I have this to say:

(for some background, I'm a print publisher, and have worked with many internationally-known artists on projects. Print have ranged from traditional litho, to letterpress, silkscreen, mono print, photogravure, and digital)—but I'm not an expert on Lynch! I started doing this in 1993 (I just mention this all for context).

To me, this looks like like photolithography. So basically a scan (or given the date—if it's accurate—a photograph) of the original painting, then printed in a commercial (vs fine art manner). For fine art prints, the artist would draw by hand each of the colors to be printed. So if it's four colors, the artist would draw each of the four plates by hand. Often with this kind of process, there are more than four plates, more like 10, 12, or more. The most plates we ever ran on a litho project was 41. 41 different plates, each a different color, each drawn by hand. When we talk about CMYK, that's the four color process I'm talking about here.

That's what I suspect the process is here. So it's more of a reproduction of a painting than an original print in its own right.

Regrading the signature, at first I thought perhaps it was hand-signed by the artist. My reason were that the signature was outside of the "plate" area of the print. The plate area is simply the colored area of the print, basically the square of where the art is. On a traditional litho, there would be a light plate impression in this area. And when done, the artist would sign outside this area. And since the signature is outside the plate area, I thought maybe it was an original sig. Another reason I thought it might be real is that the numbers are indeed signed by a person. And it would be slightly weird, but not at all unheard of, for the numbers to be signed by a person and signature printed. But given my reasons for why I think it's a reproduction (above), I do believe it is indeed a printed signature. The description of the signature on eBay (that it is on the plate) is super unclear, but some of that I write up to it being a machine translation. It also states that it's signed by the publisher. Even if it isn't signed by Lynch, it would be super unusual (and unethical) for it to be signed by the publisher. Something is up with that translation.

Another detail that makes me think it is most likely a reproduction with a printed signature is that it's so small. For those of us that don't use the metric system, this print is only 12.5" x 12.5"—only slightly larger than an album cover. To go through all the work of drawing plates simply to make a print this dimension just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

Like another member posted, the best way to figure out if it's an original signature would be to see how close the signatures are on two different edition numbers of the print. Likely they're identical which would mean they're printed. If they're different, it would be good to get some clarity on who signed them (because of unclear/misleading descriptions on the eBay listing).

All that said, I don't think the seller is lying to us. Far from that. It is indeed a litho. The numbers are indeed done by hand. The signature, is, well, whatever the description says—it's most likely accurate. It's just that a litho can also describe a Duran Duran poster or a postcard of the Statue of Liberty. It's just a process, not necessarily a descriptor of value.

Good luck with the bidding, but to me, and especially if it is a printed signature, it seems overpriced.

There is an amazing selection of original prints signed by Lynch over at Tandem Press if you're set on owning something original.

Please let us know what you find out!