaluate under magnification. The originals would've almost certainly been printed as a "spot color" - one single-color printing ink, not made up of individual dots of multiple colors during printing. 4-color printing was expensive back then, and no one would use it unless they had a darn good reason. Unless the forger had an offset press or created a custom-matched color of ink/toner for a modern desktop printer, any easy modern printing process is going to have telltale multi-color dots under a microscope. Also, the fine-lined logo appears to have been scanned and re-printed.
Exhibit 2.11 shows some really bad signs - you can see banding in a 4-color process of the "progame" logo, and there's a visible block around the "BOOT DISK DIRECTLY ON ANY APPLE" text. Looks like a scan + photoshop edit to me. I am confused by the poor quality of the majority of the text, especially where it's whiter than the white of the paper. Offset ink is oil-based, and wouldn't flake off like this. I wonder if this is coated paper for inkjet printing, and the "aged white" was printed? Again, should be super easy to tell under a microscope/loupe.
Exhibit 6.5 On the cassette tape, the original was likely printed via a pad press. It's basically screen printing, but the ink is transferred to an intermediate "balloon" that then gets pressed onto non-uniform/curved objects. Before fancy inkjet printers that can print on virtually anything, pad presses are what put logos on coffee mugs, plastic min baseball caps, cassette tapes, etc. The process isn't super precise, which is why there's often smudging as shown on the original. Is it just me, or does it almost look the forgery has a laser-printed matte-finish clear label attached? If not, the only easy modern process I can think of would be a water-slide decal or other similar "transfer" method.
Exhibit 2.12, 3.3 - very hard to tell from photos, but should be super obvious in person. These would be insanely simple to forge if you had an old 9-pin dot matrix printer and a roll of tractor-feed address labels, but very difficult without. Dot-matrix printing is very violent; it slams a metal pin through an inked ribbon, smashing it into the paper. Under magnification, the paper will be visibly crushed/dented at each mark. I also see at least one of what seems to be a hand-cut corner - very unlikely for simple labels that were sold by the millions in the 80s.
If anyone closer to the controversy wants to reach out, I'd be happy to take a look at more close-up images and give my seasoned-amateur opinion.
(EDIT: When posting the above, I hadn't seen most of the other sources/details/comments. Everything I noted appears to be very similar to opinions already made by those who have seen the forgeries in person. Their analysis seems solid to me.)
Some of the evidence presented (in this PDF linked from the Big Box group's announcement) seems pretty damning:
Exhibit 2.1 / 2.2 is one - The Ultima back cover photo. The original looks correct for a commercially-printed item from that era - half-toned/screened art. The white areas aren't less than ~10% black, and the darkest areas aren't more than ~90% black. (Any more/less, and you risk all-white or all-black splotches unless the ink coverage is dialed in PERFECTLY on the press. This is why photos in newspapers/yearbooks/etc look a little washed out. The contrast is reduced by ~20% to make them reliably printable.) The forgery is almost certainly scanned from half-toned art, cleaned up, and printed with a modern process. The original cover (front+back) would have been created via 4-color offset printing. Any modern short-run color printing process (inkjet, laser, etc) would look dramatically different under a loupe or microscope. I think it would be almost impossible to recreate the nuances of a 4-color offset process without the difficulty and expense of actually creating printing plates and printing out many copies on an actual offset press. Getting good color registration, ink uniformity, etc can easily waste 50-100 sheets at the start of a printing run. Offset printing makes sense for 500-50,000 copies, not 5-50. Forging something in this manner would make sense for thousands of pieces of fake currency, not a handful of copies of a game manual cover.
Exhibit 1.5, 2.5, 2.7 - all appear to be photocopies or scan+reprint. Look at the (C) and the line-art logo. They look exactly like what you would expect from a photocopy - lines aren't as crisp or clear.
That said, assuming it's not obviously a modern printing process (easy enough to see under a microscope), this could be a legitimate reprint. It's not unheard of for original license holders to no longer have the original artwork or color separations, and have a printed copy re-scanned for future runs. We would need to know more about the company and item. Did they change ownership? Was the product re-released a few years/decades later?
Some are less obvious. Let's discuss:
Exhibit 1.6, 1.7, 2.10 - these Disk labels should be super easy to evaluate under magnification. The originals would've almost certainly been printed as a "spot color" - one single-color printing ink, not made up of individual dots of multiple colors during printing. 4-color printing was expensive back then, and no one would use it unless they had a darn good reason. Unless the forger had an offset press or created a custom-matched color of ink/toner for a modern desktop printer, any easy modern printing process is going to have telltale multi-color dots under a microscope. Also, the fine-lined logo appears to have been scanned and re-printed.
Exhibit 2.11 shows some really bad signs - you can see banding in a 4-color process of the "progame" logo, and there's a visible block around the "BOOT DISK DIRECTLY ON ANY APPLE" text. Looks like a scan + photoshop edit to me. I am confused by the poor quality of the majority of the text, especially where it's whiter than the white of the paper. Offset ink is oil-based, and wouldn't flake off like this. I wonder if this is coated paper for inkjet printing, and the "aged white" was printed? Again, should be super easy to tell under a microscope/loupe.
Exhibit 6.5 On the cassette tape, the original was likely printed via a pad press. It's basically screen printing, but the ink is transferred to an intermediate "balloon" that then gets pressed onto non-uniform/curved objects. Before fancy inkjet printers that can print on virtually anything, pad presses are what put logos on coffee mugs, plastic min baseball caps, cassette tapes, etc. The process isn't super precise, which is why there's often smudging as shown on the original. Is it just me, or does it almost look the forgery has a laser-printed matte-finish clear label attached? If not, the only easy modern process I can think of would be a water-slide decal or other similar "transfer" method.
Exhibit 2.12, 3.3 - very hard to tell from photos, but should be super obvious in person. These would be insanely simple to forge if you had an old 9-pin dot matrix printer and a roll of tractor-feed address labels, but very difficult without. Dot-matrix printing is very violent; it slams a metal pin through an inked ribbon, smashing it into the paper. Under magnification, the paper will be visibly crushed/dented at each mark. I also see at least one of what seems to be a hand-cut corner - very unlikely for simple labels that were sold by the millions in the 80s.
If anyone closer to the controversy wants to reach out, I'd be happy to take a look at more close-up images and give my seasoned-amateur opinion.
(EDIT: When posting the above, I hadn't seen most of the other sources/details/comments. Everything I noted appears to be very similar to opinions already made by those who have seen the forgeries in person. Their analysis seems solid to me.)
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There's reproductions legit and undisclosed for EVERYTHING. Tiffany lamps. Coca Cola Machines. Samurai Swords. Video Games. Vinyl Records.
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Well that's the philosophical aspect isn't it. Because a painting is nothing more than dirt speared on a canvas. Photographs are just chemicals on paper. Money is just printed paper or worse just 1s and 0s on a computer.
So obviously it's not the thing itself but rather the value in people's minds that is worth something. The story that they make up in their mind about it.
Famously $6,000 violins outperform Stradivarius (it's been proven countless times). Yet people pay millions of dollars for the sub-optimal violin because of the prestige and value assigned the item in their mind.
That's why to me buying replicas is ano different than buying the real thing. I like the experience but I know the story is all in your mind anyway, so why pay extra for "older" molecules? Personally I would rather have a brand new thing than an old thing even if they are functionally the same.
But then again, how many of these collectors are actually going to play these games? How many of them just "collect" them? I've heard of many video game collectors who only collect shrink-wrapped games. It could be a non-functional game (bad printing of the cd) for all they know. Those original games could be unplayable.
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I have a whole bunch of different fake/fraudulent Microsoft Certificates of Authenticity, from back in the Win95/98/Office97 days. Some were out and out fakes, with terrible half-hearted "hologram" and/or silver-thread-in-the-paper simulations. One is an actual hologram, but the baby is of an entirely difference race! Some are legitimate CoAs, but attached to a fake Windows manual. They were likely removed from Microsoft mice (that are easily sold without a CoA) or bundles of software (where each program came with one), and attached to fake copies of Windows. ($15 mouse --> $90 copy of Windows.) Microsoft eventually wised up and shipped their software bundles with ONE CoA, glued to the case, rather thatn 5+, loose in the package. They changed the mice to have a CoA label/sticker attached to the cord, rather than a ~4" square paper one.
I'll have to dig them out some day and make a Reddit post.
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Thanks. I’m not sure “we’ll be expanding on” is equal to “we got played,” but I see your point.
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This reminds me a lot about the great story of Phil Collins's collection of Alamo artifacts, many of which look like forgeries. Like Cyrano4747 mentioned, small communities like these often end up with untrained experts popping up; sometimes they've got the skills to distinguish fake from real, but sometimes following their gut leads them down risky paths. https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texa ... -of-alamo/
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I collect Neo Geo games (Japanese versions - US versions are too rich for my blood), and I'm fairly certain several of them are forgeries.
I've collected multiple other platforms over the years, and have come to the general conclusion that it's virtually impossible to buy only genuine articles these days.
For me, collecting is like betting - it's important to keep in mind that you should never spend more than you're willing to lose. If what you're doing isn't that, then you're doing it wrong.
I've collected multiple other platforms over the years, and have come to the general conclusion that it's virtually impossible to buy only genuine articles these days.
For me, collecting is like betting - it's important to keep in mind that you should never spend more than you're willing to lose. If what you're doing isn't that, then you're doing it wrong.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Tribunus Militum
Came here to suggest (generously /s) that maybe the money would have been better put into NFTs.
If any of the parties involved were also involved in gamergate then my care factor becomes very low, in fact microscopic. Whenever I read anything to do with gaming, the foul taint of those times still hangs around, irrespective of actual connection.
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Forget the microscope, they printed the scanned label including patina around the original edges and then badly hand cut it. Absolute amateur hour:
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That does look ROUGH. My comments were about the linked PDF report and the photos in it. I'll have to take a look at all the other documents/discussion too.
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Easier to buy genuine bare arcade PCBs because at least you can see them, and when you get them it's relatively simple to match to the photos you got. Neo Geo carts are sealed up, so you gotta open them up to examine them, and a lot of people don't bother. I know I've never checked any of my carts lol, but I only have a handful of MVS.
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Gotta say, as kid from Eugene, Oregon (97403 zipcode, no less) whose first computer, acquired ca. 1980, was a 48K Apple II plus, that Chambers of Xenobia cover is giving me a serious case of nostalgia mixed with retroactive FOMO. Fake or no fake, how did I never know this game existed?
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These games are way smaller scale than that. There were no international publishers or anything like it. These were usually being sold by the person who wrote them, who probably copied the floppies by hand and had the label and manual printed at the local print shop. That kind of extreme small production scale, combined with the status of the game as a precursor of an important genre or an early work by a famous developer (e.g. Akalabeth), is why they're sought after.
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If you used a credit card you should have proof, assuming the transactions are kept that long
In my case, some of the games were bought from Frys (R.I.P) & I usually put the receipts in the box & they are still readable
I guess everyone used to buy & hoard games with the expectation they would "play & finish them someday"
...... then life kicks in......and you can them post about the good old days
A receipt isn't very *good* proof. Especially given receipts from before 2000 or so rarely state exactly what the item is. And the receipt proves nothing about whether the item being sold now is the item that accompanied the receipt.
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They still do. But reserved to bribe.. Uh... to generate buzz to select youtubers.
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One of my housemates has a copy of Akalabeth. Legit too. I keep telling him he should consider selling it and some of the other early adopter games he snagged as a youth. Will have to show him the high dollar those things are fetching nowadays.
My oldest boxed game is only Ultima III. I got so pissed at the Infocom style games that I tossed them all, except for Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I cut up with scissors to express my disappointment.
My oldest boxed game is only Ultima III. I got so pissed at the Infocom style games that I tossed them all, except for Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I cut up with scissors to express my disappointment.
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I only have a passing interest in vintage video games, but it's a shame that this sort of thing happens. I like to collect things, and would be really excited to have a rare item.
I have signed memorabilia from various people I admire. A few are legitimate, in that I was the one that obtained the signature. A few I have purchased off of eBay, and they come with a laughable CoA that basically says 'I so and so hereby verify that this item is legitimate'. 99% sure they're fake, but whatever. Still cool to have on the shelf. Fortunately they're all relatively inexpensive (sub $100).
Just a shame that people always look for the easy dollar, especially at the expense of others. It's so frustrating to be someone who strives to be honest, work hard, provide employment for others, and bring actual value to customers, only to make less than people who defraud or 'misrepresent'.
Somewhat related: I do like the fact that with vintage video games (or digital things in general) - that we can share the game, and make it playable to anyone - yet still be able to have rare original copies.
I have signed memorabilia from various people I admire. A few are legitimate, in that I was the one that obtained the signature. A few I have purchased off of eBay, and they come with a laughable CoA that basically says 'I so and so hereby verify that this item is legitimate'. 99% sure they're fake, but whatever. Still cool to have on the shelf. Fortunately they're all relatively inexpensive (sub $100).
Just a shame that people always look for the easy dollar, especially at the expense of others. It's so frustrating to be someone who strives to be honest, work hard, provide employment for others, and bring actual value to customers, only to make less than people who defraud or 'misrepresent'.
Somewhat related: I do like the fact that with vintage video games (or digital things in general) - that we can share the game, and make it playable to anyone - yet still be able to have rare original copies.
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There is a long history of forgery in both art and rare books. In nearly every case, the forgeries can be traced back to a single individual. You can look up the case of T. J. Wise, and you'll see pretty much the same thing - he was a leading collector and scholar of rare 19th-century books and manuscripts, Because of his great erudition, everyone believed whatever he said....until the whole thing blew up.
And when all the forgeries can be traced back to one individual, you can be pretty sure he's the one producing them.
And when all the forgeries can be traced back to one individual, you can be pretty sure he's the one producing them.
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