Fakes new and old

Spurious items made of some grade of silver, many of them claiming considerable antiquity enter our market with increasing frequency

Indeed there is a factory in China that will reproduce convincing copies of any piece of silver you care to send it for a price.

The first thing to be said about collecting antique or modern domestic silver is don’t be overly reliant on hallmarks. If the marks are British they are almost always reliable unless they have been created outside the UK where they are not only no rules against their use but their use historically has been encouraged locally but not sanctioned or monitored by the British. The US after the the American Independence is an excellent example of mass use of faux marks.

Another classic example was Henry Birks of Montreal getting permission to use London Date letters on silver manufactured in Canada and where the only guarantee of date or quality was the manufacturer itself.

Today I noted at auction in Edinburgh a "A LARGE QUEEN ANNE STYLE TWIN-HANDLED PORRINGER WITH COVER LONDON ASSAY OFFICE, LONDON 2023
with additional cancelled marks, Benjamin Godfrey, London 1713, of traditional demi-fluted form, with S-scroll handles, the pull-off lid of similar design with knopped finial
23cm high, 42oz. Note: Please note that this piece was admitted to the Antique Plate Committee: Case number 9597 and now has 2023 London hallmarks " I am quoting the auction house description directly:

Those of you who know and collect Ben Godfrey’s work will note four rather odd things, first that the date letter is for 1713 or before Godfrey commenced his apprenticeship with John Craig, secondly that the item has been re-submitted to the London Goldsmiths in 2023 which has substituted a Sterling mark for the fake Britannia mark, thirdly the legislation of the time prevented sterling silver being sold for domestic plate (a measure to cut back on coin clipping) and fourthly that Godfrey would have had to have been only 14 when he made this item and stamped it with a steel punch he did not get approved to use until a decade or more later.

So two issues arising: first in a world of internet where auctioneers are no longer selling mostly to a sophisticated group of collectors and dealers but a world of amateur buyers, does this description lead or mislead? Might the buyer, reliant on the rep’ of the auctioneer, think he or she is getting a genuine 1713 item by a famous silversmith which has been restamped for double authentication by the modern Goldsmiths’ office?

And secondly: what if any steps should global collectors take or encourage their governments and duly authorised assay offices to take in order to prevent the mass distribution of sham silver which will have the same effect as the sham furniture market has had on antiques rendered in wood which, without rock solid provenance, fell by 2010 to less than 10% of their peak in 1990.

It is fairly safe to say in a world where politicians only respond usefully to issues which will garner them populist support and votes, the legislatures of the globe will do nothing. So it is up to the dealers and auction houses to preserve their trade and integrity or else see it and their livelihood dwindle to the status of a Georgian armchair with one Georgian leg and three after-market supports.

I am grateful to Phil Osbourn of Silver Makers Marks for his input and helpful comments on this and many other items that turn up at auction.

Christopher R W Wilson
Guildhall Antiques
Toronto, Canada

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That strikes me as “we’re covered, but if you’re confused, it’s your own fault” language. If they wanted to be more straightforward, the description should read:

A LARGE QUEEN ANNE STYLE TWIN-HANDLED PORRINGER WITH COVER LONDON ASSAY OFFICE, LONDON 2023

(Additional cancelled marks, Benjamin Godfrey, London 1713, determined to be fakes.)

Of traditional demi-fluted form, with S-scroll handles, the pull-off lid of similar design with knopped finial.

23cm high, 42oz.

Note: Please note that this piece was admitted to the Antique Plate Committee, Case number 9597, and now has 2023 London hallmarks.

In short, use the word “fake,” so that everyone understands.

Should UK auctioneers be selling fakes, even declared fakes at all? The LAO has this opinion in its handbook on the law:

“Is it legal for an auctioneer to
catalogue an item of British silver
as wrong or a fake?”

“No, if it is a fake it is an offence to
catalogue it or try to sell it as such. If a
piece is listed as unmarked or having worn
marks when they are in fact readable, this
is also an offence. If you are unsure about
an article, you can submit it to the APC.”

“What if I ignore a request from the
Goldsmiths’ Company Assay Office
to withdraw a piece?”

“A piece is not officially deemed to be
a fake until it has been considered by
the APC. Members of the committee
check saleroom catalogues and dealers’
websites for suspect items and report
their findings to the Assay Office. The
office will then contact the auction house
or dealer asking them to withdraw it from
sale. If this request is not complied with
and the article is subsequently found to
contravene the law, an offence will have
been committed. Very occasionally in such
cases, the Assay Office may request the
local Trading Standards Authority to carry
out a formal investigation. However, the
Assay Office and APC’s primary role is to
help and advise. Ultimately, if an auction
room sells an item that turns out to be
a fake, the buyer will be entitled to their
money back but the vendor may have
already been paid out, leaving the auction
room with a loss. If any doubt can be
removed before an item is sold it is better
for the seller, buyer, and agent.”

Hallmark Authentication Committee | The Goldsmiths' Company Assay Office.

But there are two matters left unanswered by this little booklet. First this may be a Scottish auction but its clientele is global and second, while the laws of the UK and other countries enact rules and penalties for sale of fakes, if the seller declares they are fakes, and arguably the auctioneer here has sort of done this, you are no longer committing criminal fraud and probably not commercial fraud.

Auctioneers, who do not also offer their services as appraisers as most now do, have long maintained they are entitled to rely on the printed waivers in their catalogues and the exemptions granted them under auction legislation, nationally, by state or provinces or by bylaw.

These rules worked fine when serious bidders, whether established collectors or dealers, were their main customers and any civilian who stepped into the arena understood caveat emptor and relied on his or her own spidy sense to sus’ out both fakes and bargains, but today, when much of buying is done off photos and written description, how fair is it to presume every buyer will do a deep search before casting a bid?

It also raises a question often ask auctioneers, why are you charging a seller and a buyer surcharge? What is it exactly you are doing for the buyer if you accept limited responsibility for listing errors?

The answer appears to be despite the exclusions to liability permitted under the law and despite the fact the auction houses are supposed to get as much money as reasonably possible for the consignor with whom they have a contractual obligation, they also work for you the buyer and charge you the extra for that work.

Auctioneers making such claims ignore the usual conflict of interest rules that plague real estate sellers in countries that allow them the same double dipping.

CRWW

If it’s illegal to sell a fake, even when it’s clearly labeled as such, why did the APC dispatch this item to the London assay office in 2023 to be re-hallmarked? If you really want to prevent fakes from reentering the stream of commerce, objects like this should be seized, and the owner given the melt value of it. Then, off to the furnace!

Of course, one can’t get too tough about mislabeled things. If we did, 90% of the “Ming” vases in the world would be tossed onto the scrap heap. Most of them are late 19th Century, or, at worst, from last Wednesday. :laughing:.

Any answer I gave you would necessarily be speculative, but to take the best case scenario, let’s presume the consignor was unaware of the problem and bought it in good faith. Let’s presume the auctioneer did do his or her research and told him the marks were likely bogus and if he wanted to sell it in the UK it would need to be re- assayed and marked.

Let’s then presume that the London Assay Office got the item and said its tested sterling and we can mark it as such and he elected to remark it sterling and pay that fee.

The item is now back with the auctioneer, who may not have read this little booklet and decided with reference to the statute legislation governing his work so long as the fake was declared he was entitled to sell it, just as " School of" or " Attributed to" pictorial art is routinely flogged and naively bought.

So far so good. Possible breach of the Hallmark Act but nothing that will blow back so write the listing.

Is the listing deceptive? Well as Phil will assert it deceived me for about an hour and I make a living from reading marks correctly. My excuse is I was jet-lagged and exhausted when I did the original search and only caught the fake on the second pass.

If I understand your question, Jeff, it is what alternative did the consignor have? Ship it to the US and hope we on this continent are all too dozy to pick up on the fraud? Melt it for the scrap value? Sell it as white metal? Keep it in the “totally unsaleable” drawer most collectors have of item bundled with other stuff they want or mistakes they made in their youth or last year whichever is longer ago? I notice, collaterally Bonhams is doing a lot of silver bundling recently and it should stop it as prices are lower and people like me don’t bid because postage and storage is too expensive to ship and hold unwanted material.

CRWW

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In the case of this “Godfrey” piece the LAO has erased the false marks and re-marked with their own marks. As long as it is marketed as such (i.e. sterling silver with a London 2023 mark) it is not a fake so there is no legal problem. I also don’t see any problem with describing the erased marks, but any suggestion that the erased marks were originally genuine is where the cross-over to illegality occurs.

The part of the auction description which reads “with additional cancelled marks, Benjamin Godfrey, London 1713” is where the line has been crossed. Jeff’s suggested wording of that part perhaps doesn’t go quite far enough but is definitely better.

Phil

It’s even worse than I thought, at first blush. The auction listing features only two photographs - one of the entire porringer (and it’s not a porringer - typical sloppy auction house description), and the other of… wait for it… the bogus, canceled hallmarks!

I think we can all agree that we won’t be bidding on this lot, at any rate. What would you end up with? You’d know that it was sterling, and that’s about all. When was it made? Not 1713, and almost certainly not 2023. Sometime between those two dates. A nice, narrow range. And who made it? Not Godrey. Perhaps Inmate No. 283923. And selling it would definitely be a dodgy proposition, requiring great care.

The only saving grace is that the opening bid price is well south of the melt value, if the stated weight is to be believed. Before bidding I’d want to see a photo of it sitting on a gram scale, to remove all doubt, including the “ounce vs. troy ounce” ambiguity. If you could get it cheaply enough, you could take it directly to a scrap metal dealer and pocket a small profit.

In fairness, They do show the LAO 2023 mark.

Nobody has yet commented on what I see as the underlying problem: auction house rules were long ago crafted with “Buyer Beware” clauses in them which were perfectly reasonable if the buyers were sophisticated or acknowledge, if they are amateurs, they are in a lottery of sorts. They might get a big prize or they might buy bupkis.

But in the modern market where most buyers are hundreds of miles away and must rely on auction rep’s and photos – a high percentage of which in the silver mark business are wrong – the exemptions place an unfair burden on the buyer who must do a deep search to protect himself before each bid.

Most auction rules are local rather than national and certainly not international but the auctions courtesy of the internet are now international. So where exactly is the lex fori – governing law? and if it is still local then please somebody start the ball rolling and cut back on sloppy descriptions.

Seems the houses want it both ways. On the one hand to charge buyers as well as sellers a fee and on the other hand to waive all responsibility to the buyer and rely entirely on the often dated and incorrect reps of the consignor.

Perhaps the solution is to make the internet uber auctions like live auctioneers or hibid different rules. But watching the legislators struggle with doing this for facebook and “X” formerly called Twitter I am dubious about this too.

CRWW

Once you start digging around a bit, you discover that the situation is even worse than you imagined. Take LiveAuctioneers, for example. They’re not an auction house, but are just an aggregator. Fair enough - the individual listings let you know who the real auctioneer is. But no, that’s not always true. Some of the listings lead to someone like Mynt Auctions, which is yet another aggregator. Mynt is not in possession of the lots, and has no retail presence at all. You can’t even find out who the consignor is.

At the end of the day, you have no reason to trust the listings at all, and if things go horribly wrong, you have virtually no recourse. At least with eBay and Etsy, there’s some built-in protection.

My local online estate auctions are a real minefield, since the auctioneers know absolutely nothing about what they’re flogging, and take no responsibility for it. They’re just clearing everything out of a house. No opportunity to view the items in the flesh, either - you’re bidding blind. Still a good source for some things - I just snagged a very nice original watercolor, signed, but by an unknown artist. It will probably need a new frame (I won’t know until this Friday, when I pick it up). Why take the risk? Because my bottom-line price, including commission and tax, came to $6.27. This is not a typo. I got one very nice print recently for $1.25. At those prices, how wrong can you go?! :laughing:

"Hallmarking involves the independent testing and marking of articles of precious metal to indicate they conform to legal standards of purity (fineness). These tests are carried out in the UK by Assay Offices in London, Birmingham, Sheffield and Edinburgh.

"The Hallmarking Act 1973 makes it an offence for anyone in the course of business to sell or describe a precious metal article as gold, silver or platinum unless it is hallmarked, subject to certain exemptions including articles below statutorily prescribed weights. The Act is enforced by local Trading Standards departments. It was amended in January 1999 to bring it into line with European law.

"The UK is a member of the Convention on the Control and Marking of Articles of Precious Metals (Hallmarking Convention), which facilitates the cross border trade of independently marked precious metal articles. The UK recognises Convention hallmarks from 15 member countries. Goods marked with Convention hallmarks can be imported and sold in the UK without the need for additional UK hallmarking.

“The UK also recognises independent hallmarks struck in EU Member States to equivalent UK standards in line with the European Court of Justice Houtwipper Judgment.”

Extract from Consumer buying and selling legislation handbook UK.

Statutory buyer rights after the fall of the hammer depend on a number of factors. "If you buy brand new goods from a trader at a public auction, you have clear legal rights and a number statutory remedies available under the UK Consumer Rights Act, 2015 .

"However, if the item being auctioned is second hand or antique, and you can buy the item at the auction in person, these legal rights under the CRA no longer apply. Instead, the Sale of Goods Act 1979 apply.

"Under the SGA, the item must match its description, be of satisfactory quality, and fit for purpose. If the item fails any of those standards, you have the legal right to return it for a repair, replacement or refund. The rights and remedies available under the SGA are more limited than under the CRA.

"In addition, auction contracts are exempt from the usual right to cancel the contract within 14 days where the buyer is able to attend the public auction.

So is the auctioneer or auction house ever liable?

“The contract on an auction sale is with the seller, not the auctioneer, so contractual liability remains with the seller. However, the auctioneer may be liable as a bailee, and/or for misrepresentation, for instance, if the description of the goods was exaggerated. The auctioneer can also be liable for negligence if, for example, the seller’s instructions are ignored; and liability can also arise if there is fraud.”

What are my Statutory Rights when Buying at an Auction? - claims.co.uk ™(Bidding%20Agreements,accept%20that%20inducement%20or%20reward.

Conclusion: "Houston, well actually Edinburgh, we have a problem with liftoff on this auction.

So when is a fake not a fake? The Assay office claims it has the statutory duty to make that determination in the case of marked UK silver. But that legislation is designed to protect the Assay office, the registered manufacturers and the Crown’s tax entitlement from time to time and only incidentally the buyer who is afforded very limited and indirect remedy.

Does the consumer legislation do the job then? Probably if the item is a manufactured for sale fake and therefore “new” but almost certainly not if the item is an after stamped but still second hand item as in the instant case.

So what is the consumer left with as a remedy: a public prosecution? A private action for civil fraud or just chalk it up to experience and carry on?

Case law is clear on the matter, the consumer has a duty of care to attend the auction and inspect if he can. Can he if he is thousands of miles away on another continent or is this an unreasonable burden to place on the buyer or an unrealistic out for the seller or auctioneer?

Absent statutory amendment that is going to remain an open question for now.

One more option: a chargeback on the credit card you used to make the purchase. That really gets a seller’s attention. :wink: