Original Bromoil Transfers or Reproductions?

[Gene Laughter <glaughter@earthlink.net>]

Recently there have been several individual pages of a 1949 book, Roma, auctioned on ebay as "original bromoil transfers." They have fetched up to $275 per page. The edition size of the book was 1,000 copies. Different sellers have auctioned the recent pages.

Presently there is the entire book, "Roma," with 91 plates, being auctioned on ebay. Again the claim is that these are "original bromoil transfers."

D.R. Peretti Griva ROMA 91 Bromoil Transfers Folio 1949 
Item Number: 280235958900 
Item URL: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280235958900 

In a friendly debate with the ebay seller, I contend that these are high quality reproductions, not original bromoil transfers.

I have several technical reasons for taking this position, but the main reason being:

It would be unthinkable, as well as impossible, to me, for an artist to ink matrices and to produce transfers on a hand press of 91,000 copies! 91 plates x the edition size of 1,000 copies. I calculate that if Griva had been super fast at bromoil transferring that it would have taken him twenty years of doing nothing else but producing these transfers!

The seller cites as his source of authenticity the following:

http://tinyurl.com/6fp5u3

"They are bromoil transfer prints, which is a variation of process of bromoil, and 
Peretti Griva in the Officine Donaggio made limited edition (about 1000 copies) from 
1948 to 1955 of few photographics books. If you control the plates with magnifying 
lens, you can see that don't have a classic tipographic reticle." 

"Few people know a difference, but the plates are limited edition of pictorialist 
photographic works, not rare like the bromoils, but rare. And you can tell that the
plates are different colours in the different copies of the book, because the author 
and the printer change the inks." 

I have another different book of Griva's transfers and have examined the plates with a loupe. There are no traces of half-tone dots or of the surface texture associated with collotype. There are sunken plate marks on each page, but to my eye these are too perfect and I feel the plate marks were mechanically produced. Each page is signed, but to my eye, they were signed on a printing plate.

Does anyone here have knowlege of the method D.R. Peretti Griva used to print his books and to reproduce his transfers?

Thanks,

Gene Laughter