An auction that I had been following out of curiosity just ended on Ebay. It was a colosseum sestertius and the priced it fetched amazed me. Here is the coin and link. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Titus-AD-7...vip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m43663.l10137 If I'm not mistaken, this is a cast coin (sand cast?). What's going on?
You didn't miss anything, but apparently those bidding on it did! Indeed a modern forgery. Take a look at the seller's other listings. Shameful.
Sadly... Why someone would give 2 grand to a seller with less then 100 pieces of feedback (6of which stating the coins were fakes) is beyond me. Smh
This seller is pulling in about $3,000 a month in fakes over the last 3 months and this month is off to a flying start. For those who think that it isn't worth the fakers producing these then think again.
Probably many of the bids were from fake accounts to drive up the price and instill confidence. If one of those fake accounts win no money changes hands and the fake coin is relisted.
I've often wondered if it isn't something more nefarious. With enough fake coins and ebay accounts I could launder a lot of money via selling those coins on the website. All I would need to do was make sure one of my fake buyer accounts won and money would never have to change hands. The ebay fee would be a small piece to pay to clean my money. I would no longer be a person with an income stream I couldn't provide a source for, I would be a numismatist with a long list coin sales. This is probably all very unlikely, but it's often crossed my mind when horrible fakes sell for high prices.
Marty on the Netflix show Ozark should be buying his own fake coins on eBay rather than getting into all the trouble he is on that show... problem solved! Ha...
i saw it a few days ago..when i see a fantastic(& questionable) coin like that, i go straight to the sellers history of names, dates and previous sales and feed back...red flags abound....
