Check the seller's other auctions, he's obviously got access to some sort of stash of printers proofs lithos. And if you do a search for "u2 lithograph" on ebay, you'll see that there's a second seller from the UK who is also offering a similar selection of un-numbered lithos (just not that "unreleased" one). It would appear that U2's printer gave them some sort of a close-out deal to get rid of a bunch of stuff they had lying around.
Well from that point of view, it's pretty obvious why U2.com decided not to release it. But I can't imagine why someone would go through all that trouble just to make one fake lithograph. I would assume it's real just based on all the other U2 lithos he's selling. A seller wouldn't go through all the trouble to fake all of those real ones too just to make up a fake unreleased one. It would be a monumental expense of time and money, to cater to a market that certainly isn't very big (since the real U2 ones only have a numbered print run of 500 each).
My next question is whether there are other mock-ups sitting around that have the Best Of collections mashed-up with other albums.
Hello
This is my first post in here as I have joined specifically to answer the above question. I thought long and hard whether to do so but could see no harm.
I am the owner of the "withdrawn lithograph" which was bought back in 2008. A very well connected friend of mine who worked for Universal gave me a heads up that eil.com had a copy and was going to put this online. I live just a few miles from them so I actually bought this, and all the other unnumbered lithos that I listed on eBay from them. I got lucky really. Right contact, right place, right time as no one else had a chance to buy the withdrawn lithograph as I snagged it immediately, in person.
I understand the withdrawn and unnumbered lithos were used as printer proofs for quality control before each of the numbered versions were manufactured for release thru U2.com. They obviously didn't like the withdrawn litho. I was lead to believe I have the only one that exists of the withdrawn litho. As far as I am concerned All the unnumbered lithos and withdrawn litho are 100% genuine and as I have the numbered lithographs, I can vouch that there is absolutely no difference in the quality whatsoever, the image and paper are exactly the same.
I hate to even go down this road but I am certainly not clever or talented enough to fake anything like this, especially not just for one copy.
I just had a look at the eil.com site and they have no current or archived online pages for these lithos now but if you put U2 unnumbered lithos printer proof or similar in Google, it will hopefully bring up links to those archived pages albeit not the withdrawn litho.
The eBay auctions were very speculative on my part as I wasn't sure whether they would sell or not. To be honest when I bought them back in 2008, i had the intention of keeping them but either have the numbered copies now and have run out of storage space. I started the "withdrawn litho" at £250 just to see if that bird would fly. I had a lot of questions but it remained unsold and I haven't relisted since.
Having thought about this, I suppose if someone is saying that they have a piece of potentially very rare U2 memorabilia, people may be suspicious of it. I bought all the lithos through reputable sources and have every reason to believe that they are 100% genuine. Although it doesn't show up on the google search that I can find nor do i have the receipt from 5 years ago, I did have the piece of mind to keep a paper copy of the eil.com web page that gives the relevant details even though it never was available for sale through eil.com. Whether you can call that proof is for others to determine.
I would be more than happy to supply any photographs for people.
I hope members won't mind me posting about this.
Cheers