Discussions about the Imperial Family and European Royalty > The Imperial Family

Spurious Ebay Photos of the Imperial Family. Beware.

(1/8) > >>

Forum Admin:
Hi guys. We usually don't post much about what happens over on ebay, but almost got fooled ourselves by some faked photos of the Imperial Family.  They are selling for a lot of money and wanted to ask you guys to be very cautious about buying them.  The seller is "Oceanic Voyager".  The problem is this, some of his items are quite genuine, we have bought from him.  HOWEVER, recently there are a number of FAKED photos of the Imperial Family being listed.  I only discovered the scam accidentally, when a photograph of Olga Nicholievna which I KNOW was taken by Karl Hahn (Gahn) at the Alexander Palace was listed but was shown on an antique photo card stock from a MOSCOW photographer with NO imperial warrant and no Imperial Censor approval stamp.  THEN a photograph of Princess Dagmar (Marie Feodorovna) and her sister Alexandra, which I KNOW was taken in Copenhagen, appeared, AGAIN on a Moscow photographer's card.  Similaraly a Boissonas & Eggler portrait of Nicholas II was listed on a French "Cabinet Portrait" card, NOT the original B&E card with their stamp and Censor approval. What he does is this: Takes actual photographs of original photographs, then buys cheap original Russian photos, removes the worthless photos and glues the copies onto the old stock to make them look old!

BE VERY CAREFUL! We almost spent $500 on a photo of Nicholas, Alix, Serge and Ella at the Kremlin, which I know believe to be one of these FAKES!

Carolath Habsburg:
Romanovrussia. com also warned people about this user. What a moron to try to make money of people which doesnt know about this.

Eddie_uk:
Funnily enough, I noticed this too. Oceanic Voyager was selling what he claimed was an item of Faberge which was clearly not, I messaged him and he was having none of it!

I could tell the Cabinet cards where fake, for example scratches to make them look aged which just didn't look right etc. It's a disgrace.

Can the seller be reported to eBay? Would they act I wonder?

Eddie_uk:
Also, on his feedback all previous items are listed as "private" which shows he is covering his tracks. This is one of the reasons why i avoid eBay, unless I know the seller!

grandduchessella:
I had posted this way back in 2004 (!):


--- Quote from: grandduchessella on September 08, 2004, 11:34:32 PM --- I was re-reading Camera and the Tsars--I found it again! Actually, I haven't read all of it since I'm generally just looking at the photos, but anyway. It said that Russian photographers didn't enjoy a copyright before the 1890s or so, so some photographers (like Elfelt who I've seen listed on many photos & postcards) used to take photographs, re-photograph whole groups of  them and sell them as their own! Now that's chutzpah! I also can't image in was that easy back then with the big, bulky cameras but at least the subjects were stationary.  ;) I have some Elfelt prints and now I'mwondering about them.... :)

--- End quote ---

Could the seller perhaps have some of those kinds of photos and doesn't realize they aren't the original work? They are from the period just copied without proper credit at the time.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page