Antique buyers fall for old tricks

An archaeology expert offers free appraisals for residents in Hefei, capital of Anhui province. The occasion was the city's third cultural heritage day in 2008. 

A local woman with a porcelain pot approached Ding Yuanhai in Harbin. She told Ding, director of the Cultural Heritage Forensic Evaluation Institute of Heilongjiang Museum, that her antique had been appraised at 100,000 yuan ($15,400). And she had a document to prove it, provided and signed by an expert she had found through connections in Beijing.

Ding and his colleagues looked over the item and broke the news: The pot was counterfeit. The woman had no chance of recovering the 20,000 yuan appraisal fee she paid to the "expert" in the capital.

"She fell onto the chair and sat there, fixed, when she heard the 'antique' was a fake," Ding said. "I felt so sorry..."

More than 1 million items have been submitted to Ding and his colleagues for review at the institute over the last two years. The institute is the only organization in the province entitled to conduct forensic appraisals, which are used for court proceedings.

"We could only guarantee 61 items of those submitted and we handed out credentials to the owners," Ding said.

China's legitimate art and relics market is thriving. Last year it overtook the United Kingdom's to become the second largest market worldwide, according to an annual report by the European Fine Arts Foundation. Its value doubled from 2009, reaching 9.8 billion euros (91.2 billion yuan, $14 billion) and a 23 percent global share, the foundation said.

The counterfeit market is booming, too. According to a recent report from Beijing Business Today, about 300,000 people work in China's fake antiques market, which generated more than 10 billion yuan in 2009 and 2010.

Common people still dream of making a fortune by buying and selling true relics, but there is little help available to guide and protect them.

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