Speculative fraud hypothesis

[proto57]

The quantity of parchment is also wholly improbable: if Wilfrid found this much untouched parchment it would honestly be worth more to sell it to other con-men as supplies, or produce smaller fakes inviting less attention. It could be that he had other reasons for crafting it the way it is, but the quality of the finished product doesn't support this.

A few things about those points: Actually, blank ancient materials have not been, and are not, worth an awful lot. Back in 2011 I did a deep dive to see what blank vellum was available, and it turned out that there are many cases in which unused vellum sat for up to hundreds of years, and when available for sale was relatively inexpensive: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

That being said, we also know that Voynich acquired a vast repository of materials, possibly as many as half a million items which had been squirreled away for 40 years by the owner of the Libreria Franceshini, which Voynich had purchased in 1908. I explain this in my post, "Something Sheepy in the State of Denmark":

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So we know it probable that Voynich did have a great deal of materials at his fingertips (and BTW, I also suspect that the Libreria was known to Voynich long before his purchase, and might be the main source of Incunabula he famously sold to the British Museum in 1902).

   

But also, we actually know that Voynich sold blank materials, and cheap! According to Millicent Sowerby, in her autobiographic account of her life in books, she related that Voynich did this... presumably from the vast piles he acquired in 1908, but he was also known to disassemble books in poor shape. Sowerby related how the famous engraver, James McBey, would come to the shop to purchase blank materials for his engravings. And in his autobiography, McBey also relates how he searched out ancient, blank materials for his prints (in one case, he found Rubin's actual, personal scrapbook at a street fair, and bought it for a pittance!).

And lastly, we also know that blank materials have been used for forgeries since like forever. Think about your own statement, in fact, "... if Wilfrid found this much untouched parchment it would honestly be worth more to sell it to other con-men as supplies"... well, what if he were the "con-man"? Would it not be far more valuable to him, once converted into a forgery, than we know he sold those same materials for?

But we don't have to guess... every ancient material has been used... or re-used, for forgeries: Paper, vellum, even bark for MesoAmerican forgeries. And look at the famously forged Vineland Map, which used blank vellum from the Speculum Historale and the Tartar Relation. The volume of the Speculum, in fact, was one of a larger set of several, large volumes, which could have provided even more material, for more forgeries.

So while I do agree with your speculations as to the cost and availability of materials... I, myself may have similarly assumed the same things you have... but when you look into it, it turns out that such materials were and are available, were and are relatively inexpensive, and arguably, Voynich had mountains of the stuff by 1908.