Caveat Emptor: The Lesson of the Fake Waldseemüller Gores

There have been stories recently, in major news publications, about an extremely rare, early 16th century map that was set to go to auction with an expected selling price of at least USD800,000, but that has turned out to be a fake. It's a cool story, and a cautionary tale worth recording.

The map in question is the Martin Waldseemüller "gores". Gores are meant to be cut out and pasted onto a sphere to create a globe. That's one reason why this map is so rare. Most of these maps would have been cut up after being produced and lost over time. In fact, only four originals were known to exist of a map believed to be the first printed globe and the first to use the word "America".

The map was described as "a huge deal". It was the first to show the world in 360 degrees. Showed an important new landmass, and introduced an important new word into our lexicon. It also gave arguably inflated importance to the explorer Amerigo Vespucci.

It's an amazing thought, that just 15 years after Columbus's voyage, a map-maker scrambled to compile all this new information he's learning about the new world and to try and express it in a new way.  

Apparently, the story goes that someone walked off the street into Christie's auction house and claimed to be a descendant of a well known British paper restorer who had found the map among his late-relative's papers. The experts at the Auction house were overjoyed. The felt they had chanced upon an amazing treasure. Too bad they were wrong.

A map expert named Alex Clausen, employed by the well known (in the map world) Barry Ruderman of Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps, spotted a few things amiss.

A drop of glue on the paper, that would have affixed it to something, had print on top of the adhesive, rather than under it, as might be expected. In other places, detail seems to have been added to the map, where it would have been expected to be missing as the printing process wore it down. Another concern, caught by another paper expert, was that there was a line on the map that matched a spot where a verified original map had been repaired. It was too coincidental for this new map to have an identical repair. Moreover, another copy of the map, previously presumed to be original also had this same line. That latter map's status as an original is now also being re-considered by its owner.

Such a map would likely never be in the hands of an amateur or casual map collector, but it raises a question: if most experts were nearly fooled, how could an amateur ever avoid being duped? If the nuances between the real thing and a fake are so hard to detect, it's discouraging to someone who may want to take a step into buying some of the rarer, older, and more expensive maps that are on the market. The best advice, is probably to ask lots of questions of the seller, including about the provenance--the historical chain of ownership--of the map. It also helps to have a high level of trust in the seller.

Above all, it reinforces the much older maxim: caveat emptor! Let the buyer beware.