McGinnis Cross - Relic or Fraud?

[potsherd_creek]

It was like a little game we played in the small one room classroom.
35 kids, 2 different grades.

The teacher whispered something in the first child's ear.

That kid passed the message to the other.

By the time it got to the end of the 35 different versions.

Let's say it kind of resembled the original message but had many twists and turns, including subject matter.

This is how fables/stories are created.
It grows, gets a little more exciting to hold the interest of the ear.

By the end it is nothing more than a cow floppy.

I remember, we did the same thing in school. The sad part of society are the ones who take the tail end part and believe it, give their own take and pass along as fact.

 

[n2mini]

I have no way of knowing if the cross is old or not, but do know that 100's of years ago you had people making fine jewelry, beads, buttons etc.. It wouldn't be out of the realm for someone back then to have made something like it, or even with more detail for that matter..

 

[Spanish Spinach]

It was like a little game we played in the small one room classroom.
35 kids, 2 different grades.

The teacher whispered something in the first child's ear.

That kid passed the message to the other.

By the time it got to the end of the 35 different versions.

Let's say it kind of resembled the original message but had many twists and turns, including subject matter.

This is how fables/stories are created.
It grows, gets a little more exciting to hold the interest of the ear.

By the end it is nothing more than a cow floppy.

In France, we call this "le téléphone arabe," which informally refers to the rapid spread of news by word of mouth, often with the information being distorted or exaggerated along the way.

 

[Pete E]

Expert means nothing. Provenance is not a story given by people who seem "nice". Being an antique's appraiser is something you can claim without credentials. It's even worse than getting a diploma from a diploma mill from an ad on a pack of matches. You can become a certified appraiser by essentially paying membership dues to some unregulated outfit. The training is a guide to where to go to look up realized values. My now deceased father had such a license. It was useful to have for his auction business to present to lawyers as evidence of competency .

As an anecdotal example, I remember him being asked to sell a piece of furniture for an estate where the family produced pages upon pages of "evidence" that the chest was a colonial piece from the late 1700s (most of it was genealogical work). Words to the effect that some dealers had offered them "big money" for the piece were also given. Upon rudimentary examination, it was noticed that the entire carcass had been poorly made up of fruit boxes from the early 20th century. Excuse me for saying it, but some people are nuts and dangerous. My father ended up selling that piece with their paperwork with a caveat, but someone saw fit to not bother looking for themselves. If the expert is not you then be VERY careful. The horseshit attributions we have seen on the COOI are testament to how wild some people's ideas can be.

I am in the UK, and follow some of these threads with interest.

My now deceased ex FIL used to restore antiques and make reproductions on commission.. He was a real eccentric but he could turn his hand to anything from repairing clocks, to making BP replica handguns from scratch, to making it restoring furniture.

There was a wealthy family in the area who lived in a 18th century mansion/country house filled with various antiques and my FIL spent a lot of time restoring and making reproduction items for the owner and some of the owners friends...

FIL was always worried his reproductions would be passed off as genuine antiques, so he would put his makers mark plus a coded date on them somewhere inconspicuous.

Later in life he was in antique shop and recognised an item he had made years earlier...He got talking to the proprietor who gave him a long sales spiel about it's provenance going back to the 1750's...Eventually my FIL told him it actually went back to the 1970's and that he made it....The proprietor would no believe him, so FIL told him about the presence of his mark and date code.... On checking and seeing the mark as described, he chucked the FIL out the shop and banned him returning! lol

As you say, verbal provenance means little, and even written provenance should be treated with suspicion if there are any gaps in it....

 

[smdog66]

Not doubting your info, but I don't recall hearing that. Do you know where we can find that story? I remember the episode the family was on and remember a lot of vague info being talked about and wondering way not just get it tested..

 

[smdog66]

Of course that story about it being from the 1970's was not disclosed on the TV show. That would ruin it

 

[TruthbeTold]

Just as with everything else on the show, the cross was a fake.