The Ballantine paperback does have illustrations by Keith Henderson - as does our copy of the first American Worm Ouroboros from 1926. The Ballantine cover art appears to be by Barbara Remington, in the style of her Tolkien covers, though without any BREM signature or other indication of the artist on or in the book.

Wayne

http://cgi.ebay.ca/TALES-BEEDLE-BARD- ... es_EH&hash=item45f6b42f2b

New Tolkien book - who knew?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=380288038069

This made me laugh. I have pointed out Enderby Lincolnshire and hte real Bag End are miles apart and indeed picture is titled Bag NOT Bag End !!!!!

http://cgi.ebay.ca/SIGNED-JRR-TOLKIEN ... ks_UK&hash=item2a0be45fd8

Interesting. Does anyone else out there have any non-Tolkien books signed by Tolkien and verified by two (un-named) highly-respected bookshops?

Here's an opportunity to buy a "Tolkien" signature for cheap!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Personal-Letter-J ... tible&hash=item2eb1ae218b

I guess this guy will never stop.

He does not have any incentive to stop as he always sells the fakes. He will carry on indefinitely.

It is sad to see that The Tolkien Estate have no problem with fake Tolkien signatures being sold, as they do nothing to stop them,

The same letter was offered on eBay almost a year ago by "classic_art_uk". We commented in this thread.

Here's an opportunity to buy a "Tolkien" signature for cheap!

Last year, the bidding started at $800, with Buy It Now at $1,500, versus the current $599.99 and $699.99.

It is sad to see that The Tolkien Estate have no problem with fake Tolkien signatures being sold, as they do nothing to stop them.

It's unfair to say that Estate "have no problem" with this, since none of us is privy to the many actions they take quietly and privately - in so far as they can take them. (Is a fake Tolkien letter a fraud against the Estate, or against whomever is foolish enough to buy it?)

Wayne & Christina

It is funny (not ha-ha funny) but it occurs to me:

My understanding is that the estate controls the publication rights for Tolkien's materials (published books, manuscripts, letters, artwork, etc.) but not the materials themselves (owned by Marquette, Wade, Bodleian, private collectors, etc.) The owners of the originals may sell, trade, give away, display as much as they please, but cannot reproduce the item for publication without permission.

So technically, the Estate may have some ground to prevent the publication of a real letter in an auction catalog or website (though clearly there is some fair use grounds here), but what grounds would they have to prevent the auction listing for a fraudulent letter?

It is against the law to sell fraudulent artwork, but that has no bearing on the Estate. The Estate cannot have copyright control over something that is not produced by Tolkien! They can push to prosecute a fraudulent seller, but so can anyone else. Perhaps they can be considered a strong authority on whether a particular item is fake or not, but eBay has shown that they don't really care - they get more profit (listing and sale fees) the more frauds that sell...

http://reviews.ebay.com/Scam-Alert-eB ... 0QQugidZ10000000001451263

There are some interesting parallels on this website

http://www.lenkiewicz.org/index.php?o ... ion=printpage;topic=739.0

where people are arguing that the executor/estate should try and protect the reputation of the individual by preventing fakes from being sold.

I'm sure that the Tolkien Estate are very interested in protecting Tolkien's reputation, in fact as I see it they may be only entity that eBay would take any notice of in this regard.

Some very good points raised from that thread you shared, Trotter:

Conventional auctioneers have also reported that large numbers of dubious watercolours and so-called self-portraits, which often fool the inexperienced, being offered for sale have also contributed to the inexorable decline in confidence amongst potential buyers.

The Lenkiewicz Foundation, which has seen the value of their assets plunge due to the flood of forgeries and mis-attributions issued the following statement...

Emphasis added by me. So it is not just reputation that is at stake, but the financial value of the Estates holdings as well - as evidenced by another Estate that has suffered measurable declines in value due to massive forgeries and mis-attributions.