Authenticating coins

I am really sorry to have to correct you (as far as antique coins are concerned).

Even 50 USD Gordianus coins are counterfeited en masse! Recently there was a whole glut of AE Follis from the 3-4th century circulating on Ebay that were worth maybe 10-30 USD each (had they been genuine).

It is a misconception that only expensive known ancient coins are counterfeited. On the contrary - the more expensive the coin, the more closely it is examined = bad for the counterfeiter. With a 50 USD coin, hardly any experts bother to check it carefully. And < USD 50 coins are often bought by beginners who do not immediately recognise counterfeits.

No. Inexpensive coins are also counterfeited en masse. And quite often quite well. The mass of counterfeits then makes money for the counterfeiters.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Here is one off an auction house that I think looks good. It is slabbed but looks to be legit.

 

I never said that low value coins were not faked. I said that the lower the value the worse quality of the fake and hence easier to cull out the bad ones. The higher value of a coin the higher the quality of the fakes. Not always but the higher value means more attention to the coin. The fakers know this and so will invest more into the making of these coins. I know that is true just from common sense. No one is going to invest hundreds or thousands into making high quality hard to tell fakes for a $15 coin. You not only have to created dies, and wear but aging. It would take way too long to get your money back if you have to invest $10 into making a $15 dollar coin.

 

No. Sorry.

But I'm out of here now - you'll have your own experiences - everyone here has had them. I wish you lots of fun and success and many beautiful coins - antique coins are an interesting and instructive field, which in my opinion is a lot of fun.

 

To me there are two "paths" of relatively good fake ancients.

The traditional path is going through all of the work of making a good copy of the dies, finding appropriate flans, then erasing any evidence of modern manufacture.

For rare coins, your profit per coin is high BUT rare is rare. You cannot make many copies at all because it is a rare coin and the number of die examples on the market will be noticed. For cheap coins, your profit is much lower but still a fairly high profit IF you make enough copies. But, since they are cheap and much more common not nearly as many people are looking at die matches, since many die matches are to be expected for common coins.

So, to me an example P&L for the rare and common fakes would be, (made up numbers):

Rare Coin Common Coin
Cost of die creation $1000 $1000
Variable coin cost 50 1
Number Struck 10 500
Price 500 10

Total Profit $3500 $3500

So you see they can be similarly profitable. The "tell" will be the abnormally large amount of die matches hitting the market and if anyone notices. This is how the Black Sea Hoard was determined to be all Bugarian fakes, way too many die matches even though the coins were relatively cheap.

 

I am a niche collector, and the coins I collect are by definition much more rare than your typical Roman imperial or Greek coins. There are many types that I have only seen once or twice on the market, over more than 25 years I closely monitor it. Thus i can't be picky, it is often now or never, literally. So eBay, major auctions, minor 'hole in the wall' auctions, vcoins dealers - all goes. There are two major factors, coin and price. Who you buying it from doesn't really matter. Luckily in my field there are not many forgeries, though they still exist. Tooling is much more common and severe problem, and such modified coins can come from any source, eBay or CNG. Long story short, what matters is the coin and not where you buy it. If coins are your passion and you have any specialization you quickly gain some insight. If your interest is very broad or occasional just rely on vcoins and slabs, it will cost you a little more but will give you confidence you need. Obviously with this approach you will never have any good surprises as well, but that's your trade for confidence.