I think I bought a fake. Help, please.

Thickness is a sure sign of a cast coin. The bottom right picture seems to thick and I think I see the seam.

 

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I expected the same. In the current situation, somebody is going to have to have a couple hundred dollars tied up for a while. I simply think it should be the seller who sold me a bad coin, not me. As far as I’m concerned, the coin is worthless. However, the seller still has my money.

But I’m trying to be philosophical about it. The seller apologized and agreed to refund my money. I’m just going to have to wait a few more weeks than I had hoped. I keep a separate coin fund that keeps me on budget. I really can’t start shopping for a replacement coin until I have received the refund.

I guess patience isn’t my strong suit. I need to work on that.

 

I still cannot rule out the possibility that the OP’s coin was the host coin for the fake. The graffito on the obverse of the OP coin has clear metal movement, while the eBay coin just simply has a depression in the same shape. I am not an expert on these by any means, but the evidence strongly hints that the OP’s coin is a genuine coin that was used to make the fakes.

Now, the eBay coin could be a fake of a fake, where the OP’s coin was a fake disfigured by the graffito to make it more convincing, but that seems unlikely.

 

Well, that unusual scenario would indeed change my estimation of a currently “worthless” coin. It would obviously have authentic value. Just not authentic value in my collection. Only a collector supremely confident in his or her authentification skills, or someone willing to pay for a service, could keep this coin. That is not me.

 

Have you checked the per cent of silver in the coin?

 

Since you are talking "far fetched" scenarios here is one lol back in the day one person got both coins as they were minted etc and marked them.

 

I have no idea how to do that.

 

Have a jeweler or coin shop XRF it.

 

I think I will leave those measures to the seller. It’s going back. Host coin or not. If I see a clone of my coin on eBay every couple of years, it’s just going to irritate me.

 

Can't blame you at all for just being rid of it. I would likely do the same. Even if it is real, you're always going to have doubts about it. But it's still worth trying to figure out, for others who might be in the same situation one day. We can all learn from it.

I compared your edge to some denarii that I am confident are authentic. Honestly, it doesn't look that off. I see what some might take as a casting seam, but it could also just be uneven toning or pressure from the striking. You'd be in a better position to judge that, with it in hand.

The top example is your coin with the possible seam marked out, while the bottom one is my coin with a similar look. In my case, I think it's uneven toning inside a depression along the edge.

At any rate, if people with far more experience and knowledge can't say for sure, it's scary.

 

Here is a good example anyway if you can make the front look good so can you with the seam.

 

These two coins and this topic continue to mystify me, partly because it makes little sense to me that a forger would purposely copy the graffito on the OP coin's obverse.

There is no doubt that at least one of these is a fake. For me, the evidence is not so much the similarity in the devices, but rather the unlikeliness of the identical flan defects. I've circled just three of them (there are many more) in the picture below:


The defects are in exactly the same place, and are pretty much the same shape. The statistical probability of a flan partly cracking (on striking) in exactly the same place and shape is zero. So at least one of the above coins is a forgery, but the other is possibly the original from which the forgery was copied.

Regardless of which coin was the original -- or possibly the original was an entirely different authentic coin -- why would the forger bother to etch a graffito into the obverse? That's a lot of individual work on each forgery for little, if any, increase in authenticity.

Or could the graffito have been part of the die or mold from which the forgeries were made? But why would a forger do this, since to do so (1) might identify the original authentic coin from which the forgery was made if it has the graffito, and (2) clearly identifies the copies as forgeries since two different ancient coins pretty much will never have the same graffito, in the same location, on the coins' surfaces.

At least for me, the mystery continues.

 

The graffito isn't exact!!!

 

That is one of the first things I noticed. But the “cracks” on the eBay coin just look like voids of metal why the OP’s coin seems to have actual cracks.

Almost certainly. There is no metal movement around the graffito on the obverse.

Criminals are not smart. It was probably because this coin was the cheapest genuine one available at the time.

 

The position, angles, and sizes of all of the scratches is exactly the same. That sounds exact to me. They look different because there was a design transfer between the OP’s coin and the eBay coin, and the finer details were lost/diminished.

 

That’s what I would do as a seller. Too many crooked buyers who think a refund means keeping the coin. How would the dealer know that the buyer did not make his/her own fakes in order to keep the genuine coin for free?

The end requirement is that the money gets back to the buyer at some point. I side with the seller in that the refund occurs at the safe arrival of the returned coin. Much less risk for both parties that way.

Sorry, but I always assume the worst in people.

 

Yes, it is. Don't forget about the distortion introduced by the different angles of photography.

I think the graffito is on the host coin (the authentic coin) and it has subsequently transferred to the mold and then to each copy, with some differences in depth and quality of the graffito as would be expected from casts.

I doesn't seem smart for the forger to do this, does it? I suspect the answer is that it takes extra work (see the detailed explanation that follows), and apparently they have had success passing forgeries without sweating the details, so why bother?

Using what I know about lost wax casting, which is presumably the method by which these cast forgeries are made, here are the steps:

1. Make a vulcanized rubber mold of the authentic coin. Think of the mold as a "negative" of the coin, including its surface imperfections and characteristics.
2. Split the mold to remove the coin. The mold is split in such a way that it can be "keyed" together, holding the two halves in proper alignment. The mold incorporates a funnel, which is the conduit for the wax in the next step and also provides a "stem" for the molten metal egress.
3. Using a wax injector, fill up the mold.
4. When the wax has hardened, open the mold and remove the wax copy. Note that this copy is a "positive". Repeat steps 3 and 4 until you've made as many copies as desired.
5. Encase the wax in a plaster-like substance called "investment". The stem of wax is left protruding above the surface to provide a hole for receiving the molten metal (this becomes the "sprue). Multiple waxes can be sprued together into a tree, casting many dozens in one go.
6. The investment-encased wax copy is fired in a kiln to melt off all of the wax
7. Molten metal is poured into the investment mold, using centrifugal force or a vacuum to ensure good fill.
8. The entire thing is dunked into water, cooling the metal and breaking apart the investment. The sprue and any seams are removed and the coin cleaned up and artificially aged.

Options for removing graffito:

A. Ideally, the graffito would be removed prior to making the mold, but that would likely damage the original coin.
B. Remove the grafitto on each wax copy, one copy at a time. The wax could be filled in or a small heated tool applied to the scratch to melt the wax in that area. Not difficult to do, but unless done very carefully it will leave an area that looks altered, perhaps raising more of a red flag than would the original graffito... unless an astute collector later spots a coin with identical grafitto and virtually identical flan.
C. Remove the graffito on the cast copy, which incurs the same problems as B.

 

@TIF, you know a little TOO much about forging coins...

 

No, just a little about jewelry-making. Although-- I have made a few vulcanized molds of some ancient coins with the intent of making some pendants. That was a few years ago and I've still not made them because my jeweler friend with the equipment passed away.

 

An update:

I received a refund on this forged coin from the Spanish seller. The seller acknowledged it was a forgery upon further review; he apologized for the sale.

The refund was for $284.84. I originally paid a total of $295 to buy the coin; the coin was €240 plus €9 shipping. (Exchange rate $295.38 USD = €249.00 €1 USD = 0.84 EUR.) I expected to at least have my original shipping refunded and was prepared to eat my return shipping. But I don’t think I got either.

Even with exchange rates fluctuating by 3 cents, I don’t quite understand why I received only $284.84–the equivalent of €231. Is the seller deducting the PayPal fees from the purchase and return?

All totaled, I have spent $310 on this forgery fiasco and got back $284.84, a difference of $25.

The only thing I can see is that the seller is just giving me back the base price of the coin; apparently I eat the shipping both ways on a forged coin.

If I were a seller and accidentally sold a forged coin, I think I would make sure the buyer is not out any money; I certainly wouldn’t expect the buyer to pay shipping both ways on a coin that should have never been sold in the first place.

Part of me wants to ask the seller to at least refund my original shipping. Then part of me says I shouldn’t be petty and just eat the $25 and be happy I got most of my money back. But it’s the principle of the thing.

Am I missing something? I mean, besides an extra $25?