Recently, I was reminded how far the sizzle of good marketing can overwhelm or hide the reality of a bad steak. To put it in collector-speak, we can easily get so caught up in the hype of the dealers pitch that we check our brains at the door. Case in point was a major auction house more than 20 years ago who offered for sale an item that was both dated and said to have a long and clear provenance (history of ownership) back to a well-known community organization. Wow, it sure sounded great. Again, the item was dated and also had great provenance. However, the facts were that the date on the piece pre-dated the founding of the organization that supposedly owned it by more than a decade. The item sold for a record price and got lots of media attention. Yet, there was a quiet but pervasive drumbeat from skeptics who doubted the story. Perhaps there was a logical explanation and the inconsistencies all made sense, or perhaps the story and the date were conveniently combined to help sell the item. Having antiqued across the United States, I have frequently seen antiques galleries located in prime tourist areas offering fishy items with great stories and lots of shiny added bells and whistles. Forty years ago, I recall being in a gallery in San Antonio where Philippine religious carvings were being mounted in brilliantly painted, and very new, nichos and sold as southwestern folk art. There were pretty magazines with stories about the carvings all over the gallery, and the pitch was definitely being made about what a rare and great buy they were. At $1,000 a pop, they were no bargain. A quick study of southwestern Santos (carvings and paintings of saints) would have revealed that the carvings were not from this hemisphere and that the nichos were new. However, the gallery was counting on your enthusiasm to overwhelm your analytical brain. Similarly, a favorite trick in the West is to take commonplace cartes-de-visit and cabinet cards of normal people and write a narrative that they are famous lawmen or outlaws or are related to famous lawmen or outlaws. How many photographs of Billy the Kid or George Custer have I seen being peddled as the real McCoy? Most are generic images that might have a passing resemblance to some figure but without a scrap of evidence to show them as real, yet they are being pitched as 100 percent genuine. I have also seen fake western police badges married with photographs of distinguished gentlemen and the entire package then being purported to show famous lawmen and their badges. I recall reading a piece from a faker about all of this. He said that he could sleep well every night in knowing that he never actually made the relationship connections between objects and people, he let the buyers do that for themselves. I found that incredibly dishonest and disingenuous to say the least. As a seller, I believe you have an obligation to be as accurate as you possibly can be. Anything less is fraud in my book. Born to collect should be the motto of Peter Seiberts family. Raised in Central Pennsylvania, Seibert has been collecting and writing about antiques for more than three decades. By day, he is a museum director and has worked in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Virginia and New Mexico. In addition, he advises and consults with auction houses throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, particularly about American furniture and decorative arts. Seiberts writings include books on photography, American fraternal societies and paintings. He and his family are restoring a 1905 arts and crafts house filled with years worth antique treasures found in shops, co-ops and at auctions.