Dr. Mark

Ditto - most of us I suspect have different obsessions, which is good. Through these obsessions discoveries are made and knowledge transmitted that can benefit everyone.

Not quite. More accurate is that it is usually difficult for experts to make a definitive assessment from photographs and a few testimonials from a source with vested interest, however disinterested that source purports to be. What is an acceptable risk of misattributing an instrument when the difference may amount to a few hundred dollars, becomes unacceptable risk when the difference rises to thousands, or tens of thousands or more. A reputation only adds to the stakes, and consequent lawsuits are not unheard of. In the case of potentially valuable instruments a close-up and personal examination is at least de rigueur if not mandatory, certainly good practice and maybe even common sense.

This just gets better and better...!

evidently Ebonprex is red beech: "Ebonprex is made with Red Beech Laminated densified Wood, with raw material 100% of European origin, easily available and environmental friendly being PEFC certificated."

I like that...

Now I'm intrigued...

E&M was big back then among scientists, inventors, and various frauds and scam artists - a bit like AI now.... Maxwell died in '79, the year Einstein was born. Einstein's special relativity paper was 'The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies".

And now...Endblockology!

That's the legendary clawed hunchback three-legged seated monkey! How could anyone mistake it?

For the Emperor, you might try contacting Jan Špidlen. I found this: https://stringsmagazine.com/violin-maker-jan-spidlen-on-the-1715-emperor-stradivari-violin/

I did this once in reverse - I cut the lozenges from a slice of ebony waste from a fingerboard and inlaid the dots and ebony in a white matrix of tagua nut dust and glue. Worked pretty well at the time but I haven't seen the violin in decades so I don't know how it held up.

I propose it's because there never have been many blue or purple or green people - at least who are both alive and reasonably healthy.

That, Sir, is unfair. The dismal science, it's called...

There we go!

It seems you're dictating other's opinions. Do terms like 'overpriced' have some kind of absolute meaning, defined by some objective metric? You're trying to justify a fool's parade. Overpriced items sell all the time. We could discuss it further if you like, but that doesn't seem to be a good use of Maestro-Net.