One can hardly blame the manufacturer for this. The demand for old glass is much larger than the supply, and the collector, who is desirous of nothing so much as to complete his “set,” is insistent in his inquiries. But the trouble comes when a reproduction, altogether admirable in itself, is passed off for the thing it is not--a genuine specimen of the early glass-worker’s art--bearing a value proportioned to its antiquity and presumed rarity. I saw, not long ago, in a silversmith’s in the south of England, a great number of specimens set out for sale as genuine old glass, at a price corresponding to their supposed value, but every piece, without exception, belonged to what a connoisseur would term the “bad age,”. _i.e._ anything from the year 1850 onwards. The dealers must have known its period and its worth, or rather its worthlessness, and yet they allowed it to be sold as the real thing. Unfortunately, this is no uncommon occurrence, and it is a pity that the practice cannot be checked. The ordinary trader is not permitted to sell margarine as butter, or the publican manufactured spirit as pure grape brandy, but the dealer in antiques seems to claim a special licence to impose upon the unwary, and may with impunity--or, at least, often does--pass off as rare specimens of ancient craftsman’s work things which to the seeing eye are obvious and clumsy frauds, and virtually worthless. Nor is the large dealer the only culprit. Small second-hand shops teem with “faked” antiques, and many of these, and also certain pawnshops, make a great part of their profit out of the unwary and unskilled hunter for bargains in glass, china, engravings, sporting prints, and all the other objects that tempt a collector’s eye. Fig. 14 illustrates a common type of such bargains. These pieces were procured at a pawnbroker’s establishment in South London. They are obviously imitations of Early Georgian salt-cellars, but they were offered to the author as “genuine old Waterford sweetmeat dishes,” and then as “perhaps salt-cellars,” and finally as “old glass ice-cups,” at a price dwindling from 31s. 6d., through 25s. to 15s., at which I purchased them as “awful examples” of the fate that awaits the collector who goes bargain-hunting in antiques with an enthusiasm greater than his knowledge.