Posted by: ScottWarner114

These are the stuff the onwers put on sale.  In China, most of time it is up to you to make the judgement, the owners never guarantee they are real.  They only say the stuff look real to them.  It is up to you to buy or not.  However, most of prudent or inexperienced collectors would pay for the appraisal from the professionals hired by the website before buying them.  But if the professionals are corrupted to help the sellers, then you are screwed.   That is why you have to have enormous field experiences to survive.   There are some collectors that keep monitoring the trend of fake stuff by buying them and studying them.   Sounds unreal here, right?  Those hired professionals most of time do not even have time to monitor each item.   it is the the buyer beware situation.  This is Chinese antique market reality. 

Hi Scott,

I am sorry but I am really struggling with understanding the whole logic behind your opinions in this thread. I love simplicity and cleanliness of opinions and unfortunately here I can see a logical mess. I don't mean to offend you in any way, I am just pointing out the contradiction on the structural level of your comments here. First of all you started with a very laconic opinion that the cup is a fake. As a proof you have presented totally unreliable opinions from a Chinese website. When the qualifications of those "experts' were questioned here, you have replied that, oh this is Chinese market and people do business there like that... I am sorry but please don't expect to be treated seriously after posting explanations of this kind. We can't rely in a serious and very real world on judgements like that. I am very sorry but this is just unacceptable and I mean it on the level of pure realism. Facts, knowledge, reputation - I can rely on this, not on some laconic and anonymous opinions from a funny Chinese portal which can be real or fake, because, as you say it's this market's specific feature.

I am a complete ignorant in terms of  Yuan celadon ceramics, therefore I can't assume this source of yours is legitimate. Above you have listed few points where this cup doesn't match characteristic of a genuine piece. Maybe we should focus on that instead of talking about funny guys from funny website?

Like I said, I have no intention of offending you at all, I apologise if you see my tone as harsh and offensive. I just want participate in a substantive, merit discussion, not something like what you have presented above.

Kind regards,

Adrian

Dear Scott,

sorry for the misunderstanding, I thought that you were addressing to myself.

As for the Longquan stemmed cup, In my view I tis genuine as I said from the beginning. There is nothing wrong to the decoration to me, and I must say that one of the reasons for believing it genuine is the incised waved motif on the rim. That is clearly made by a skilled hand. A faker today is not able to do that in that fluent way, because he is not used to do it. If the motif were done by a faker, it would be more stiff.

If you are convinced that the paste of the item that you have shown is brown, you are wrong, it is perfectly white and you can see it in the chips produced by detaching it from the iron ring that support the item during firing.

Dear Adrian and Birgit, I fully agree with you. When Scott mentioned the Chinese site, I even didn’t take the trouble to investigate about it, because I know that they are far from having the professionality of Gotheborg, to make an example.

The situation of the market, in great part, it is like this: in China they make tons of fakes and send them to Europe, because it is known (better, assumed to be known) that the genuine items are found here in Europe. Then, most of the Chinese guys here, including who has a barber shop, a bar, etc., goes everywhere at the local auctions, street markets, antiquarians, private houses, looking for Chinese items (again, because the genuine items are found here in Europe) and since the largest majority of them knows nothing, literally nothing about Chinese antiquities, they take pictures by the phone and send them to a correspondent in China, who, based on horrible pictures only, has to decide “buy – do not buy”. This leads to the fact that the great majority of items, which arrived recently from China, goes back there to be finally found for what they are, fake.

The only positive side of all this is the fact that they at least clean up the market by sending back the fake that they have produced.

I know practically all the Chinese guys in a wide area here around, only one or two are experts.

Giovanni

I have to admit, Scott looked so convinced the cup is not authentic he gave me some doubts. Therefore, I emailed a christies senior specialist (a chinese man) the detailed photos in order to confirm the cup was from the yuan-ming dynasty before I ship it to the buyer. If I wasn't able to confirm the age of the cup I would have to cancel the sale. Now, there is no doubt the cup is old. 

Here is his answer:

Thank you for the inquiry and images. The stem bowl appears to be made in provincial kilns around Longquan and it could be from the Ming dynasty. However this type is not so easy to sell at auction. Kind regards

As expected

Posted by: springmeier

I have to admit, Scott looked so convinced the cup is not authentic he gave me some doubts. Therefore, I emailed a christies senior specialist (a chinese man) the detailed photos in order to confirm the cup was from the yuan-ming dynasty before I ship it to the buyer. If I wasn't able to confirm the age of the cup I would have to cancel the sale. Now, there is no doubt the cup is old. 

Here is his answer:

Thank you for the inquiry and images. The stem bowl appears to be made in provincial kilns around Longquan and it could be from the Ming dynasty. However this type is not so easy to sell at auction. Kind regards

 

Sorted.

Yet another aspect of the whole thing appeared here - why on earth they keep coming back with their harsh judgements as above that something is 'not easy to sell at auction" or (this one I got few times) "the item is from the period unfortunately below 3000 threshold..." or (also happened to me) "the item was inspected by our specialist and it appears from the 19th Century therefore not desirable at the moment"?? And then you open up an catalogue and see a lot of items (not from the collection but individual) sold below 1k and lots of late Qing... The quality matters of course, however in the case of this cup I would say it is damn good for an auction at any of the main houses and it could fetch a nice score! Sometimes I really don't get those guys...

If you want to sell items of lower value at their auction you have to 

1. be a dealer who has a good business history with them

2. Have you few nicer pieces to sell along. 

Also, Bonhams is ALWAYS your best bet to sell low value items ($3000 or less) . Sothebys is the worse... 

If you live in europe, maybe Rob Michiels Auction could be a good choice. They sell lower value items. However it has been hard for me to contact them in the past, it may takes week for them to answer your emails if they answer them at all. 

Posted by: springmeier

Also, Bonhams is ALWAYS your best bet to sell low value items ($3000 or less) . Sothebys is the worse... 

If you live in europe, maybe Rob Michiels Auction could be a good choice. They sell lower value items. However it has been hard for me to contact them in the past, it may takes week for them to answer your emails if they answer them at all. 

Thank you for all the info, appreciate it a lot.

Funny thing with Rob, he reached me on my instagram asking for one of my items and we have exchanged comments there, he indeed comes back delayed a bit a day or two but in fact he is interested in lower value stuff.

Thanks again a lot.