ed427vette

I agree

marshal135

Greg and Ed present very good points.
Ethics goes out the window when greed prevails.
I've been locking greedy people up for 26 years and
not for ethics violations but crime.
If someone can pull a fast one given the perfect opportunity they will.
Not everyone........... but many many.

I crossed over from the military collectibles world as I'm sure I've said before.
Forgers work the greed of collectors all the time. PSSST I have Hitler's PPK he shot him self in the bunker with kinda greed. A 250k burned kinda greed.
Just go to the big shows and look around. Eva Braun had allot of silver ware??
You get it.... why shouldn't faking an L-88 be any different?
I threw up in my mouth looking at the above car, it's such an ignorant waste.
Marshal

Metalhead140

Would have blown away too many of the parts... I'm surprised they managed to move it so intact!

kingeak

What a thread to read on a Sunday AM!

Regarding your above comment.....I'm on the hunt for a C3 chrome bumpered Vette. I've talked to a lot of people who are advertising #'s matching cars, but where the rubber meets the road, they just don't match. Had one guy trying to get me to bite on a car with a "6" in the windshield VIN that was NOT a convertible. And yet he was convinced it was a #'s matching car. (PS - I'm not looking for a #'s matching car, but if you advertise it as #'s match, with a high $$, you'd better be right and have the photos & documentation to back it up).

What's been described as a possibility happening to this car (changing out the VIN & drivetrain & selling as #'s matching) happened more than once back in the day.

With regards to this car, it's toast IMO.

Can you imagine the time required to part out this car, list the parts for sale and then wait to hope for a return on your time/investment? No thank you.

7t2vette

Looks like we have a bit of a bidding war between two people! Last time I checked the auction yesterday, there still was only 1 bidder and 1 bid of $1500; this morning there are 2 bidders and 7 bids, and it is up to $2750.

general ike

I am sure the forum post has created a little bidding war!!!!

Parting out anything is time consuming, work intensive and not a quick fix. I think you can do quite well but you need to be geared for this kind of work. Of course the internet, Ebay and others help in this.

I wonder how and when it went from someone pride and joy to orphaned in a field!!!!
As someone else has stated, I have looked into some of these relics, only to either have the owner quote some ridiculous number or a classic statement that he/she is going to start a restoration only for it to be in the same place years later!!!

CrossedUp

Happens:

derekderek

Guy I know bought a DeTomasso Pantera for about 2k that was way rustier than that. Boy am I glad the price is up on this one. It's out of my Funny Money range. Now I don't have to worry about what the hell I'm going to do with it.

Richard454

Yep-


1961 Porsche 356B -SOLD $17,750!!!




1962 Porsche 356B SOLD $4,201

ed427vette

And I think you have to add a 23% buyers premium on top of your bid. I may put in a bid but once it gets past 3500 (which i think it will) its not worth it for me. There are parts I would be interested in keeping for myself and the rest I would trade or sell. In my opinion, taking a car apart to restore or part out is the easy part. Putting one back together is the hard part.

Faster Rat

Find one that has not been restored. A lifetime of dirt, grease and rust is hard to fake. That is why Bloomington Gold uses very knowledgeable judges and gives awards for true Survivors. There are still people around who have made a living working on Corvettes for more than 50 years.

dtamustang

i have to agree with Greg...unless you know the entire history of the car personally , at some point you have to trust what someone is telling you, previous owners , paperwork of some sort , experts , but the bottom line is no one is perfect all the time, experts get fooled , owners knowingly or unknowingly lie and documentation can be faked. i wonder how many fake cars have had the stamp of approval by the experts as real ? a bigger question is how many legitimate cars have been called fake because of some production or paperwork anomaly ? one of the many reasons i stay out of the numbers game.

ed427vette

I understand what you are saying, but I also know, as do many other people who have been in the hobby long enough, what is real and what isn't. With enough time and experience of observation looking at original cars with good provenance, one can see through fake and attempted forged cars and forged paperwork. I would not presume to say I could never be fooled, but once I'm convinced, then I would have other sets of eyes that I trust look at it too. If everyone gets fooled then its a great fake. I've yet to come across that scenario.

I personally have gotten to the point that I can tell you which paper forger forged what paperwork. They each have unique mistakes they each make. Could there be a perfect fake document maker out there? Maybe, but I haven't seen it yet and unless they make the fake docs on a vintage IBM printer (which I can indentify if it has or hasn't been done on one) then I will always be able to tell.

I also know exactly what fonts were used on 68-69 corvette stamp pads. However, I do not need to be all that great at identifying them because there is a company (CCAS) that has been researching the broach marks on the engine pads for many years and has it literally down to a identifiable forensic science and can place a engine pads cuts to a date and time by comparing the cuts of other cars, just like ballistics.

So basically? Its not fooling me or at least not the entire process I would go through. And I'm not even considered any kind of expert by anyone, nor should I be. I'm just a regular guy, at times a member of NCRS, never a judge, but someone who pays attention to small details like many other members here. Its not brain surgery. The fakers are NOT trying to fool me anyway. They are trying to fool the majority of car buyers who DO NOT DO PROPER RESEARCH. They count on the buyers who see a car priced below market, like it, hoping to get a great deal, do a weeks worth of research and think that is enough. Then AFTER they buy the car realize they made a mistake. You see it all the time.

The guys who judge at the big events know exactly what they are looking at. I hear people say they can fool judges with fake stamps and fake paperwork but how is that possible if they can't even fool me? Besides, some of the judging events are NOT judging originality. They are judging how close to CORRECT production a car has been restored to. Those are two VERY different things.

And if something to me looks like its legit and I am considering buying it, THEN I'll bring in an expert to either confirm my findings or maybe find something I missed.

If you know what an unrestored car looks like, and you CAN tell, then you don't need to know the cars history personally. How can you tell? I can answer that but it would take me hours to type all of that info here. But ill try to make it brief. How I can tell is by seeing enough unrestored cars, seing how the factory put them together versus even the best restored examples. A restored car looks brand new. That's not a true guide to what was originally done, but it can assist. Can someone put together a "Survivor" looking car? Yes. But unless it is something like an L88 then nobody in there right mind would do that with a common car and those are the ones to look at. Beat up barn finds are good for that reason. Even the car in this thread. Some aspects of the car are probably still intact as the factory left it and will be there when ripped apart. I see what looks like an original alternator. I doubt someone would be faking it on this car. So I would make note of it and take a picture of the stamp and add it to my personal photo library. Engine stamps that have been verified by CCAS. Save pics of those stamps. Compare it to ones you look at considering for purchase.

I could go on and on but hopefully this at least explains that there are plenty of knowledgable people out there that can see the cars for what they are. Its possible, i guess anything is possible, that some experts might be fooled by something but they can't fool everyone.

Faster Rat

Thank you Ed. I could not have said it better myself, even if I felt like it. You can lead a horse to water...but you can't make him drink. I would like to meet you some day.

dtamustang

if i was thirsty i would drink , like i said i'm not one thats in to the numbers , but i don't ridicule those that are. i just have some difficulty assuming when it comes to verifying the numbers , 100% of the experts are correct 100% of the time. i have never met a person that has never made a mistake.

Greg

Ed,
You've put a very credible post but for the one obvious flaw; if the judges are/were/have been fooled, how would anyone ever know?

I would bet the farm that many counterfeit (for lack of a better term) cars have passed through top flight judges hands, received their benediction and gone on to those willing to pay the top prices for a rare, legitimate car.

I also agree with you that the forensics involved can and do expose the fakes. However that just leads to the next plateau in forgery. Once it's been determined that "XYZ" test will out the fraud, that becomes next step in replication.

As dta pointed out nobody can have 100% a record.

Like you, I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable about Corvettes.
I spent many years with the General, I've owned more Corvettes than just about anyone I've known, done every job there is to do on them including plenty of complete frame offs and I can tell you, I have been fooled.
Greg

dmaxx3500

wernt there 2 guys in the middle of IL. building RARE corvettes,20+ years ago,,one was quoted as saying,''he could build a perfect car,everything except the air in the tires from that year''

they were even changing ''eng casting numbers''

Faster Rat

Greg
How about turning off the bold type? If what you have to say is valid, you don't have to shout to make your point....
Dennis

ed427vette

The paradox that you are implying is a very real issue if you don't know what "original" looks like or haven't seen it for oneself. You would have to trust what you read or hear currently as fact. That is a hard leap of faith. You would have to believe what a "Judge" tells you as fact. All you can do is base that decision on the credibility of that person giving that assessment.

Its no different in having anyone or any "expert" inspect any object to verify what is real or fake wether it be any type of art, coins, artifacts or anything at all.

At some point you have to decide wether you believe it or not based on all available data.

I know what fonts I should see on real paperwork from the late 60s. I base this on docs I know to be real and it has been consistent for the 35 years I have seen it. Also the same for Corvette engne stamps. But lets say someone gets into the hobby today and asks me. How could they know what I'm telling them is correct? They would have to decide for themselves and base that decision on hearing other people they feel are credible also. Also, you can try to locate period photos of when these cars were new. Not to easy to do I agree.

There is actually quite a lot of good info on these Corvettes that have been published for longer than I have been in the hobby. Its out there. And pictures of documentation from a very long time ago, before they were being forged, before the cars were worth anything. But you would have to find it and even know about it.

That's the best answers I can think of.

ed427vette

I am sure there were more than 2 guys who have done this over the last several decades. That's why some of us love finding what we believe to be as untouched cars. Restored cars can have anything done to them. At that point you have to try to be a detective to see what was done. Not easy at all. Cars need to be disassembled to really tell the story.

I never was able to buy the really collectible very expensive restored cars back in the day. So I always figured who would go that far to fake something that's notvrestored and not really that valuable. But studying them helped when I got older and could maybe afford to spend a little more money. You see when someone replaced something.

I have always been a little nervous when looking at a very expensive, rare restored car that either I was interested in or someone asked me to look at because so much has been changed from the factory. There is only so much info you can gather when looking at a car for an hour or two. Every nut and bolt might look correct but everything was removed and put back from someone other than the factory. My OWN cars will be restored and the next buyer will have the same issue as I just described, as me, if I ever decided to sell them.

As with anything, you just have to be as best informed as you can. Fortunately the cars I've bought we're not too rare or expensive.