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Message:: [QUOTE="blooey, post: 2795968, member: 12007"]As I dealt primarily in old paintings, I found once the value starts to climb, the proliferation of fakes increases. I'm sure it's like that in all fields.A "little knowledge being a dangerous thing" is a good thing to keep in mind too, as fakers of paintings will often target artists of somewhat obscure familiarity but with fairly strong price ranges. Prior to the internet, dealers with access to the then expensive and hard to access great old foreign language art indicies such as Benezit and Thieme-Becker would be the targets of the faker.A dealer might be offered a painting or perhaps undiscovered "family hoard" by a minor impressionist, rarely seen in the market  -but with strong past sales records. The dealer, who would normally scoff at a Corot or Renoir as a fake, would look up the obscure artist and on finding a decent bio, be fooled, and purchase the fake. From there, the fake could go anywhere before it was eventually seen by an expert and condemned. This has been the way for centuries and old fakes can be REALLY old!Once I started buying paintings in the 5 figure range, fakes popped up everywhere, and yes, I too bought some in those days -I still have one, a Jan Sluyters that I paid over $10,000 for back in the early 1990's. It lives unseen in an old cupboard so I'm not reminded daily of my foolishness!![/QUOTE]