Painter Forgeries

Unfortunately, a forger is passing many forgeries mostly, for now, via eBay. This person, who also uses several aliases, is using different tactics to pass his forgeries, namely using many eBay handles (see below for some of the few) and varying his style a bit between creations. This person also forges other signatures as well (Donald Trump, Pele, John McEnroe, Serena and Venus Williams, Kate Bush AND probably others).

Thus far, his list of names he's passed J.K. Rowling Forgeries under:

Dollpainte-0

Bergermeister70

Plantcollections72

beatjup0

philchrlewis_68

Retro Collectables Ltd

Steampunkcollectables

SteamPunkPainters

*mcoles78

*quartermain-75 (US-BASED)

*These last two handles HAVE sold many, many JK Rowling forgeries. And their garbage looks very similar to some known Painter forgery garbage, so for now, I'm assuming he is/was using these handles as well. If I find out more names, I'll add them here.

This person keeps adding new eBay IDs fairly often to keep spreading his crap. Sadly, some of his creations have made their way into dealers'/other sellers'/collectors' hands. Myself and Patricio (from The Rowling Library) as well as Adam Houston and others whom we trust, have been long-time collectors with trained eyes for Jo's hand, especially as it changes over time. Each of us have been seriously working with and studying JK Rowling's signatures as well as collecting along the way. We just want to help clean the market up so everyone can enjoy collecting Jo signed pieces without worry. Again, we are working to educate the buyer to put a stop to this person's bad behavior, because ultimately, with him doing his "thing" we all lose.

If you've bought ANY signed piece from this person and/or any of the eBay user names above, please return for your money back if you can. Those pieces are not real.

How do we know this person's things (or others') are forgeries:

Unfortunately, this person is working to improve his work currently, so I absolutely will not divulge how we are on to him. And in case he finds this page, (and if you do, know we do not like you, sir(s) or madame(s)) we do not want to help him out through trying to do a good thing. What I will say is that we as a collector collective who are working on this JK Rowling Forgery project (sadly) discuss at length every forgery (unless super obvious) that we include in our database. We do NOT want to shame anyone, namely someone who is selling a forgery by accident, but we do want to educate the buying public about to what's currently going on in the marketplace. It's a fine line, we know.

What about Authentication Houses like PSA DNA and others:

As much as I'd like to have a positive thing to say here I cannot. I have seen them (and other well-known 3rd party authentication houses) pass Rowling forgeries (sometimes even blatantly obvious ones) and fail authentic ones. While I'm sure they are great with certain signatures, they are not consistently good with Jo. So, do NOT buy a Jo signed piece just because it has a "trusted" authentication certificate.

HOWEVER, Adam over at theharrypotterspecialist is the ONLY authentication specialist I'd trust with anything to do with JK Rowling signatures, as that's all he specializes in. In short, he knows his stuff.

For now that's all.

Thanks for reading and Happy (Cautious) Collecting!

-Carly