[Mindaugas S.]

Dear friends,

I would like to warn you about one inadequate person, who purloins foreign items. His name is Abraham Zand (Ebraham Zandia). He is of Iranian origin and introduces himself as art dealer. He can live in London, Brighton, also in Germany and other European countries.

Some time ago this person gained trust of my partner and convinced him to give him for sale 9 bronze helmets. In some time he made an offer to my partner to sell helmets for minimal price, lower than the market value, because Abraham has a buyer wanting to buy some antique helmets. My partner refused to conclude such transaction. In response, Abraham Zand requested to pay him 10 % from not concluded transaction. My partner agreed to pay these 10 % after helmets will be sold, and asked to return all helmets back. However, Abraham returned only 3 helmets and stopped answering to my partner’s phone calls and e-mails. My partner has no possibility to communicate with this person. The last surprise was appearance of two my partner‘s helmets on Time Line Auctions. Here are links to the catalogue:

https://timelineauctions.com/lot/chalcidian-helmet/101704/
https://timelineauctions.com/lot/montefortino-helmet/101703/

Please be careful with purchasing them because these helmets most probably will be wanted as stolen.

Please find attached pictures of helmets, awaiting for return to their legitimate owner. Helmets marked 1 and 2 are now offered at Timeline. Be careful.

I hope Abraham will find a possibility to correct this situation and not to finally loose his reputation and good name.

[Matthew Amt]

Sorry to hear about this! Sounds like a real mess.

The one helmet identified as a Montefortino is NOT a Montefortino, nor Roman in any way. It might even be a cookpot.

The helmet at center of that group photo (with the "goggles") is a spectacular FAKE, being an approximate copy of the Gjerbundmu Viking-era helmet that has been artificially aged. So it makes me suspect some of the others...

That auction site apparently doesn't know the definition of "provenance", either!

Good luck!

Matthew

[Dan Howard]

It is like a counterfeiter complaining about someone who stole his phony cash.

The sad part is that someone on that auction site just bid £2,700 for a cookpot.

The Corinthian looks like a decent replica. If you get it back, I'll give you a couple of hundred bucks for it - more if you polish out all of the artificial aging instead of making me do it.