A Society member recently had a problem with fake lantern slides in a lot he bought from a UK Auction House. He writes:

After receiving the shipping box from DHL & opening the wood boxes of slides first off something caught my eye right away. That was the thickness of the slides. After handling 1000's & 1000's of slides you run into different ones over time but nothing like this had I ever seen & I have seen in my opinion pretty much everything common to rare to say that something wasn't right. These were 3.25" square also and for the experts out there you know how hard it would be to find American Indians of this size.

After having the "too thick" glass thought in my head I started to look through the slides. I tend to view slides like this at about 14" to 18" due to my eyesight, for a general glance to see what is in a collection where as later on they would be viewed more closely. At my 14" - 18" viewing I started noticing odd colors from the actual color of the images to the black around the image inside the glass. Something was starting to look weird. Then I held one to the light & bamm! The image disappeared into just dots. Now I knew something was wrong. I went through all of them and then came to a conclusion after spending $1700.00 US$ on these. One was going to have to be opened. After looking a little I found one that was pretty much already opened and then it happened as the tape fell off it. A plastic transparency on thick film flopped out. In less than 1 second I knew this was counterfeit as well as all of the others.

After a sleepless night I have pretty much found every single thing that is odd here I hope.

1) Some of these are thicker than others in the lot but the thick ones jump out as being un-usual.

2) The edge tape if flattened measures at 5/8". Appears to be either old stock or an old paper someone cut & glued somehow. There is absolutely no residue anywhere from the tape that you find typically somewhere on the glass. Others in the collections that are falling apart are the same way. The backside of the tape that has loosened has an un-usual shiny look that is not the same as the rice paper or wheat paper & the glues that were used.

3) When this one slide fell apart & opened, the insides where 110% spotless on the thick plastic transparency as well as the glass, brand new.

4) The glass & it edges look like new glass recently cut to me.

5) The thick plastic transparency was cut the to the size of the glass where as the few transparencies types you run into were always smaller & delicate like tissue paper. I have included a video attachment of the transparency being wiggled back & forth to show a sound which shows just how thick this is. It was also perfectly smooth & flat when it fell out from between the glass. Older ones would have stuck in place, crumbled, crimped somewhere maybe even ripped.

6) The plastic piece has a shiny side & then the inkjet/laser printer, printing of the image which is dull. It can't be ripped by hand.

7) The image when looked at in the light is nothing but dots. There is also color loss in addition to odd color that never existed in those shades & hues.

8) The black area around a slide was always covered by either black paper, black tape, or a black matt. This inside piece was all 1 where the black area around the image is inkjet black ink.

9) These slides were housed In old wood boxes to make them look old & smell old. After leaving the one slide out overnight there is just about no smell now.

10) After looking at the other images in the boxes the really blurry ones as compared to this one appear to be that way from the ink running like the inkjet printer didn't dry fast enough or something.

11) I did a test with a drop of water to see how the ink would respond and it removed extremely quickly from the plastic.

12) I did another test with a common eraser & it erased the ink!

 

If you are aware of similar slides being offered please let us know - Contact Us