Beware the Dreaded Printed Facsimile

Printed facsimiles have plagued dealers and collectors for over a century. One must be very cautious when examining a signature to make sure that the ink was applied by a person as opposed to a machine or printing press. Fundraising letters of Einstein and birthday thanks from Churchill are two of the more well known examples of how deceiving a facsimile can be.

One still sees both offered as genuine examples by less experienced dealers and unknowledgeable vendors on eBay. Thousands of the above facsimiles were produced, thus making identification a breeze, by just using a little common sense. Simply make Xerox or preferably a transparency copy of a known facsimile copy and use it as an overlay. Presto! A match insures the item is not authentic.

What is more difficult to many people is identifying facsimiles that were only issued in limited quantities; such as the Kennedy brochure illustrated below. The image shows a scan of a seemingly authentic Kennedy signed photo that some collector could have paid as much as $10,000 to purchase.

Inexperienced, Deceitful or both, you decide.

The following image shows an "authentication" by none other than our notorious offender Steve Koscal.

Notice that he states that he "..has personally examined the original portrait.."

The following image shows the very same signed facsimile which was recently sold at a major auction described as being a facsimile signed portrait with later added JFK inscription and signature.

The story is fairly obvious here. Koschal authenticated something that was printed either because he did not examine it in person; in our opinion making him Inexperienced, Deceitful or both.

How you can prevent costly errors.

To prevent such costly errors in purchasing material diligent dealers and collectors should employ at the very least a 30X magnifier. Under such magnification one can see the lack of consistency caused by a writer using a pen, and the consistency of a printed item. Sometimes printed items will even reveal the dot screen pattern of the printing process, not always visible to the naked eye.

Another method is to hold the questioned document in an indirect light source and observe how it reflects the light. A printed item will reflect with a smooth consistency while a written will not.

We have seen people try to doctor printed items by adding ink overlays to make them look written; to expose this process use Ultra-violet light for the examination as it will cause printing inks and writing inks to laminate differently.

In our opinion the best way to avoid costly mistakes is to deal with known long term dealers such as those that are members of UACC or PADA, or to use the expertise of known authenticators.

These and other links may be found in the reference section of our website.