How do we know it is fake/real?

Exactly. And file marks may be ancient. They might have been done to mount it, steal some of the precious metal by a crook (especially with gold), done by some bored idiot with a file, and sometimes filing was actually done as part of the flan preparation on some coins. It's my opinion that filing has to be taken in context of the rest of the evidence and issue.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Insider: No, not all of these are this thick. Some are thicker; some thinner. Looking at the ones on coin archives, you can find some in the 10+g range and some in the 13+g range. I have not done a study of what the highest and lowest known are but weights were not the first consideration on these. I am no fan of this particular thing which means I only have 3 or 4 others (remember I choose to buy ten lesser coins than one MS - they are more educational and I don't plan to sell them when I buy). One similar coin I do have is this Philip II Caesar of Antioch which weighs 15.3g. I bought it from a dealer I trust more than 95% I know in 2001. Weight is not a big thing on these. It does not have filed edges.


One last photo is from my page on fabric
http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fabric.html
and shows a stack of four AE coins from this period and region (some, not all, were Antioch).

Each not only has scratches but show a diagonal angle to those scratches that suggest to me that the flans might have been stacked in a clamp and filed by a right handed worker. Can I prove that? Certainly not! Do these scratches match those on the OP billon tet? Not at all. Have I seen this discussed in scholarly literature? What scholarly literature would you suggest I check? Will it be mentioned in RPC VIII? Does this mean that round coins were fashionable that year? Does it mean anything? Questions are many; answers are few. The more I learn, the less I know. The point here was to generate thought. Perhaps we succeeded.

 

I have been collecting coins since I was a teenage paperboy (I'm now retired), and I find ancient coins to be the most frustrating coins. It always seems to be the same question, "Is it real", and in all my years I've never met anyone who could answer that question with any definite certainty. As was pointed out to me in a previous post, even NGC Ancients puts up a disclaimer that states basically if they certify an ancient as authentic and it turns out to be counterfeit they will have no liability for their certification.

I firmly believe that no two "experts" will agree on whether an ancient is authentic unless it is an obvious and poorly done fake. I'm having a problem trying to work out if a Attica Athens AR Tetradrachm Athena and Owl 440-404 BC is authentic. I bought it from a fellow club member who assured me it was authentic, but he gave me a price that was low for the quality of the coin. I took it to a coin dealer friend and he said it looked good, but when he put it under his microscope he saw a few small bubbles which concerned him. I took it to another coin dealer friend and he said it was authentic without a doubt. I brought it to a third coin dealer friend (we have 5 coin shops in town) and he looked it over and said he couldn't be sure (I think he gave the best answer). I was going to send it to NGC Ancients for certification when as I said earlier, it was pointed out that they don't guarantee their certification either.

My final opinion? I don't think anyone can say, without a doubt, that an ancient is authentic. You can go by all the indicators, do all the research, but if it's fake and made by someone who really knows what they're doing, you just can't tell.

 

What the ...? Snark Report!

Truthfully, you cannot and it does not matter. The coin is damaged. Anyway, an experienced collector can often tell if the coin is c/f w/o looking at its edge.

Actually, any form of cleaning does not come close to leaving "file marks."

Except for one thing...unless I missed it......What is your opinion? Good, bad, or no decision?

 

You could of course try David Sear.

 

My point exactly. The coin in question does not show file marks, but cleaning scratches.

 

It depends on who you are asking. I think the British Museum may have a pretty good accuracy record. Here is something I read many "moons" ago and I have found it to be true in very many cases: A new hire at ANACS in DC told his Summer Seminar class that soon after he was hired, he realized that over half of the well known, long time professional coin dealers that were being used as consultants "could not authenticate themselves out of a paper bag." They stopped using many of them and as he told us, even the ones they kept using had their opinions verified by the staff using comparison coins in museums!

Now, I should guess that the upper strata of dealers do a pretty good job. Plus, when a coin goes into a major auction with everyone looking few fakes slip past - some do. Yet, with every Tom, Dick, and Harry trying to prove how much they know, it must be tough to pass a fake.

One final thought. There are some coins that defy authentication and you will find top experts in disagreement. But most of the time you take a coin around to several dealers for an opinion, you are going to be very disappointed with the results UNLESS the coin is an crude fake or what professionals like to call a coin so obviously genuine that it is "self authenticating."

 

I should like to see some magnified photos of this piece. There is a lot of roughness at the sides of its relief.

 

Hard to tell from a scan. It may just be polished, which I have seen a LOT of US dealers do to ancients.

 

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!

Much better?

IMHO, I don't think that polishing or cleaning would cause the granularity I think I can make out on the edge of some of this coin's high points. I am probably wrong and just guessing here as it is very hard to tell anything about a coin when looking at a photo.

 

I believe you will find there have been advances in faking modern coins that makes that less certain than it once was. Of course I don't know since I don't collect modern coins. The problem here is we are asked to work from photos including some really bad photos. There are very few towns with five coin shops that employ anyone whose opinion on ancients approach 'expert' but many that have no problem telling you they are. We recently had a post from someone whose local dealer claimed affiliation with NGC ancients as I recall when their affiliation was that they knew how to mail off coins to be graded. The biggest problem with ancients is that there are so many more types that no single person has seen them all and it is really hard to be expert in something you have never seen. There is a big difference between being 99.9% certain of an answer and being certain. Issuing guarantees on something worth $100,000 when you are only 99.9% certain would not be a great business model.

 

I'll try to take better pictures of the Athena, but I really don't have the proper equipment. I had it run through a metal analyzer and it is 89% silver, 24 mm at its longest edges, and weighs 14.2 grams.

 

it does to me! if some dude marked the coin while he was "cleaning" it 2012 or the flans were filed at the mint 2,000 years ago makes quite a difference.

 

With very little equipment you can take very good photos. If you have a point and shoot camera, a stable platform to shoot from, and a lamp you'll be very surprised with what you can accomplish.

 

The weight is a red flag. These should be in the area of 17 grams.

 

I've collected modern U.S most of my life. World around a decade. Ancient around 3 months. Now I say I dabble on both sides of the light. I don't know enough about ancients to really involve myself in most discussions, but I'm learning. I guess that's why I like to read yours & yeah TIF''s threads & posts. There's others here I can say I enjoy also.
Yes, there are fake modern coins as well. Darn good ones to. I have a few Morgan's I've set off to the side I'm suspect of.

 

Here 's the photos I just took of the Athena- best I could do.

 

See, those really aren't bad at all!

 

It seems you succeeded in generating thought...and I definitely find the more I 'learn' the less I know LOL

BTW: I saw nothing on the OP coin to suggest a fake just wear and perhaps careless cleaning and would've purchased it at the right price after a bit of the usual 'due diligence'. But what do I know So I still primarily depend on the auction houses to provide the 'genuine' status and not myself since I can NEVER be absolutely sure on my own.

 

Great, we finally attracted a true "Ex-Pert" to the thread.

While I'll agree that a thousand year old scratch can be regarded as "historical evidence" of some long forgotten process and

Now, perhaps you will be kind enough to educate me and anyone else that is interested HOW YOU tell the difference? And don't give me the old "there's patina over the scratches" BS because the guys in the know can reproduce that effect in a very short period of time! Color me waiting.