Collection is not easy, good collections are rare, and real cultural relics are even more difficult to find. Ordinary people have limited abilities and can be understood. However, it is not just ordinary collectors who have been blinded.
Northern Wei Pottery Figurines Incident
Treasure hunting the world
Speaking of the famous domestic fake cultural relics, we have to mention the Northern Wei pottery figurine incident.
According to reports, in 1994, while wandering around the Panjiayuan flea market in Beijing, an expert found a batch of Northern Wei pottery figurines, whose form had never been seen, and experts at the National Museum of China agreed that this was a precious cultural relic from the Northern Wei period, and it may have been a funerary item in the Northern Wei tomb recently disclosed by the media in Henan.
The Northern Wei Pottery Painted Male Figurine is now in the Palace Museum
Experts used C14, a high-tech dating method commonly used in archaeology, to test and found that the figurines were exactly in date with the Northern Wei Dynasty. The National Museum of China also invited almost all the top archaeologists and appraisal experts in Beijing at that time to "look over", and they unanimously recognized it as authentic. Therefore, experts applied for special funds and special rescue to purchase the "Precious Pottery Figurines of the Northern Wei Dynasty" on the antique market.
Northern Wei pottery painted samurai figurines are now in the Palace Museum
Unexpectedly, since then, similar "unearthed cultural relics" have appeared in Beijing's cultural relics market, experts feel that something is wrong, the State Administration of Cultural Relics set up a special team for this matter, the investigation proved: this batch of cultural relics is actually fake, is The Henan Luoyang Mengjin Nanshishan Village Gao Shuiwang made.
Gao Shuiwang is making clay figurines
When experts from Beijing and local public security came to Gao Shuiwang's house together, they found that there were hundreds of pieces of the kind of "Northern Wei pottery figurines" they had bought by surprise in Gao's house. A seller in Henan told the truth: "It is too easy for Mongolian experts to master the know-how of tires, glazes, types, workers, and old ones." It is not difficult to pass the test pass, let the pottery figurines take a plane. "Experiments have shown that ceramics irradiated by X-rays will age the glaze by about 200 years in every second. The news published in the newspaper that a Northern Wei tomb in Henan was dug up was actually a bureau set up by a broker who bought pottery figurines from Gao Shuiwang's family and went to Beijing to sell them.
Estimated at 2.4 billion
The golden jade robe is a common name for the burial clothes of the emperors and nobles of the Han Dynasty in China, and is divided into gold wisps, silver wisps and copper wisps according to the rank of the deceased. When the emperor and some of his close subjects were buried, they wore golden jade robes, which were made of gold wisps and jade pieces.
The golden jade garment of Liu Sheng, king of Zhongshan Jing, is now in the Hebei Provincial Museum
In September 2011, as businessman Xie Genrong's loan fraud case entered the second instance, CCTV's "News 1+1" program broadcast "Antique Appraisal of "Aiding and Abetting Abuse", exposing the ins and outs of the sky-high price of "golden jade clothes": the court found that two pieces of "jade clothes" valued at 2.4 billion yuan in the case were forged and forged cultural relics.
Shegan rong his people
Xie Genrong paid for the former vice president of the Palace Museum and other 5 experts to estimate the sky-high price, and then won the trust of the bank with these two "jade clothes", not only guaranteed the previous 660 million yuan loan, but also obtained a loan of 50 million yuan and a bank acceptance draft of 450 million yuan. These 5 national antique appraisal experts all have dazzling titles and aura, but they were bribed by Xie Genrong's "appraisal fee" and issued a false sky-high appraisal certificate of 2.4 billion yuan.
The experience and fame of these experts were in front of me, and Bai Yansong said: "My first instinct at that time was that I picked up a stone on the road and told me that this was worth 100 million yuan, and I estimated that I would believe it." ”
Song Porcelain Gate Incident
The main figure involved in the "Song Porcelain Gate" is Ding Yangzhen, a native of Huangli Village, Huaibei City, Anhui Province, who first ran a construction industry, and then stepped into the quagmire of the collection, and all his savings became a pile of antiques, waiting for the opportunity to sell.
He once bought a Changsha kiln jug "dug out of the ancient canal" for 1600 yuan, and later, he held this "jug king" publicly appeared at the CCTV Saibao Conference in 2004, when Yang Jingrong, an expert on cultural relics at the Palace Museum, and four other experts unanimously believed that the "jug king" was a fake. Ding Yangzhen insisted that his "pot king" was the real thing.
The controversial Southern Song Dynasty official kiln museum "Hu Wang"
In the autumn of 2005, Hangzhou expanded the Southern Song Dynasty Guan kiln museum on a large scale to collect collections from the society, and Ding Yangzhen donated more than 600 cultural relics, including the "Kettle King", most of which were Song porcelain. At that time, the Southern Song Dynasty Guanyao Museum summoned 4 cultural relics experts to Huaibei to certify the cultural relics donated by Ding Yangzhen. The appraisal video of the scene shows that the experts marveled at the uniqueness of the "Kettle King" and unanimously determined that the "Kettle King" was a rare treasure and suggested pushing a first-class product.
The Southern Song Dynasty Guanyao Museum finally put this batch of cultural relics into the museum with confidence. In July 2005, the Hangzhou Municipal Government commended Ding Yangzhen for donating 611 cultural relics and decided to reward Ding Yangzhen with 15 million yuan in cash. In the following 3 years, the Southern Song Dynasty Guanyao Museum transferred the reward money into Ding Yangzhen's account on three occasions.
Hangzhou Southern Song Dynasty Official Kiln Museum
The cultural relics donation activity caused great controversy, although the controversial collection has been publicly exhibited in the museum, but the dispute between the true and false "pot king" has continued.
"No counterfeiting" becomes an unspoken rule?
In recent years, the mainland collectibles market has prospered, and the jade, ceramics and other collection markets have been favored by investors, but the fakes in the antique markets around the world account for 90%. Many "cultural relics" come from the mass production of small workshops, and there are not a few counterfeits in Henan, Hebei, Shaanxi and other provinces.
A reporter once investigated the phenomenon of the proliferation of fake cultural relics, and some experts believe that the reason why counterfeiting is not falsified in the collection market is that it cannot be counterfeited. The identification of antiques does not have a real sense of authority. Now the auction house has basically marked the "fidelity" in the auction terms, the auction follows the hammer transaction rules, as long as the auction house declares that it cannot guarantee the authenticity of the lot, the auction house will not bear any legal responsibility.
Is the auction house fidelity an overlord clause?
With the continuous improvement of counterfeiting technology, many counterfeits are specifically aimed at the criteria for identifying genuine products, and even professionals are difficult to distinguish, such as the "Northern Wei pottery figurines" mentioned earlier. For the average collector, let alone identifying authenticity.
At the same time, some experts believe that there is no need to fight counterfeiting in the collection industry, because the real sense of counterfeiting refers to well-made collections, such as the art of the Song Dynasty imitating the Zhou and Han Dynasties, these fakes are imitations in the previous generation, and in the contemporary era, they are handicrafts with artistic value, and in the future they are antiques.
How to define the value of a work of art
Experts advocate that collectors should hold a good mentality of "having it by looking over", and the chance of buying fakes will be greatly reduced. What do you think about fakes and fakes?