Message #43478

[Joey Silver / Si Zhouyi 義周司]

Dear Cathy,

     I get your first mistake - thinking that anything from Christie's "should be above reproach".
Depends on the appraiser, depends on the seller, depends on how 'honest' they are feeling that day...
If your mom sells you a bottle, and she is educated about SBs, I would vote you trust her. Although she may just know about the bottle from a bit earlier.  Any auction house, nope.
There is a comment in the Talmud: "Respect BUT Suspect".
Words to live by with auction houses, UNLESS you have personal friends working there, whom you can trust one on one.
Best,
Joey

Thanks George - that gives me something to go on!

The first one pictured in the comparisons was sold at Christie's and so should be above reproach.

On mine, I have tracked down the company (still in business) that made it and so there is no question that it is new, but the company does hand paint them, so at least there's that.

But in my explorations of red dragons, I filled a folder with all the legitimate red dragon pieces of porcelain I could find. Then I did my comparison thing, finding all the identifiers in the paintings.

So when I came across that jar on ebay I compared it to my markers and thought the painting at least looked right.

But I did not take the shape of the piece into consideration, and also it didn't have a mark, and so I didn't pay enough attention to the base either I think.