[tab1]

The same has happened in the genuine Print markets in the past , original pest certificate sold with a fake , print, anything is possible with devious individuals .
Another market bbay could make a profit from and clean up , dispose of fakes if sent in and create a stamp for the back of genuine items ?
The money involved in these items will attract a lot of chancers , look at the thread with the gdp can.

[iamzero]

Wasn’t there a problem with Warhol stuff by doing this?

[blackwolf496]

Jan 6, 2021 11:38:52 GMT 1 tab1 said:

The same has happened in the genuine Print markets in the past , original pest certificate sold with a fake , print, anything is possible with devious individuals .
Another market bbay could make a profit from and clean up , dispose of fakes if sent in and create a stamp for the back of genuine items ?
The money involved in these items will attract a lot of chancers , look at the thread with the gdp can.

This situation must be on Pest Controls radar, I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying Banksy Prints from Tate Ward going forward.

Can you imagine, put a change of ownership in...

Where did you buy ?

Tate Ward ?

Alarm bells start to ring..... loudly.

Does anyone know if they have sold Banksy Prints without a PC COA before ? I’d be super worried if they had.

[tab1]

Jan 6, 2021 18:23:04 GMT 1 blackwolf496 said:

Jan 6, 2021 11:38:52 GMT 1 tab1 said:

The same has happened in the genuine Print markets in the past , original pest certificate sold with a fake , print, anything is possible with devious individuals .
Another market bbay could make a profit from and clean up , dispose of fakes if sent in and create a stamp for the back of genuine items ?
The money involved in these items will attract a lot of chancers , look at the thread with the gdp can.

This situation must be on Pest Controls radar, I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying Banksy Prints from Tate Ward going forward.

Can you imagine, put a change of ownership in...

Where did you buy ?

Tate Ward ?

Alarm bells start to ring..... loudly.

Does anyone know if they have sold Banksy Prints without a PC COA before ? I’d be super worried if they had.

Or sold with out cert being updated ? Not everyone updates the change of ownership

[Rubberneck]

Jan 6, 2021 18:23:04 GMT 1 blackwolf496 said:

Jan 6, 2021 11:38:52 GMT 1 tab1 said:

The same has happened in the genuine Print markets in the past , original pest certificate sold with a fake , print, anything is possible with devious individuals .
Another market bbay could make a profit from and clean up , dispose of fakes if sent in and create a stamp for the back of genuine items ?
The money involved in these items will attract a lot of chancers , look at the thread with the gdp can.

This situation must be on Pest Controls radar, I wouldn’t feel comfortable buying Banksy Prints from Tate Ward going forward.

Can you imagine, put a change of ownership in...

Where did you buy ?

Tate Ward ?

Alarm bells start to ring..... loudly.

Does anyone know if they have sold Banksy Prints without a PC COA before ? I’d be super worried if they had.

Yes they have sold GDP prints.   I also understand some buyers are still waiting on CoA’s to be sent on after more than a year on other POW Banksy prints. 

[jamieb]

Jan 4, 2021 21:07:36 GMT 1 tab1 said:

Police action is only taken if A buyer is not refunded and action raised by the buyer
Shown on here by this thread everyone is happy with their refunds including the person that raised the issue and none have taken no further action , presumably if they keep quiet it will all blow over as already shown the Warhol items may be effected , a full investigation may spread to many other items / artists being counterfeit .
Shown already they had a great market and much more to come if they carry out a full independent investigation to clear them of any wrongdoing it may help them to retrieve that market

Yes I am the person who raised the "issue" and yes I did get a refund so am not out of pocket.

But I am NOT happy. The more of this that comes to light the more it stinks, between Tateward and Nick/Lobster there are scores of these fakes been sold.

I did not need compensation as I realised it was fake the second I saw it, returned the same day for a full refund. 

Those who were sold these "fakes" even a just a few months ago have lost out at current market value.

Therefore anything short of compensation at current market value to the affected parties and evidence that the fakes were all separately consigned to Tateward and Nick/Lobster, therefore proving that they are not the source will not make me happy with the outcome.

[orenic]

Jan 7, 2021 11:43:31 GMT 1 jamieb said:

Jan 4, 2021 21:07:36 GMT 1 tab1 said:

Police action is only taken if A buyer is not refunded and action raised by the buyer
Shown on here by this thread everyone is happy with their refunds including the person that raised the issue and none have taken no further action , presumably if they keep quiet it will all blow over as already shown the Warhol items may be effected , a full investigation may spread to many other items / artists being counterfeit .
Shown already they had a great market and much more to come if they carry out a full independent investigation to clear them of any wrongdoing it may help them to retrieve that market

Yes I am the person who raised the "issue" and yes I did get a refund so am not out of pocket.

But I am NOT happy. The more of this that comes to light the more it stinks, between Tateward and Nick/Lobster there are scores of these fakes been sold.

I did not need compensation as I realised it was fake the second I saw it, returned the same day for a full refund. 

Those who were sold these "fakes" even a just a few months ago have lost out at current market value.

Therefore anything short of compensation at current market value to the affected parties and evidence that the fakes were all separately consigned to Tateward and Nick/Lobster, therefore proving that they are not the source will to make me happy with the outcome.

Jamieb, totally agree with you but there is a much bigger problem. The Warhol’s they have sold are fake as well.

When will Tate Ward make a statement about these ?

Hate to think what else is going to pop up over the next few months, absolute minefield.

[JFCC]

I think everybody is appalled at what Tate Ward and individuals attached to the Auction House have done with Petrol Bomb and there is heightening alarm about what may have happened with Warhol prints but I don't think it needs to extend to prints with a COA pending or with the pieces gaining a COA.

I personally would not buy without a COA in place (and without the authentication process privately) but many people do, especially where it is stated as pending. Sotheby's recently sold Grannies with COA pending. (Contemporary Art 18 December 2020 - Lot 135)

The GDP sales with no COA, are different, it feels morally wrong, there was a clear understanding that the owners would not sell them for a 2 year period and the other Auction Houses will not touch them until that is honoured. It shows that Tate Ward appear to be as morally bankrupt as the sellers.

As to involving the Police, that can only happen if someone calls them and reports it, it will not happen otherwise!

[orenic]

Jan 7, 2021 13:15:30 GMT 1 JFCC said:

I think everybody is appalled at what Tate Ward and individuals attached to the Auction House have done with Petrol Bomb and there is heightening alarm about what may have happened with Warhol prints but I don't think it needs to extend to prints with a COA pending or with the pieces gaining a COA.

I personally would not buy without a COA in place (and without the authentication process privately) but many people do, especially where it is stated as pending. Sotheby's recently sold Grannies with COA pending. (Contemporary Art 18 December 2020 - Lot 135)

The GDP sales with no COA, are different, it feels morally wrong, there was a clear understanding that the owners would not sell them for a 2 year period and the other Auction Houses will not touch them until that is honoured. It shows that Tate Ward appear to be as morally bankrupt as the sellers.

As to involving the Police, that can only happen if someone calls them and reports it, it will not happen otherwise!

For sure everyone is appalled, these people have continuously sold fakes through their business.

There are multiple people that have been effected on this forum who have lost out on recent Banksy price jumps.

All in all it’s left a very bad taste.

I think everyone that has been effected should call the Police. It will only take 5 mins.

[lazarus II]

Jan 12, 2021 11:30:24 GMT 1 orenic said:

Jan 7, 2021 13:15:30 GMT 1 JFCC said:

I think everybody is appalled at what Tate Ward and individuals attached to the Auction House have done with Petrol Bomb and there is heightening alarm about what may have happened with Warhol prints but I don't think it needs to extend to prints with a COA pending or with the pieces gaining a COA.

I personally would not buy without a COA in place (and without the authentication process privately) but many people do, especially where it is stated as pending. Sotheby's recently sold Grannies with COA pending. (Contemporary Art 18 December 2020 - Lot 135)

The GDP sales with no COA, are different, it feels morally wrong, there was a clear understanding that the owners would not sell them for a 2 year period and the other Auction Houses will not touch them until that is honoured. It shows that Tate Ward appear to be as morally bankrupt as the sellers.

As to involving the Police, that can only happen if someone calls them and reports it, it will not happen otherwise!

For sure everyone is appalled, these people have continuously sold fakes through their business.

There are multiple people that have been effected on this forum who have lost out on recent Banksy price jumps.

All in all it’s left a very bad taste.

I think everyone that has been effected should call the Police. It will only take 5 mins.

anyone can report a crime, you dont need to be a victim, give them a call yourself.

[Rubberneck]

Dec 20, 2020 21:53:58 GMT 1 daniel3886 said:

Just so all are aware this has not been forgotten. As I stated before once I have the facts they will be reported. We have not had responses
from all buyers yet so that is my priority.

How’s the responses coming along?

[terryfuckwitt]

Their Google reviews are coming along well. I especially enjoyed reading the one they wrote about themselves.
If I could review a review, I would give them a solid 5 stars for that one😂

[samir21]

Will you be reporting back on the fake posters, you’ve been selling in all your auctions?

[orenic]

Jan 18, 2021 12:39:08 GMT 1 terryfuckwitt said:

Their Google reviews are coming along well. I especially enjoyed reading the one they wrote about themselves.
If I could review a review, I would give them a solid 5 stars for that one😂

Wow, the audacity of their replies..... what planet are they living on

[daniel3886]

I wanted to take the opportunity to update this thread and also make some general points regarding Tate Ward.

I understand people have been looking for answers and feedback here, what we have been doing is contacting and indeed speaking to the people who have been directly affected by this issue. As opposed to people who have not been directly affected and in some cases who are simply posting with the sole intention of attempting to damage Tate Ward's reputation. A good example of this is of course the "member" who started this thread in the first place. A new member with around 16 posts all on the Tate Ward thread's. Probably a competitor, gallery or maybe who has an axe to grind. Others are busy having arguments on multiple threads so at least they are not purely focusing their negativity here. I will leave others to judge the the true motivation of this and other similar members posts, but to me it is very clear. We will not explain or justify ourselves to people who create accounts purely to try to damage our reputation.

On a number of occasions the police have been mentioned and bearing in mind both Tate Ward and Nick have a very clear audit trail as to where the Tesco Petrol's have come from the police were contacted at a early stage. We have spoken to Ray Swann of the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit. Obviously this is a public forum as such we cannot into full detail here. However that situation may change in the future, if/when it does I will again update members.

What I can say is that we are confident that we have contacted everyone who has have been affected by the above issue. A few haven’t responded yet, we will continue to try to contact these buyers. Not all the prints sold were fake a number were genuine. All have been offered a full refund and in addition any shipping. framing and other costs involved.

The Warhol's have also been mentioned and I think fall into two distinct categories:

Chanel Offest Lithograph's - these were published in 1997 by Chanel in conjunction with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The total edition is unknown we have sold multiples of these and have never had any issues whatsoever apart from some members here being unaware of the backstory to these prints. We will continue to sell these works.

Warhol "Unsigned/Unnumbered Proofs". The nature of running an auction house is that when you get a strong result for an item then you tend to get offered more of the same item. Which is exactly what happened here. A consignor consigned an image, it got a strong result and we were then offered others by various different consignors. These were in a number of our auctions and during this period we didn't receive any complaints or notifications that people thought they were fake. We had done our own research pre and post sale and these are openly sold by a number of auction houses and galleries. There are 2 galleries in particular - one in Israel and one in the States. They have been established for a long time and if these works are such obvious fakes then I wonder how are they allowed to still sell them. America in particular has an incredibly litigious culture and if these are indeed fake then it seems unbelievable that they continue to openly sell them. We have contacted all the consignors and the selling galleries for further information on the history/authenticity of these items but in the meantime we are going to do two things:

Firstly stop selling them until we can definitively establish the authenticity of these proofs.

Secondly offer anyone who has bought one a full refund if they wish. I do not believe we can do more.

I also notice that people mentioned Tate Ward selling Banksy prints without COA.We have done this on a number of occasions for clients who wanted to sell quickly and for whatever reason hadn't applied for the COA yet. We took these on a case by case basis and with the situation with the delays at PC well documented we didn't see this is a issue. Major auction houses do this all the time and again if the COA is not issued we would of course give a full refund.

Tate Ward selling GDP items appears to be another criticism. GDP/PC said they were not going to issue the PC certs for two years. What they didn't say is you can't/shouldn’t sell these works, they are two very different things. I am not sure how much money the people criticising us do or don't have but to some people who won items in the GDP lottery the potential sums involved are literally life changing. If they wish sell their items to improve their lives then I really don't think either they or Tate Ward should be apologists for this.

I would like to point out that we don't "make up" and use multiple forum names or post online reviews of our own business. I’ve had the same account here for 14 years. But would like thank members for the positive posts on these threads. Also a thank you to the people who have taken the time to text / email us with their support. Our last three auctions at TW were our best yet, each selling well in excess of £1m with a sell through rate of over 80% each time with the highest being 88%. We don't always get it right and clearly we have made errors here, however we have tried to rectify them to the best of our ability.

Over the past few years we have sold thousands and thousands of lots and the narrative that "Tate Ward selling Fakes" really is an unfair representation of what we have achieved as an auction house. I am not sure there is any auction house that hasn't had similar issues and I genuinely believe we have done our best to reach out to people and rectify these issues. Of course this won't be good enough for some people but what is important to us, is that it is good enough to the people that have been affected.

I do hope this explains our position clearly and again if anyone has been affected by these issues and hasn't been contacted then please do get in touch. This closes the matter for us we will not comment any further on either of these matters. If you wish to have a dialogue with us then please email myself [e-mail] or [e-mail] or arrange a call.

Finally we have two auctions coming up, one in Feb online with Artsy and then our next "Live" auction in March. Both are open for consignments so please get in touch with any work you are considering selling and we’ll come back to you with estimates.

[ubl]

Jan 20, 2021 22:27:27 GMT 1 daniel3886 said:

I wanted to take the opportunity to update this thread and also make some general points regarding Tate Ward....

You almost make it sound like its the starter of this thread that makes TW get a bad rap, taking no responsibility. Many people mentioned that you are selling a lot of (very expensive) tat. If you are not 100% sure its authentic, you should not sell. It just makes you look unprofessional, and that you are out to make a quick buck.

[gimmeabreak]

Jan 20, 2021 22:27:27 GMT 1 daniel3886 said:

I wanted to take the opportunity to update this thread and also make some general points regarding Tate Ward.

I understand people have been looking for answers and feedback here, what we have been doing is contacting and indeed speaking to the people who have been directly affected by this issue. As opposed to people who have not been directly affected and in some cases who are simply posting with the sole intention of attempting to damage Tate Ward's reputation. A good example of this is of course the "member" who started this thread in the first place. A new member with around 16 posts all on the Tate Ward thread's. Probably a competitor, gallery or maybe who has an axe to grind. Others are busy having arguments on multiple threads so at least they are not purely focusing their negativity here. I will leave others to judge the the true motivation of this and other similar members posts, but to me it is very clear. We will not explain or justify ourselves to people who create accounts purely to try to damage our reputation.

On a number of occasions the police have been mentioned and bearing in mind both Tate Ward and Nick have a very clear audit trail as to where the Tesco Petrol's have come from the police were contacted at a early stage. We have spoken to Ray Swann of the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit. Obviously this is a public forum as such we cannot into full detail here. However that situation may change in the future, if/when it does I will again update members.

What I can say is that we are confident that we have contacted everyone who has have been affected by the above issue. A few haven’t responded yet, we will continue to try to contact these buyers. Not all the prints sold were fake a number were genuine. All have been offered a full refund and in addition any shipping. framing and other costs involved.

every single person considering your auction house is affected. ya done fucked up. act accordingly.

getting called out for selling fake works and then disappearing from the public eye once the fraud is revealed is not 'purely to try to damage [y]our reputation'. it is a 100% valid complaint that you should respond to on a public forum, and treat as a 'business reputation' issue rather than an isolated incident that it clearly isn't.

and publicly attacking the person who called you out for selling fake works of art is idiotic and self-defeating from a business perspective, and most other perspectives.

[blackwolf496]

Jan 20, 2021 22:27:27 GMT 1 daniel3886 said:

I wanted to take the opportunity to update this thread and also make some general points regarding Tate Ward.

I understand people have been looking for answers and feedback here, what we have been doing is contacting and indeed speaking to the people who have been directly affected by this issue. As opposed to people who have not been directly affected and in some cases who are simply posting with the sole intention of attempting to damage Tate Ward's reputation. A good example of this is of course the "member" who started this thread in the first place. A new member with around 16 posts all on the Tate Ward thread's. Probably a competitor, gallery or maybe who has an axe to grind. Others are busy having arguments on multiple threads so at least they are not purely focusing their negativity here. I will leave others to judge the the true motivation of this and other similar members posts, but to me it is very clear. We will not explain or justify ourselves to people who create accounts purely to try to damage our reputation.

On a number of occasions the police have been mentioned and bearing in mind both Tate Ward and Nick have a very clear audit trail as to where the Tesco Petrol's have come from the police were contacted at a early stage. We have spoken to Ray Swann of the Metropolitan Police Art and Antiques Unit. Obviously this is a public forum as such we cannot into full detail here. However that situation may change in the future, if/when it does I will again update members.

What I can say is that we are confident that we have contacted everyone who has have been affected by the above issue. A few haven’t responded yet, we will continue to try to contact these buyers. Not all the prints sold were fake a number were genuine. All have been offered a full refund and in addition any shipping. framing and other costs involved.

The Warhol's have also been mentioned and I think fall into two distinct categories:

Chanel Offest Lithograph's - these were published in 1997 by Chanel in conjunction with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The total edition is unknown we have sold multiples of these and have never had any issues whatsoever apart from some members here being unaware of the backstory to these prints. We will continue to sell these works.

Warhol "Unsigned/Unnumbered Proofs". The nature of running an auction house is that when you get a strong result for an item then you tend to get offered more of the same item. Which is exactly what happened here. A consignor consigned an image, it got a strong result and we were then offered others by various different consignors. These were in a number of our auctions and during this period we didn't receive any complaints or notifications that people thought they were fake. We had done our own research pre and post sale and these are openly sold by a number of auction houses and galleries. There are 2 galleries in particular - one in Israel and one in the States. They have been established for a long time and if these works are such obvious fakes then I wonder how are they allowed to still sell them. America in particular has an incredibly litigious culture and if these are indeed fake then it seems unbelievable that they continue to openly sell them. We have contacted all the consignors and the selling galleries for further information on the history/authenticity of these items but in the meantime we are going to do two things:

Firstly stop selling them until we can definitively establish the authenticity of these proofs.

Secondly offer anyone who has bought one a full refund if they wish. I do not believe we can do more.

I also notice that people mentioned Tate Ward selling Banksy prints without COA.We have done this on a number of occasions for clients who wanted to sell quickly and for whatever reason hadn't applied for the COA yet. We took these on a case by case basis and with the situation with the delays at PC well documented we didn't see this is a issue. Major auction houses do this all the time and again if the COA is not issued we would of course give a full refund.

Tate Ward selling GDP items appears to be another criticism. GDP/PC said they were not going to issue the PC certs for two years. What they didn't say is you can't/shouldn’t sell these works, they are two very different things. I am not sure how much money the people criticising us do or don't have but to some people who won items in the GDP lottery the potential sums involved are literally life changing. If they wish sell their items to improve their lives then I really don't think either they or Tate Ward should be apologists for this.

I would like to point out that we don't "make up" and use multiple forum names or post online reviews of our own business. I’ve had the same account here for 14 years. But would like thank members for the positive posts on these threads. Also a thank you to the people who have taken the time to text / email us with their support. Our last three auctions at TW were our best yet, each selling well in excess of £1m with a sell through rate of over 80% each time with the highest being 88%. We don't always get it right and clearly we have made errors here, however we have tried to rectify them to the best of our ability.

Over the past few years we have sold thousands and thousands of lots and the narrative that "Tate Ward selling Fakes" really is an unfair representation of what we have achieved as an auction house. I am not sure there is any auction house that hasn't had similar issues and I genuinely believe we have done our best to reach out to people and rectify these issues. Of course this won't be good enough for some people but what is important to us, is that it is good enough to the people that have been affected.

I do hope this explains our position clearly and again if anyone has been affected by these issues and hasn't been contacted then please do get in touch. This closes the matter for us we will not comment any further on either of these matters. If you wish to have a dialogue with us then please email myself [e-mail] or [e-mail] or arrange a call.

Finally we have two auctions coming up, one in Feb online with Artsy and then our next "Live" auction in March. Both are open for consignments so please get in touch with any work you are considering selling and we’ll come back to you with estimates.

What a funny response.

A competitor or gallery, don’t flatter yourself, you have slipped down any auction house rankings probably to the bottom, there is no one down there that will care. You seem to forget you have sold loads of fake art works and been caught. Not once, not twice but lots and lots of times.

I would imagine the other 7th division auction houses will be laughing at you more than anything on how badly you have conducted yourself.

With regards to the Warhol’s, this just proves how bad you guys are at your job. You still have no idea of what you’re selling is fake or not. How can anyone have any confidence in you? the answer to that is they can’t. You have proven time and time again you aren’t capable of doing the basic functions of an auctions house.

Not only should the Police be involved but trading standards also.

Then here comes the best bit, you mention at the end of your post about people consigning works for your upcoming sales. Anyone that wants to buy or sell through you should stay away. I personally would never buy any form of art work with Tate Ward involved in the provenance ever as there is a high chance it will be fake.

[WOOF]

This thread is the perfect example of why PR is its own job, and shouldn't be handled by just anyone.

[kfroms]

Jan 21, 2021 19:48:46 GMT 1 WOOF said:

This thread is the perfect example of why PR is its own job, and shouldn't be handled by just anyone.

Fully agree.
The fluffy response is only making things worse.