The article is as insightful and as useful as all your others. You’re so right about dealers not willing to share important information which forces others to redo the provenance work all over again.

But, as for authenticating items, I had one family try to get a value on a switch supposedly from one of the crematoriums used during the Holocaust. It was brought during a public evaluation clinic in Manassas, VA some years ago. Every dealer there strongly suggested that, authentication or not (and there wasn’t any except hearsay), it should be donated, given, for free, today, to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

There are just some things where authentication or provenance just wouldn’t add or detract from a particular item such as that one.

Tom Carrier
Worthologist