In the past, I would have been far more confident about my ability to spot something fake, but now having spent a bit of time in museums and knowing what they put out on display (often replicas), as well as just realising how far many will go to make a few grand dishonestly, I've become more concerned that a lot of what's out there is actually rubbish.
The pictured could just as well be sandblasted garden ornaments made from similar materials. Any discrepancies can be put down to "restoration attempts".
Is there any proper legal regulation of this market?
Those do all look massively fake, and they are priced like fakes would be as well. You’d need to be a proper expert to know for sure, of course, but I don’t think ancient carvings looked like that.
A great deal of it. Rare antiques in good condition still command a high price, so naturally the incentive is there to try to pass your pile of junk off as something valuable. But also, the market is flooded by supply because of the Internet and online platforms, which means that it's harder to sell any one antique item, so some people try to tout their piece as something especially valuable, which it maybe isn't.
>Is there any proper legal regulation of this market?
Mainly the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations, as well as probably parts of the Sale of Goods Act and the Consumer Rights Act. So in essence, you've only got general principles applying to it that apply to all kinds of other buying and selling of goods.
