Text haKuRyu
Fruit core culture, take you to see the game circle of those things.
In the past month, the old game collection circle in Europe and the United States has been a bit uneven.
The man who looked a little handsome was named Enrico Ricciardi. He is a professional photographer from Milan, providing model photographs and illustrations for several Italian fashion magazines.
Of course, this is just a subsistence. He is truly known as an authoritative expert in PC game collecting, especially those extremely rare classic games, and the host of the BBPCGC (Big Box PC Game Collectors) club. Many European and American game collectors will find well-known people in the industry to "identify" the authenticity after buying the baby, and Richarti is one of the best experts in reputation.
Richarti's authority comes from his age in the industry: he's been in the PC game collection for 20 years, and has even pointed out fakes that no one else notices on several occasions. Therefore, rather than buying games from anonymous people, many collectors are more inclined to "Taobao" directly from Richarti, after all, the names of experts and authorities are placed here, and there is no reason to roll over...
Right?
On May 18, a collector named A2_Canada claimed to have bought a very rare game called The Chambers of Xenobia.
It's a role-playing game released in 1981 for the Apple II PC. A2_Canada first heard about the game in 2003, when he was told that "no one could find the original version of the game," but that instead piqued A2_Canada's desire to win. He spent nearly 20 years looking for the game's original data, and finally learned that Richarti had sold a copy of Xenobia, so he happily bought a copy for $10,000 and tweeted excitedly.
However, A2_Canada have a good habit of mapping out the purchased floppy disk data and making a digital version to save in their hard disks.
A2_Canada gave the floppy disk to an Apple II decoding expert named 4am who compiled a runnable copy of Xenobia. However, 4am soon discovered that the game's in-game cover was impressively written "Presented by The Data Killer." This means that the data on the disc is not the original copy, but a version that was cracked by the man named Data Killer.
4am also helped A2_Canada decode another game, Fracas, which he bought from Richarty, and found out that it was written on the Pronto-DOS command line. Remember that Fracas was released in 1981 and Pronto-DOS was born in 1982... That said, it's also a cracked version.
This caused A2_Canada to be alarmed: if the data in the floppy disk is fake, will the outer packaging also be fake? After all, as a busy person, It is understandable that Richarti did not check the data and was deceived by the fake sellers; But if there is also a problem with the outer packaging, then Richarti himself is very suspicious.
A2_Canada scanned the outer packaging of his Xenobia and found a watermark called "Fabriano" on the wrapping paper. It's the name of an Italian high-end paper company that has been around for hundreds of years, but didn't enter the U.S. market in 1981. Apparently, Xenobia's publisher, Avant-Garde, a small 10-person company based in Oregon, had no reason to package his game on Fabriano's high-end paper.
A2_Canada's encounter immediately caused an earthquake in the European and American game collection circles. Many of Richarty's patrons have begun to scrutinize their collections at high prices, and have found many flaws.
A German collector, Dominik Reichardt, found that the entire batch of Akalabeth that Richarti sold had one thing in common, which was that the curvature of the four edges was different from the genuine one. He guessed that this was a mark deliberately left by the forger, in case he accidentally sold the genuine copy, or accidentally bought his own fake.
Another Malaysian collector, Kevin Ng, pointed out that Akalabeth's pure white outer packaging had some magenta dots on it, which was ironclad evidence of the game's forgery. Kevin Ng says that the solid color printing technology of the 80s should not cause these flaws, so these small dots are actually the result of the stains on the original cover that have been scanned and then reprinted.
Faced with the questioning of a large number of customers, Richarti has been defending herself. Not only did he refuse to admit that he was a forger, but he also insisted that he had been "deceived" and "unknowingly" changed hands on the forged fake game of others.
Richardti explains it this way: "I certainly can't guarantee that I haven't bought or sold a fake in the 25 years I've been in this business. Because it is impossible to thoroughly check the authenticity of each game, some fake games are too realistic for me to see for a while and a half. I'm 62 years old, and I still have the problem of the new crown epidemic, and I've been really tired these past few years, maybe I'm old. ”
Subsequently, Richarti added intriguingly: "I agree to refund these games, anyone who questions the authenticity of the game can return the game to me, and I will return the proceeds of the sale as it is." But beware, that doesn't mean I'm admitting that they're all fake, and at least 99% of my games are genuine. ”
Richarti's response reminds some collectors that by definition, "experts" and "authorities" are just a bunch of people with a lot of knowledge and deep understanding, and people will make mistakes.
Or rather, Richarti should have known that there were fakes in the game he had passed, but his personality and identity made it impossible for him to admit it himself. Richarti is a man of great concern for reputation, and admitting mistakes will not only lead to a loss of his own authority, but also depreciate along with other genuine goods in his hands, which is more than worth the loss.
Moreover, when a person is mixed up in a certain field to the level of Richartis, as long as he says that something is true, then there will be many people who believe in him and think that it is true. This is not simply "blind faith" and "foolish obedience", but people will always be inclined to ask for help in the face of the unknown, and whether help is useful or not, people can get comfort from it, which is a psychological principle.
Let's take an extreme example, if there is only 1 copy of a collection in the world, and there is no other collection as a comparison, then how do we know what the real thing is like? After all, from a philosophical point of view, if something does appear that is both immutable and unique, then it is temporarily invincible.
An extremely valuable collection like the xenobia mentioned above, if it were not for the fact that the forger made an overly obvious mistake, would not have been found to be fake for the rest of his life, because there is no other original floppy disk of Xenobia on the market as a contrast.
More critically, this Internet storm will make counterfeiters more cautious and reduce the low-level mistakes they may make in future forgeries. The future fake games will only become more and more realistic, the number of deceived collectors will only increase, and the cost of identifying authenticity will only become higher and higher.
Some readers may say that it is better to know the information of Richarti's supplier and then not buy from him?
If only that were the case. There is an unwritten rule in collecting circles that the anonymous attitude of anonymous traders must be respected. Anonymous traders generally have some unspeakable secrets, such as the fear of being targeted by the enemy, or the goods in their hands are not coming from the right way, in short, any middleman will not disclose the true identity of the anonymous trader, otherwise the middleman will not be able to do it. Richarti admits that most of the fakes on his hands come from an anonymous seller named "X", who has now evaporated, but he refuses to disclose his email exchanges with X and his true identity.
It's hard to say if this X is Ricciartti herself... I'm inclined not to, but I'm afraid no one can figure out who X really is. Maybe it's just an ordinary person who looks at the fat meat of the fake game, and there is no trace or place to find.
It reminds me of a famous professional liar and performance artist, Rudy Kurniawan. He is an ordinary Indonesian guy who has gold medalled himself with counterfeit precious wines, not only successfully blended into the top rich circles in the United States, but even fooled a number of well-known entrepreneurs and politicians into a daze, which can be called the number one performance artist of the 21st century.
In this materialistic era, people want to wrap themselves with a variety of goods. Rudy or Mr. X, but they just took advantage of the urgency. It is true that their counterfeiting should be resisted and punished, but here is a quote from the electric baton: even if the scammer has 99% of the pot, this society that cares so much about reputation and identity that the scammers get stuck in the bug, is there not even a 1% pot?
Let me put a question mark here for the time being.
This week's [core culture] ends here, you have a topic you want to see may wish to post in the comment area, everyone communicate together.