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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Bronwen, post: 12447291, member: 5833&quot;]Quite true.&nbsp; Museums often enough have to sheepishly release the news that some iconic treasure of theirs is actually not what they thought.&nbsp; This was a famous one:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/30/arts/met-says-its-popular-cat-is-probably-fake.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/04/30/arts/met-says-its-popular-cat-is-probably-fake.html" rel="nofollow"><font size="6"><b>MET SAYS ITS POPULAR CAT IS PROBABLY FAKE</b></font></a></p><p><br /></p><p>Everyone who was generous enough to share their opinion with me had to base their observations on photos alone, but, as more than one of them said, even with the piece in hand, they probably could not guarantee its antiquity.&nbsp; I imagine there are high tech ways to assess it, but probably would be destructive to the piece.</p><p><br /></p><p>The argument for its authenticity is circumstantial: it looks like other known examples confirmed as Roman; genuine examples were plentiful on the market when the fob seal would have been made; the availability of affordable genuine pieces would have made forgery not worth the effort; if you were going to forge it, why in the world would you go to great lengths to obliterate the signature, a large part of the amethyst&#039;s claim to fame?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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