Well I found something else that has peaked my interest,
so I am out. Good luck to those going for it. I hope you
all get it so that I can drool over them in your galleries.
Well my group got beat since we didn't put in our total MAX bid. We did it on purpose. I got bombarded with PMs about this auction being fake. Not sure if it's true or not, but some dealers said they didn't think it was real. Long story short....if you did win please confirm where the sketches came from "meaning where Mandy bought them from" because after reading all the PMs it did scare me off and I don't scare too easily. There were just too many people with the same thing to say. If by some chance they are real then it'll be cool to at least drool over them in someone's gallery. Good luck and I guess congrats to the winner.
***EDIT*** Almost forgot to mention. Don't get angry that I didn't post this sooner if you were the high bidder. A lot of these PMs didn't get sent till towards the end. We were still thinking ourselves of what to do. Towards the last few hours is when I noticed several more sent.
"Life can only be lived looking forward. It is understood when looking backwards" - Hadji From Real Adventures of Jonny Quest Gold Knight's Cel Gallery - Rubberslug
These were semi-rough sketches, they were not the final production drawings. Why wouldn't they use holed studio paper to drawn roughs on. It makes sense to me.
The Hikaru no Go hanken sketches I have seen were done on similar paper.
I believe Studio Pierrot does have a hanken department, but that doesn't mean they made these hankens. I would assume Studio Pierrot is not the only studio that uses holed paper. hehe. these are assumptions...
It just doesn't seem profitable to me though for the forger. There were 20 pages (17 originals and 3 copies). The time it would take to copy those pictures so exactly, and then also add in the parts that weren't seen, the erased parts. Do that for 17 pictures, and photocopy 3. In my opinion this would take a lot of time, practice, and some skill.
Since they were on Mandrake, so many people would have seen them, that you could not replicate those again probably, so it is a one-time deal. What did Mandrake buy them for? Lets guess $500 USD. That is a lot of work for that amount of money...and if they were discovered to be non-authentic, would it be worth that hassle...I would say not.
The only suggestion I have heard is that the paper has studio holes, and that isn't enough to say something is a forgery. These were sold as rough sketches also, so I can accept the holes. The Hikaru no Go hankens I saw were also on holed paper, but that doesn't mean the HikaGo were not forgeries. hehe
This is a moot though, as there is no way to "prove" either way. ^_^