With my recent misfortune of fake ancients, I thought I would get some expert advice on a few coin that I want to get certified. Please give me your opinion on authenticity and value of grading. Thank you #1 calabria tarentum 6.5 g 20 mm #2 calabria tarentum 6.4 gr 19-20 mm #3 Maybe to get re-certified by NGC ANACS CHALKIDIAN LEAGUE TETRADRACHM 23 MM 14.2 GRAMS
Not really. With the certification money you could buy yourself a really nice 4rth coin. And those coins have nice provenance. Don't trash that provenance. A lot of people would kill to have provenance going back a few decades.
I see two major reasons to have a coin certified. Does one apply tp you? 1. You do not trust the person you bought the coin from and want to find out if you should have listened to the advice we always give here and only buy from trusted sources. In this case you are also saying you do not trust ANACS to be able to spot fakes. I don't know who works for them or whether I would trust them either so I can't comment there. 2. You are planning to sell the coins soon to someone who knows nothing about such coins and would pay you enough more for the coins with the certification than they would as they now are. I do not claim sufficient expertise to be able to spot all fakes from photographs and tend not to trust anyone who thinks they can. From what I see, I would suspect the coins have a 99% chance of being OK and agree with Sallent on the desirability of spending the money on another coin but if you are bothered by the risk and want to spend the money to put your mind at rest, that is your prerogative. Even the best sellers will make an ocassional mistake and, if you ask enough self styled experts, you will find one that will tell you that the coins are fake. Please understand that taking a poll of online collectors who have between 5 minutes and 70 years experience is not the way to get expert advice. Do you have some evidence that makes you distrust these coins? I will say that they are good enough that you need a better expert than I am to look at the coins actually in hand. Most bad fakes can be spotted easily but the best of them may fool us all. If you pay for another opinion, will you then be comfortable or will you have accomplished nothing?
I have some bad experience in the past. sent in about a dozen coins to NGC and over half were fake. https://www.cointalk.com/posts/3525217/ I believe these are real, but I thought a second or third opinion would be helpful before spending the money.
The market value of 1 and 2 doesn't justify the cost of certification. The olynthos is 99% fake; I let 1% of doubt because I don't have Robinson/Clement so this could be a bad styled rare die. But I wouldn't hold my breath. Hope @Barry Murphy can offer you an opinion
Well, I would say almost all of the ones that NGC determined were fake, were fairly obvious fakes. Had you asked us in this forum before buying, we could have saved you that experience. I know jack squat about Bactrian coins, but could have told you they were fakes despite not knowing anything about those coins. The surfaces were obvious indicatives of being cast coins. I've seen the same surface look on a hundred other casts. I recommend you do the following until you learn more about coins....(1) shop only reliable and trustworthy dealers like coolcoins.com (our own Ken Dorney), Civitas Galleries, Mark Breitsprecher at mrbcoins.com, FORVM shop, or sign up for auctions such as CNG Auctions and Agora Auctions. (2) when shopping anywhere else, get the opinion of a few members here first. Never hurts. (3) Go to coin shows where ancients dealers are present and spend an afternoon holding ancient coins and seeing them under magnification, and asking dealers for tips on how to examine coins for genuineness.
The first Tarentum looks OK in the photo. The second one looks odd but it could be the photo or the way the coin was cleaned, but it has a bit of a cast look. The Chalkidian League tetradrachm is a forgery despite the ANACS certificate. Bowers might have a return privilege if you were the original buyer, or after 24 years they may not. Bowers has also changed hands a few times so any guarantee might have expired with the change of ownership. I don’t know if ANACS has any sort of guarantee. If you bought the coin recently from a reputable source, an NGC opinion would probably help to facilitate your returning the item to the dealer. Barry Murphy
