Divine Comedy? Divine Tragedy? Or Divine Farce? - Case Study

The Price and the Cost

As covered previously, Sharon and Julian paid a total of $483,828 - nearly half a million dollars - for this set of prints.

After the examination of the prints had been concluded, Sharon Day asked Frank Hunter and Nicolas Descharnes for their estimate of the value of the set.

Frank Hunter cited the fact that he had just been offered for purchase a complete, unsigned set of genuine prints in folios, same edition, in excellent condition, for $10,000, and considered this fairly typical.

He also estimated that the value of the set, had the signatures been valid and with excellent provenance and proof that the signatures were indeed by the hand of Salvador Dali, would be $30-50,000. This is fairly close to the estimate given by Gary Metzner of Sotheby's in Chicago.

It also coincides with figures provided by a reliable source who had access to the records of what Park West had paid for the set. This source stated that the cost to Park West for the set was between $49,000 and $86,000.

"And with the forged signatures, how much are they worth?" asked Sharon Day.

"They have no value," said Frank Hunter. "It's unfortunate."

"I agree," Nicolas Descharnes concurred.

All three experts were in agreement that, even were the false signatures to be removed, the cost of doing so would be more than the cost of a full set without signatures, and the traces of the false signatures would never completely disappear.

Follow-up

The video which was shot by Fine Art Registry of the opening and examination of the Divine Comedy prints has been edited and produced in two versions and published on the Fine Art Registry website and the SalvadorDaliFakes.com website and distributed on many social networking and web video sites. One version is 10 minutes long and is a short summary of the investigation. The other version is about 32 minutes long and is in two parts. It is a more detailed report.

Still to be produced is a full length video with the full examination, 1 1/2 hours long. This is planned to be made available on DVD along with supporting documents, correspondence and so on, at the FAR Web Store.

Legal Action

Sharon Day and Julian Howard have also sued Park West Gallery, Albert Scaglione, Morris Shapiro and Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd., represented by Kaufman, Payton & Chapa, a Farmington Hills, Michigan, legal firm. The same suit included as plaintiffs a number of Park West Gallery victims, who had given up in their attempt to get satisfaction from Park West customer services.

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