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Message:: [QUOTE="all_fakes, post: 1623207, member: 55"]I'll add an "amusing" and true story, omitting the names to foil any avid robots....But there is an ebay seller whose specialty is or was fake NW Coast masks.  He listed one or two every week, over a period of 10-20 years; saying they were genuine old native or "aboriginal" work, with a little story as to how he came to have them; almost all going unsold or sometimes selling for $50 or so.The apparent strategy was to saturate the market with the listings, so that over time they would begin to appear genuine, by sheer repetition; as uninformed bidders started to feel that the items must be real, because they'd been seen so often on ebay.   And eventually you'd start to see the items resold by secondary buyers, with the same little story about their origin.One of the masks appeared on the well-known "Masks of the world" site as genuine; with the same little story.  This seller and his partner have a 100% FB rating.....but if you ever see a NW Coast "native" mask that comes with a little story about how it was carved in Canada by a tree-surgeon; or collected in Canada by a member of the merchant marine in the 1960s.....RUN!A similar strategy has been practiced by a well-known "carver" or importer of fakes, from Vancouver BC.  He will donate one of his masks to a charity auction, with an inflated story about how well-made it is, and how he himself is First Nations, and listing the value as $4000 or so...so as to put this false information into public view via the charity's publicity; then when unsuspecting buyers see his market stall, they are thinking that $400 for one of his "native" masks is a real bargain.....when they are really imports worth about $40.[/QUOTE]

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