AntiqueLures

Detecting Fakes and Repaints

Use of a black light

By Dr. Michael Echols

A few years ago a buddy of mine ( a long-term collector), and I decided we needed to figure out how best to use a black light. A couple of other collectors, like Gabby Talkington, were experimenting with lights, but no one had written anything down about what to look for given various problems.

At the time we undertook this experiment, I had a collection of about eight hundred early wood lures, about half of which were bought in the 1995 to 1997 time frame before prices went through the roof and fakes were prevalent. The rest of the collection was purchased from the field via my web site AntiqueLures.com. For the most part, there was no problem at the time with direct reproductions, but rather with touch-ups and repaints from one or two known individuals.

What we did was black-light all eight hundred lures at one sitting. It was night time and the room was totally dark except for one small red light on the floor to avoid night blindness. We carefully rotated each lure to inspect the full paint job and tried to stay within a given company to compare the paint only for that company. In other words when we looked at Heddon, we looked at all the Heddon lures from oldest to the newest lures. At that time the collection was all pre-1940.

We found the older paint (pre-1940) varied considerably from present day paint in the degree of fluorescence (reflected bright light). We had made some test 'lures' for comparison by dip-painting rod dowel stock with current paint and lacquer like that used to do re-paints. This was done to check for obvious differences. The newer paint and varnish was just totally different from older oil based paint used on early pre-1940 lures. The newer paint is almost fluorescent as it glows when the ultra violet light hits it. The older paints, like we found on Heddon, Pflueger, South Bend, Shakespeare, etc. were much duller and had a kind of brownish cast due to the thick lacquer. Newer lures like you would see from Creek Chub had brighter paint and were much harder to detect as being different from current paint chemistry. Thick or thin varnish (lacquer) greatly changes the over-all cast of the color. Thick varnish like you find on South Bend, Heddon, and the higher grade Pfluegers, gives the brownish cast. Thin varnish lets the underlying 'paint' color shine through better.

Any lure which had a scrape to the varnish showed up as a dark spot against the over all background of the original paint. Turning the light on and off to inspect a given area was telling as you could see where the varnish was even slightly modified. The same dark spot is seen with a touch up, but is usually much darker.

Shakespeare lures showed the greatest variation as there seem to be multiple layers of color and any scratch or rub drastically changed the look of the paint under the defect. In general early Shakespeare, pre-1910, have very thin varnish. The solid yellow of early, pre-1908, Shakespeare is non-fluorescing and looks very dull.

The greatest surprise came when we compared three mint all-yellow lures. The lures were a 1920 Heddon 150 fat body in L-rig, a 1926 Heddon150 slim body in L-rig, and a Musky five hook c. 1916 Shakespeare minnow. All three were very high dollar lures. The first was a known field find Heddon fat body 150 in the correct box which dated to the early 1920's. This Heddon served as the 'known'. We knew this Heddon was 'right', but the other two were suspect due to their condition and the fact that they had been shipped in for evaluation by two different individuals. The solid yellow on the 'known' Heddon lure turned a kind of light yellow under the black light, but the other two turned an identical solid mustard brown instead of the natural light yellow of the known Heddon 150.

We then placed all three lures under a microscope and checked for crazing in the paint, looked for paint on the eyes, and around the hardware. What we found was the hardware on the two suspect lures were lightly dented which was inconsistent with the 'mint' paint. Perfect paint is not consistent with damaged hardware. The conclusion in the end was the two suspect lures were painted by the same person and turned up at the same time. Both were returned to the individuals trying to sell them.

Our other findings were that early Shakespeare, which has little or no varnish, consistently looked the same from lure to lure. The same with early Pflueger and the early miscellaneous companies we examined.

The group of 800 lures we examined are all on www.antiquelures.com which contains the original collection from the late 90's and were obtained prior to the wave of repaints that started in the late 90's.

The trick with a black light, like grading, is to look at as many lures from one company as you can at one time. Look at older collections and compare paint within a given company. For Creek Chub collectors, this is a real eye opener as the paint varies like crazy due to the variety of lures and the time frame when they were painted. But, in the end, you have to compare age to age and company to company. There is no one 'cook book' answer on fakes. You have to compare lots of lures and then cross examine your findings against 'known' specimens to get a control for comparison.

You can do this same examination at lure shows, but you have to pick your time because of the lighting and traffic. At one Daytona show, we had a night time safari to take small groups around the show with the lights down after hours and looked at lures on each table. It was very 'instructional'. Fakes and repaints light up like Christmas trees.

The other aspect which has to be considered is using a loop or magnifying glass to inspect the underlying paint and hardware for variations from the norm. Hardware will often be a tell-tale for mint lures as it is difficult to have perfect paint and beat hardware on the same lure. Checking paint on Heddon lures for deep 'crazing' is essential to gain an understanding of the characteristics of old and new paint. Variations in storage may account for different problems, but experience is the best and only teacher.

Other than knowing someone with extensive experience, your own experience is the best teacher. Repaints are so obvious once you look at a collection of early lures and see what the real paint looks like under the light.

Below is the type of hand-held single tube black light used. They are battery powered, inexpensive, and available from various antique dealers.