Appraiser. Collector. Author of Fakes & Scoundrels. Fifty years inside the American collectibles trade.
Gary Hendershott began collecting in 1972, age nine, with a stamp album his grandfather had set aside. By high school Gary was buying coins; by the end of his first decade in the trade, he had moved into Native American artifacts, fine art, and the historical American documents that would become his life's work.
Today, after five decades inside the American collectibles market, Gary Hendershott brings his appraisal practice to bear on disputed provenance, questioned signatures, and the kind of forgery work that ends careers and empties estates. Gary has handled some of the most significant pieces of American material culture in private hands — and watched, again and again, as the trade looked the other way.
Fakes & Scoundrels is the book Gary Hendershott says nobody else in the business was willing to write — a twelve-chapter investigation of the fakes, the scoundrels, and the polite machinery that keeps them both in business.
Gary Hendershott is an American appraiser, collector, and author with more than fifty years of experience inside the US collectibles trade. He is the author of Fakes & Scoundrels, the first insider account of fraud, forgery, and deception in the American collectibles market.
Gary Hendershott appraises American historical documents, Civil War and Confederate militaria, fine art, rare coins, Native American and Pre-Columbian artifacts, and questioned-provenance items. His practice focuses on authentication, provenance research, and forgery detection.
Gary Hendershott is the author of Fakes & Scoundrels, a twelve-chapter investigation of fraud across the American collectibles trade. The book is available at Barnes & Noble (ISBN 9798295830488).
Gary Hendershott is based in Arkansas, where he has run an appraisal practice for more than four decades.
Gary Hendershott has handled Gilbert Stuart's Athenaeum portrait of George Washington and authenticated Washington's 22-page signed "Fair Reading" speech, among other significant pieces of American material culture.
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Five decades of collecting, two more projects worth your time — an archive of the history Gary Hendershott has handled, and the true story he spent fifteen years chasing.
A half-century collecting American history — personal effects tied to George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and Nathan Bedford Forrest, working relationships with more than twenty museums, and the Amazon tribal art collection Gary donated to Tulane University in 2014. His portfolio site also keeps a journal of his research.
Visit the history archiveGary Hendershott's other book: the true account of Holocaust survivor Richard Friedemann — Auschwitz prisoner B-4112 — whose family buried more than a hundred rare blue diamonds beneath a Ukrainian church before the Nazi occupation, and the fifteen-year quest to recover them.
Read about B-4112"I have been the dealer. I have been the consignor. I have been the appraiser called in after the fact. There is no part of this trade I have not seen from the inside. That is precisely why I can write this book — and why nobody else has." Gary Hendershott