Interesting Lots, New Dealer at the V Mall

Sallent, those are completely different subjects.

The 10 day return policy is against vcoins rules and will probably be amended.

I wouldn't buy from a dealer who doesn't list his name and contact information. But that's his choice, and my choice not to buy from him.

Fake patinas are everywhere. I can look in any dealers auction and find sanded patinas. Learn to spot them and avoid them if you don't like them. Unfortunately it's not always easy to spot from a photo so policing it is almost impossible from vcoins standpoint.

 

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Btw, none of these coins are anywhere near as nice as the photos suggest

The SS- edge from 3-6 corroded and chewed up pretty good, some spots of deposits on both sides.

Macrinus - reverse had a lot of red deposits.

All are probably over cleaned and perhaps polished.

The photos in that sense are deceptive in that they don't truly show what the coins look like in hand. Not sure if that's intentional or the guy can't take a decent photo.

 

If there is a skill that I wish I could improve it would be the ability to look at a photo and tell what my photo of the coin would look like. The ability to read a bad photo and tell whether it was trying to cover up something or just that the photographer had no clue is a skill worth having and a work in progress here.

 

Doug,

I've personally photographed over 500,000 ancient coins and I've probably looked at as many other coins and compared them to photos that others have taken. That's a lot of practice. While you can't tell what a photographers motives are, you can learn to spot a good photo from a deceptive one and you can learn to see what a deceptive photo is hiding.

 

That is my exact point. I am probably at about 10,000 of which some were film and used skills that no longer apply. At this rate I will match your skills in only 200 years.

 

Barry, thank you for your candid comments and great advice. I enjoy reading your posts and the expertise you bring to the Ancients Forum. Best to you, Brian.

 

I think it is fairly common for early Seleukid coins, here is mine, the reverse design goes outside of the border 4 or 5 times

 

Great idea

 

When something seems too good to be true, especially at that price, then it probably is.

 

It would be helpful if you could restrict VCoin searches to exclude some dealers, or only search a defined subset of dealers. There are some I don't want to look at because they're evil, and some I don't bother with because so overpriced. I also have a strong preference for UK sellers, for convenience & avoiding FX costs, followed by EU sellers, to avoid custom duty. You can search one dealer's stock or all dealers' stock, but there doesn't seem to be more customisation available.

 

To be fair, you can have a die match, and the coin still be a fake. That is what die transfers are.

Other than that, these coins are out of my league. They seem too shiny to be ancient, but that is the only gripe I have. I don't know enough about them to have an educated opinion.

 

No kidding. I would love to block the VC "Numiscorner" dealer. Hundreds of listings posted daily and it clogs of listings of other dealers and their new stuff gets lost.

I have to click on dealers I am interested in on the left side to see their new offerings.

Numiscorner is the worst, listing wise. Dunno about service.

 

Sure a die match can be fake. But if you reread all the original arguments the coins were being condemned based on style. Shiny isn't an argument for authenticity. Any coin with some polishing and bad photography can look shiny. These coins are stylistically fine and the deposits, manufacture, edges etc are all perfect.

 

You can eliminate 75% of numiscorners coins by setting your search for coins above $10.

 

So what would it take to remove these kinds of sellers from Vcoins? Would all of us sending emails to Vcoins management help?

 

wow, even as a coin noob I can see that those are high quality fakes. they look extremely suspicious and "off" in every sense. I browse high end coins for hours sometimes just to study them and to learn but these feel so so wrong.

 

This thread has grown long and some of the later commenters may not have read all of the posts, so I will summarize:

The coins shown in the original post, while at first glance seem like "obvious" fakes" (they sure looked that way to me!), have not been demonstrated to be fake. The person commenting in this thread who is in the best position to comment on their authenticity (Barry Murphy) has weighed in and found nothing to indicate fraudulence in the coins. The styles, which seem comical at first, match known authentic styles and dies.

The imaging technique used by the seller is partly to blame for the rush to judgement. Inexperience with the particular coins in question (my inexperience certainly included) also played a role in the pitchfork parade.

 

Very clever! Is that an original TIF phrase?

 

Hopefully lessons have been learned and will be applied in the future.

 

There is one more point that might secure my position in the parade. Barry's opinion on a coin is as valuable to me as anyone's I know with one exception. Mine. I don't care how certain the world is about a coin, I don't want it if I don't want it. Barry has to make a call on coins - thumbs up or thumbs down. It is what he does for a living. I don't. If I were to own one of these coins, I could not sell it to a collector and feel right. I could not put it in my collection and feel right. I know I have fake coins in my collection and wish I knew which ones they are but buying one of these coins with the highest level of certainty about their status.

Today, there are several people here who have expressed an uneasy feeling about the coins. In fifty years will that have changed so selling the coins would be easier or will these be a giant joke like we experienced with the first wave of Black Sea Hoard diobols that were sold by major players in the business and certified by many experts. I don't know but I do know that I don't need the coins.

Style is a matter on coins that means something to some people and nothing to others. A sub-group of coins that look off style like these do to me could mean something interesting. I used to buy Alexandria mint Severan denarii that the sellers thought were questionable because of their style. More recently there has been a wave of off style Pompey denarii that some say are fakes and some say are good. People who certify coins for a living have to have an opinion but I am happy just to say I will buy something else with my limited resources.

Over on Forvm Ancient Coins, Joe posted what I consider to be a classic entitled:
IF YOU DON'T KNOW ENOUGH TO GIVE ADVICE - DON'T

http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0

In it he says it is not necessary for those with no good basis for an opinion to pile on their vote. Many people take offence at that post and say that venue is an unfriendly place filled with snobs. Here on Coin Talk, we tend to act like we are required to make a post saying that we don't know and don't collect but want to offer opinions anyway. Perhaps the best answer lies somewhere in the middle. I do not want anything I have said or 'liked' on this post to be taken to mean I think I know the true answer and Barry is wrong.

If we drown enough old ladies, sooner or later we will find us a witch.
By Unknown - Internet Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46968208