[Other] Old news, still unresolved

[RenegadeHealer]

A few things about the physical book raise my eyebrow:

• The text box with the title and author look photoshopped in. In fact, my first impression is that it’s not even shopped into the image from the VMs and then printed to make the cover, but directly shopped into the photo Koen linked, over the front cover of a VMs-themed notebook that has no text box.
  
• The Yale University Beinecke Library’s watermark is still visible on the image from the VMs.
  
• Can somebody crop and reverse-image-search that atypical arrangement of Voynichese glyphs in the title box? It gives me a strong sense of déjà vu. (Alisa Gladyseva’s “work”, perhaps?)
  
• Why the differences in image resolution between the background, the border of the text box, the Greek text in the box, and the Voynichese text in the box?
  

• Is that really the best the illustrator of page 10 could do with that image of f78r?? It’s poorly cropped, not flush with the margins of the page, and looks like is has a strange yellow filter
  

VViews, if you receive any book at all, I won’t be surprised if it’s a shrink-wrapped empty notebook, with a sticker on each cover, under the shrink-wrap.

[Koen G]

Don't forget it's supposedly published in the prehistoric year of 1990!

[ReneZ]

Can somebody crop and reverse-image-search that atypical arrangement of Voynichese glyphs in the title box? It gives me a strong sense of déjà vu. (Alisa Gladyseva’s “work”, perhaps?)

This is based on the Currier alphabet and comes out as:
1234567890 followed by the "splat" for unreadable characters, the quote and the "picnic table" which did not appear in the Currier alphabet.
This alphabet makes sense for 1990.
However...
The font is pixelised and not exactly like Gabriel Landini's "hand 1", but very, very close to it.
This did not exist until many years after 1990. Even the "splat" for unreadable characters was introduced afer 1990.

The number of publicly available colour images of the MS in 1990 is remarkably low. Any such would have been made photographically, on special order. Jim Reeds' colour slides shown in the 1998 meeting did not include this page.

This is about as mysterious as the fake Kircher book about the Voynich MS that appeared in an auction book some years ago. Was this before the Ninja forum?

[CaryR]

I got intrigued by this thread and tried to look for this book, and there appears to be a copy in a university library:

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If you search for "Ethan Ashmole Jones" in the library catalogue, a listing for the book comes up:

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It still doesn't explain who the author is or why everything about this is so weird and mysterious, but it does appear that a real copy of the book exists in this university's library. But you'll need to go to Corfu, Greece to really be sure that's true 

[Koen G]

The university catalogue confirms the date of 1990. So either the book is antedated or the author got his hands on color images that weren't available yet to the general public.

[MichelleL11]

The university catalogue confirms the date of 1990. So either the book is antedated or the author got his hands on color images that weren't available yet to the general public.

Or the actual book in Corfu doesn’t look like the mock up you found.  I think that is where l’d place my money.  Or it was from the future.  One or the other.

[nablator]

The university catalogue confirms the date of 1990. So either the book is antedated or the author got his hands on color images that weren't available yet to the general public.

1/1/1990 could mean it was published in the 1990s but no one knows when.

Post-1997, if this font is the one: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The check digit of the ISBN-10 is correct.

I want to believe.

[davidjackson]

I have no idea what's going on in this thread... but 10-digit ISBN starting 960 were issued for Greece before 2006, and the ISBN seems valid, although I can't find any reference to an actual book on the web.
The publishing prefix corresponds to a Greek publisher called Grammata:

Grammata

CountryGreece
Agency NameGreece
ISBN Prefix978-960-329
StatusACTIVE
AddressGravias 7 10678 Athina
Admin Contact NameSarafidou, Eleni
Admin Phone(210) 3808203, (210) 3807689
Admin Fax(210) 3810892
Admin Emaildiakinisi@protoporia.gr

[Koen G]

1/1/1990 could mean it was published in the 1990s but no one knows when.

Post-1997, if this font is the one: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

The check digit of the ISBN-10 is correct.

I want to believe.

This makes sense. I'm also still believing
When would be the earliest someone could get their hands on this color image without making extra efforts?

[ReneZ]

When would be the earliest someone could get their hands on this color image without making extra efforts?

Were watermarks ever used before digital scanning and internet publication?
I really don't know the answer.

In any case, a publication date of 1/1/1990 does not look as if it should be taken literally.
Could be anytime in the 90's but the person entering the date was not sure.