Market Crash Due to Fakes?

Another thread about the potential investment value of ancient coins got me thinking. Rather than hijack that thread, I thought I'd start a new one.

There are some exceptions, but the general consensus seems to be that ancient coins are not a good investment but a great hobby, and one that you could eventually recoup much, but likely not all, of what you spent on it should you decide to sell some day.

This has always been my assumption, too. Over the past 20 years or so, I've spent thousands of dollars putting together my collection, and I figure that when I retire I should be able to get of lot of that money back by selling it off. I collect mostly mid-grade Imperial bronzes, rarely spending more that $100 on a coin--there have been a few exceptions--with most of my purchases in the $20-50 range.

My concern is fakes. For the most part, they haven't been a major problem for me because of the price range of the coins I collect. But recently we have seem some pretty good fakes of coins that would typically sell for $30-50, including some emperor-on-galley FEL TEMPS that, I think, came from China. (https://www.silverdoctors.com/silve...de-a-chinese-silver-coin-counterfeiting-ring/) This has been discussed before in this forum.

So here's my question: Do you think it is possible for the ancient coin market to get so flooded with high-quality, low-cost fake coins that nobody can feel confident of the legitimacy of any ancient coins and, consequently, everyone just gives up on them and the market crashes, rendering our collections more or less worthless? How vulnerable are we?

 

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We are very, very vulnerable to this sort of thing. I try very hard to educate myself to the legitimacy of my ancient purchases but I am close to just giving up. This very Sunday I am returning to a periodic local show to return two coins I purchased in good faith. One turned out to be an excellent Balkan imitation of a Republic denarius. It was listed and pictured on another site that has pages of known fakes with info on who puts them out. It is a struck, not cast, coin in good silver, with apparent wear on the high points, what looks like a slight gouge on the cheek and darn it looked good. The tip off there might be something wrong was its weight, (when I got home) about a gram light and that sent me off to that forum where I found it, gouge and all. The second was an impossible coin from an obscure Greek city state. Again from appearance it looked good, but again it was the weight. The city state never issued any silver coins at this weight. 9.7 grams. It issued only small fractions of a drachma (tetrobols) and tetradrachmas at the Attic standard. Nothing of any coin anywhere near its actual weight. I guess I need to invest in a small scale to take with me to shows and shops. (any suggestions on one?)

One coin I sent away recently came back as a fake but I purchased that one decades ago and just have to eat the several hundred dollar loss. I don't like to purchase coins from on line sites as I like to have the coin in hand before my purchase and I must wonder if the people I deal with on line are themselves immune from accidentally offering coins that will turn out bad. Most of all I wonder about the coins I send away for certification, if the people there are certain about the coins they certify. In short, though I love the hobby and the history, unless some means can be found that will allow the average collector to determine the authenticity of the ancients he purchases the hobby will become limited to collectors who don't care and sellers who won't care and many of us will go back to collecting beer cans and bottle caps.

 

No, fakes have been around for centuries, and the same sort of market flooding of fake dollar/crown sized world silver coins hasn't destroyed interest and driven away all the collectors so I doubt it will happen with Ancients. Even if the number of fakes out there exploded, every single authentic ancient coin would still exist and still be authentic, collectors would just have to work a bit harder for them.

Thankfully some Greek city states apparently have escaped notice of the forgers and don't have known fakes to worry about so collectors might just adjust and eschew fake-infested Athenian coinage for example in favor of more obscure polities that don't have such issues. You Roman collectors are screwed though.

 

Triton T-2 digital scale
https://www.oldwillknottscales.com/my-weigh-triton-t2-120.html

 

A point of view: there has always been a financial incentive, and there have always been fakes e.g ancient fourre's. There is also finacial incentive for technologies and market services to change rapidly. It takes expertise to differentiate between authentic and real, bad value and good value. This is true not only for coins, but for things like diamonds, and stock investments.

As technology changes there will be both new technology and new services provided by experts. Although they are not all or only relevant to authentication and provenance, services like NCG Ancients authentication, technologies like ACS image search and Ex-Numis for provenance, metal analysis, and many others are changing and evolving at an amazing rate.

As long as collectors value expertise the hobby will remain fun and interesting.

 

Thanks. I just ordered one.

 

Interesting, if alarming thread. I've been paying a lot of attention to ancient coins for only a couple years, so my opinions are unformed and evolving. I did collect world crowns for many years before ancients and I think Plumbata's comments are on target - many fake world crowns, more than there were in the '80s and '90s, but most of them are laughably obvious. The really tricky ones are usually high-end stuff I can't collect anyway.

The thing I've been noticing recently - and this is based on eBay auctions, but also some recent CT posts - are the vast quantities of ancient coin lots coming on the market. These are mostly unidentified, sometimes sold in a heap. My "fake-dar" does not go off when I see these - and I have even bought a couple. Is this an explosion of metal detector sales in the Levant? Balkan smuggling? A random occurrence? This material does not consist of high dollar, often-faked stuff (Tribute pennies, "shekels" etc.). But there is decent material in a lot of them - not just LRB Constantinian Crud. This mass of material could have an depressing impact on prices - even cause a crash? I don't know.

Here's an example of an undescribed lot I recently got - less than $2 a coin. I picked it up for the countermarks (including a Claudius imitative with the DV revaluation - not as nice as the one jamesicus gifted me recently, but somewhat scarce). Lots of Umayyad bronze stuff I've been having a fun, frustrating time trying to figure out, an Islamic-Byzantine imitation, etc.

 

I wonder. There have been counterfeiters since there have been coins, but it seems like we're seeing new economies of scale today -- unprecedented mass-production and mass-distribution capacity, from countries where counterfeiting ancients doesn't even leave you subject to a fine, never mind the traditional death penalty.

Oh, who am I kidding? The solution is obvious. Only buy coins slabbed by a trusted third-party grader.

(ducks and runs)

 

I guess there always have been fakes even in ancient times and in the Renaissance the Paduans, for example. I don't see it really being a show-stopper in terms of the market, though.

 

There have been fakes since the day after coins were invented. The challenge today is the millennials old race between counterfeiters and authenticators is tipping inexorably in the favor of the counterfeiters. This trend is by no means unique to ancient coins. Modern coin collectors have it far worse than we do. Every collecting area of man-made objects is having to deal with this trend.

The reason for it is the technologies that improve the quality of fakes are cheaper, improving faster, and more widely available than the technologies that detect fakes made using those methods. Laser scanning, CAM for die creation, made-to-order metallurgy are cheap and readily available relative to neutron activation.

My feeling is we are a decade or two away from exact 3D replicas of anything man-made. At which point authentication of objects themselves will no longer be feasible. Things like provenance chains and trust networks, which already dominate fields like art, will take precedence. Keep those receipts!

 

When in doubt, always check for precious metal content and then offer to pay for only the weight of the metal. At least then you won't lose. If the coin weighs 10gr and the metal registers as silver then the PM value is about $5. On another thought, I wonder how many forgers used PM's in making their fakes?

 

Even more reason to specialize, and rely on other specialists.

 

I'm not at all worried about fakes destroying the values of our collections. I'm far more concerned about the actions of governments, who seem too willing to side with archaeologists on the issue of cultural patrimony and against collector/dealer interests. As for fakes, my advice:

1. Education: Learn what genuine coins look like by attending coin shows, buying books, and vieiwing websites and auction catalogues of reputable dealers The fakes are more easily spotted by one who knows what genuine coins should look like.

2. Risk Management: Buy ancient coins only from reputable, ancient-coin-specialist dealers who offer lifetime warranties of authenticity. Avoid eBay if you are a beginner.

3. Reality: Despite the above, some fakes may find their way into your collections. If you follow #1 and #2, the number should be few. If you follow #2, return the fake for a full refund.

 

To those of you who read my post at the start of this thread. I went to my local coin show this morning and showed him the info that I had gotten from the website that specializes in reporting on fake coins. He was profusely apologetic and told me that this coin had been given him by another person to sell at his table. He admitted to being somewhat uncertain about some others and asked me to take a closer look at them. One of them was a denarius of one of the Triumvirate members, not bad condition, and only a little over one hundred dollars. Quite a bargain, I told him, as were a number of other coins many of which showed obvious signs of "problems". He took them off his table right then and there. Most of the other ancients were well worn, common types and unlikely to have been phony but I am not sure what the lesson is to be learned from this but that there were problem coins out there is distressing and takes away a good deal of the pleasure collectors ought to have as opposed to angst and doubt.

 

I have a suggestion: Do not buy from someone who claims to know everything; he is a liar. Do not buy from someone that claims to know nothing; he may be telling the truth or may be covering for 'problems'. Either way is not good for you. Buy, whenever possible, from someone who falls in the middle and acts like he is trying to learn. If he is very experienced, he should remember when he made a mistake and is not anxious to repeat the experience. I have a half dozen dealers that I have known for 30+ years. If one of them were to try to cheat me, it would really hurt.

 

Seems to me there is a clash of sorts here? I feel Doug is right - the best safe option is to buy from a guy with a track record of being willing to refund if reasonable doubt emerges. But I am ignorant of the slabbing situation. Do slabbers refund your cost price if their verdict is reasonably challenged?

Rob T

PS I am troubled by even some of the grading I see from "trusted third-party graders"

 

Jeff was being sarcastic, I think.

No. None of the services who slab coins will guarantee authenticity and they hold no liability for what they put into plastic. Responsibility for a fake will still have to be negotiated with the seller. How well this will translate into the market by generally non-ancient dealers and collectors, who knows?

Grades are unimportant to me, and I think for a lot of other collectors as well. For me, as long as I like the coin the grade is irrelevant.

 

Yes - I suspected so, apologies if I seemed to suggest otherwise

Thanks. As I feared

Grading was absolutely vital in postal trading prior to relatively recent technological advances in print costs and then the internet. The standards were rather well understood by all moderately serious collectors. So its odd to see 'professional graders' today who depart from those standards. (Meanwhile the price of common coins has surely more than doubled, to cover the cost of making individual pictures, but such is progress......)

Rob T

 

It is just plain wrong to lump all the coins in slabs in one group. There are TPG's that do a good job and offer an opinion worth paying for. There are coins in slabs which almost seem randomly assigned ID. It is a lot like eBay. There is nothing wrong with buying from a good dealer who happens to use eBay as a platform. eBay does not police sellers. Being in a slab adds no value to a coin. Being in an intact NGC slab with numbers matching the online image might be worth something. I only own one coin in plastic. If National Numismatic Certification can't tell a Constantius from a Constantine I'm not sure I put much faith in their opinion of grade or authenticity and certainly won't pay any extra for their services.