When it comes to Tiffany lamps, everyone thinks they’ve got one.
“Out of 100 emails I get, probably just 4 or 5 percent of them are authentic,” says Dennis Tesdell, a private Tiffany lamp broker and consultant who assess lamps through his website AntiqueTiffanyLamps.com.
“It’s become a phrase. Any leaded lamp is called a Tiffany lamp,“ adds auctioneer John Fontaine, of Fontaine's Auction Gallery, who has been in the business for 42 years.
Fontaine gets about 50 calls a week to verify if a lamp is a real Tiffany. Most are not the real thing.
What they're hoping they have—a genuine Tiffany lamp—could be worth a small fortune. The originals, those made in the 1890s to 1930s by Tiffany Studios under the watchful eye of Louis Comfort Tiffany, can be worth anywhere from $4,000 to over $1 million