A Hoax That Changed Hands Almost as Often as It Fooled People

After George Hull's fabricated giant was exposed as a hoax within months of its 1869 unearthing, the statue itself kept a busy commercial life rather than disappearing: Hull sold a majority stake to a syndicate of businessmen who continued exhibiting it for profit even after the hoax was public knowledge, banking on paying customers who found "see the famous fake" nearly as appealing as "see the ancient giant" had been. The showman P. T. Barnum, denied a chance to buy the original, had a plaster copy made and exhibited it as the "real" giant, prompting the original's owners to sue and produce the enduring line that Barnum's giant was a fake of a fake, a dispute that generated at least as much publicity as either statue's actual claims.

The genuine statue passed through several further private owners over the following decades before eventually being acquired for the Farmers' Museum's collection in the mid-twentieth century, where it has remained on permanent display since as a deliberately unambiguous exhibit: the museum makes no claim whatsoever to the Giant's authenticity as an ancient object, presenting it instead as a case study in American hoax history, a framing that removes any genuine provenance dispute since the object's status as a fabrication has never seriously been in question since 1869.