The Method applied to
The Method applied to Vintage posters
Vintage posters sit at the crossroads of art, advertising history, and industrial reproduction — which makes them a paradise for fraudsters. The Method watches three gates: edition authenticity (stone lithography vs offset reprint vs digital fake), condition truthfully graded (linen-backing that hides tears, inpainting that invents missing areas, artificial aging), and market timing (poster fashions are violently cyclical — buy a name at its record and you're holding expensive wallpaper). We assess coherence between the piece, its story, and comparable sales; we never authenticate, but we flag every red light before you pay.
The Method's take
Counterfeit pressure scales with the artist's auction record: a Mucha, a Cassandre, a Toulouse-Lautrec printed in the millions — and faked in the millions since. The genuine-find law applies cleanly: untouched estate collections and pre-digital-catalog provincial auctions still yield original prints at discovery prices; polished gallery stock has been through ten professional hands and arrives at you with the margin extracted. Restoration doctrine: conservative linen-backing and edge-repair are standard and acceptable; heavy inpainting, reconstructed text, or a poster Frankensteined from two pieces is a pass — verify all interventions in writing with a paper conservator before purchase. Non-comparability is your only multiplier: if reverse-image search returns five identical copies on commercial poster sites at €200, you are not buying rarity; true value lives in verified early printings, artist-signed proofs, or unknown editions brought back with archival documentation.
The math
A fake Cappiello or a modern reprint of a Chéret sold as original typically costs €800–€3,000 before you discover it has no market. A poster bought at fashion's peak — say, a Campari litho at €5,000 when the category was hot, now worth €1,200 — locks that difference in dead capital for years. One Condition Report skipped, one imagined rarity, one failure to verify the printing technique: the median mistake in this category runs €1,000–€4,000. The 24-hour Insider pass costs €100; the annual pass €3,800. You recover the cost by avoiding one error — or by correctly pricing just one piece you already own.
One question answered here saved you a mistake. The engine answers yours — the exact object, the exact number.
Ask the engine — 24h pass €100