That really is great framing - makes me think I need to upgrade some of mine!

Thanks for the comments guys, just kept the framing nice and simple, I use the same framing for most of my artwork.

Traveller5959 was looking for one of these?

One of my favs. Still kick myself for thinking £5k was too much for it!

There are a lot fewer VLH backdoors out there, but they were still being printed in Brum at that point

Can you confirm if this is the regular size print rather than the larger size.

Fair enough, but the creases and the the kind of lived in look make it more appealing. I didn't really appreciate this image before...... But this might just be the way to have 'the real thing' but without having to succumb to current prices

Swapped my small backdoor version for a proof sheet of tenners years back .. Great exchange obviously, but I still regret letting it go !! glwts

Backdoor = A print 'sold'/ left through the backdoor. Never ment to be leaving the printer. Outside of the edition, but on the same paper, same ink etc. Obviously no stamp and no signature.

Not the right place to get into this. Let mikehaspey sell his print mate, enough been written about it already.

Good luck with the sale Mike, sweet print!

PMd a couple of days ago

It was just a simple question.  I like the print so was trying to learn more before sending a PM

didn't mean to cause issues

What is the source of your information?

Anyone who's new here and considering a purchase must be made fully aware that, without a certificate of authenticity from Pest Control (which specifies a print's details, including its edition number), you have absolutely no guarantee that a print is a bona fide Banksy.

Believe me when I say I've seen more counterfeit Banksy prints in my time than I care to recall, and many were quite convincing — in one case having fooled an embarrassed dealer. There are also plenty of members on this forum who've had the regrettable experience of purchasing counterfeits, sold to them with falsified provenance documentation before COAs were the norm. I've liaised with more than a dozen such members.

Frankly, most prints by Banksy are easy to fake. Rest assured as well that any capable screenprinter could produce near-identical duplicate screens from genuine prints.

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With the establishment of Pest Control in 2008 and the crucial safety net it offered, fraudsters in the Banksy market found it necessary to shift their focus. It became far more difficult for them to sell counterfeit signed and unsigned editioned prints. So they moved into the grey areas where Pest Control doesn't opine, as is the case with so-called backdoor prints — either:

(i) churning out new ones to pass off as genuine backdoor prints; or

(ii) using up previously-printed stock which (if Pest Control had not disrupted that lucrative market through its COAs) might otherwise have been given fake embossed stamps, numbered, and offloaded as genuine editioned prints.

The profits are smaller when on-selling or producing counterfeit backdoor prints. However, because they're outside the realm which Pest Control sets for itself, the advantage for fraudsters is that no one with the requisite authority calls them out. This means there's little risk of getting caught, let alone going to prison. All you need is a suitably convincing backstory (real or fabricated), a gift of the gab, and a conspiracy of silence and complicity by other people here who really should know better.

And, hey, if you've also managed to find or to fake an email exchange with some ex-Mission Print or POW printer or one of their mates, then super. Conveniently, that very same email could be printed out repeatedly and re-used with other buyers — to dump, say, 10, 20 or 50 more counterfeits onto the already seedy backdoor-print market.

When you have credulous buyers who desperately want to believe that a backstory is true, the efforts needed to con them are minimised, and the selling work is pretty much done for you.

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Consequently, those who consider dodginess to be an attractive feature should definitely look into backdoor prints.

A purchase will result in one of two outcomes:

1. Quite probably, you'll end up spending your money on a counterfeit, like the many novices or fools who buy colour photocopies of Di-Faced Tenner notes on eBay.

2. In the best-case scenario, you'll end up with a real, unofficial, non-authorised backdoor print — deceitfully produced and released without the approval of either Pictures On Walls or Banksy. In other words, you'll end up with stolen property. It goes without saying that this raises certain ethical issues.

And of course the stolen property won't ever be authenticated by Pest Control. So the only comfort you'll have as to its genuineness will be a believable or not-so-believable tale that came from a thief. Or a story invented further down the line by some intermediary whose own moral flexibility allows them to handle and deal in stolen goods.

Presumably, they'll be like the kind of people who sell used smartphones or television sets outside of pubs. No doubt those chaps are also "true gents" and a good laugh as well.