Authentication
Steve: One of the key components of art authentication considers materials: if an artwork was painted with a paint that wasn’t invented when an artist painted, it’s probably not authentic. Or, it might just be restored with modern materials. Either way, materials are important in considering the authenticity of an object.
A recent vacation saw me read Richard Dorment’s book Warhol After Warhol: Secrets, Lies & Corruption in the Art World, which tells the story of a collector’s issues in authenticating two works by Warhol in his collection. The less valuable of the two was a collage that incorporated “dollar bills” – U.S. Federal Reserve Notes – that was denied by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. The Secret Service was consulted and found that the notes were authentic, however, further research indicated that they were printed after Warhol’s death in 1987. The bills carried the signature of Nicholas F. Brady, Secretary of the Treasury, who took office on Sept. 15, 1988, which was two years after the date inscribed on the work of April 1986. Case closed: the work was a fake.
It reminded me of a Warhol work that was offered at Philips Contemporary Art Day Sale in New York City on May 19, 2022, titled Heinz Kosher Dill Pickles Jar with Alarm. The medium: glass jar, pennies, alarm, tape and metal top. The auction house said that it was executed around 1974, with a certificate of authenticity issued by the Warhol Authentication Board.
Image: A work by Andy Warhol sold at auction in 2022 given the date of around 1974 included Lincoln cents dated as late as 1985. Perhaps cents were added after Warhol had given it to the recipient.
Of course, since the jar was filled with coins, I had to take a closer inspection which revealed some unusually shiny Lincoln Memorial cents that resembled copper-plated zinc cents of 1982 and later. Lincoln cents from the work’s given date of 1974 and earlier would have been bronze. The latest date of the cents visible was 1985: more than a decade after the date given and just two years before Warhol’s death in 1987.
It was gifted by the artist to Victor Hugo – not the French 19th century author, but the New York bon vivant described by Warhol in his diaries as a “hot tamale.” Warhol wrote in his diary on April 1, 1979, “I was giving Victor a Money painting for his birthday and money in the kosher pickle jar that makes a burglar-alarm noise when you open it... Victor wasn’t too impressed with any of the presents.”
Dennis, have you ever been surprised when you looked closely and found that something wasn’t necessarily what it claimed to be?
Dennis: I love how you used numismatics to investigate that Warhol work! I see that it sold for $18,900.
I remember many years ago I saw an eBay auction that seemed too good to be true. It was for a group of five Prussian gold coins that were artfully fashioned into a bracelet. Nice-looking coins, good bezel work and chains. The auction had about three hours to go, and its current bid was very low, much lower than the coins’ gold melt value, with no reserve. Normally I would have set myself a reminder for three hours and hopped back online to snipe the lot at the last minute, but I had one foot out the door for a flight to New York. On a lark, I put in a ridiculously low bid, a fraction of what I quickly calculated to be the coins’ gold value, on the off chance of scoring a monumental win. Then I left for the airport and promptly forgot about the auction.
I forgot about it—but I won it with my extreme lowball bid!
By the time I got home from vacation, got back in the groove, and checked the email address my eBay account was attached to, it was a couple weeks after the auction ended. The seller had dinged me for non-payment and the gold was long gone. At first I was stung by my forgetfulness and upset by the bargain I’d missed out on. But by then my gold fever had cooled a bit and I took a closer look at the auction.
This was a good reminder of some time-worn lessons. First, if a deal seems too good to be true, it probably is. Second, if you get greedy, you can put blinders on yourself. I daydreamed about grabbing those gold coins for a tiny percentage of their value, so I read “5 marks” as “10 marks” and pulled the trigger (and almost shot myself in the foot).
Back to that $18,900 Andy Warhol auction. A cynic might boil that down to “a lot of money for a pickle jar full of pocket change”—especially since your sharp-eyed observations raise questions about its backstory. I hope the new owner finds some enjoyment in the piece, whatever its real history might be.
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Hello! And welcome to the ANA’s blog series, “Collecting Friends.”
We decided to approach this much like a conversation between friends. One of us starts with a topic, then the other responds. Simple as that. Along those lines, we’ll keep the tone conversational as much as possible.
We both write about coins professionally, and will keep our relative style guides in our writing. For Dennis, Publisher at Whitman Publishing, that means capitalizing “Proof” and italicizing Red Book and never saying anything bad about Ken Bressett, who’s awesome anyway.
For Steve, who’s written with Coin World for 15 years, it means Winged Liberty Head dime instead of “Mercury” dime, and similar nuances and oddities. And, it means writing A Guide Book of United States Coins (better known as the “Red Book”).
Both of us started collecting when we were little, introduced to coins by a chance encounter with an old coin that sparked our curiosity. One of Steve’s interests is coin valuation, and he gravitates towards the intersection of art and coins. Dennis enjoys medals and world coins, and studying modern U.S. coins in the context of older series, what came before.
We met in 2012 at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Philadelphia at an event hosted by the Austrian Mint where there was both a Ben Franklin and a Betsy Ross impersonator. We’ve become great friends in the past decade. We even were appointed together to sit on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee starting in 2016, but Steve resigned soon after he was appointed to accept a full-time job at the Treasury Department while Dennis was re-appointed in 2020.
We taught a course together on numismatic publishing and writing a few years ago at the Summer Seminar, and while life has gotten in the way of us teaching another class, we jumped at our friend Caleb’s suggestion that we write a column. We hope you enjoy it!
The American Numismatic Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins and related items. The Association serves collectors, the general public, and academic communities with an interest in numismatics.
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