My questionable coin arrived

The coin I mentioned in my first post finally arrived. I feel better about it seeing it in person, however there are still questions on the table. I know the circumstances are sketchy at best, but if the coin checks out, I'm hoping to keep it.

The good: Size and weight appear good. I have not found any matching coins published as fake. The seller had sold similar coins- but ones with enough variation to make me feel that they were not copies. The flan cracks look convincing. The internal metal appears to by crystalized. If it is a fake I feel that it was likely pressed or stuck to get this affect. I am also still able to return it.

The bad: I'm unable to attribute the coin based on photos provided on Wildwinds. Mushy details. Possible air bubbles on reverse?

The ugly: the seller is on the notorious fake seller list along with one of their previous usernames. It shipped from Germany but I believe they are actually based in Bulgaria. They recently removed all of their items for sale and made feedback private. I believe I can still contact them to make a return, however I have not yet tried.

If there is enough evidence to rule this a fake, I would like to take necessary action and report my coin.

Feedback is always
appreciated, thanks!

Maybe unrelated, but what sort of residue is common on ancients? The edges of the incuse square have a dark, grimy build up with a waxy texture. Is this normal?

 

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It will be easier to judge the coin if you post the actual size and weight.

 

Will do as soon as I get home

 

This is a forgery from a group of about 200 that I saw in 2018. Style is wrong, punch is wrong and metal tests on about 30 of them showed silver ranging from about 20% to 80% (they were all over the place). If I recall, there were 8 (I think) obverse dies in the group.

Barry Murphy

 

Here are the dies I recorded, it was actually 7 dies. Adams coin matches the last coin in this group.

 

and the last 2.....

 

I really appreciate the response and the research Barry! I certainly believe you, but I'm curious how we know it is a modern forgery and not an undocumented ancient die. Does it just come down to metal composition? And are these photos published anywhere else?

Where should I go from here? Do I return it to the seller? I suspect they are just going to turn around and sell it to another unknowing person. I also do not want 50 something dollars tied up in a fake coin... Thoughts?

 

Approx. 13mm and 3.14g

 

I'm sorry that this happened to you – crooks on ebay are a problem, and your coin is dangerously deceptive.

If I were you, I'd return the coin and demand a refund. Your fake seller probably has a bag of those sitting in his drawer. Regardless of whether you return yours, he'll pull out the next one soon, post it on ebay, and sell it to an unsuspecting beginner. Whether he gets your coin back or not won't make any difference.

All you can effectively do is to mention the ebay-name of the seller here, so that others reading this thread won't fall victim to him, and leave feedback indicating that your coin was a forgery after you got your refund.

 

. . . and after posting the name here, maybe see if you can get it added to these two lists:
FORVM's NOTORIOUS FAKE SELLERS LIST (NFSL)
eBay fakesellers of ancient coins
Warren Esty, the person who maintains the second list, is a member of this forum.

 

Postings like this scare the daylights out of me. How in heaven's name is the average collector, even savvy collectors and dealers supposed to deal with this sort of thing? When I see adds on coin sales websites where the dealer is offering hundreds of ancients at a time, how can they know for sure what coins and artifacts they are offering are genuine?

 

I agree, it's a shame. At least I don't feel as bad knowing that it was not an obvious fake!

**eBay Seller**
"apollo_archeology"

I believe he is transitioning to a new account currently...
As I mentioned there are no longer any items for sale on his page and all feedback is now private.
Nonetheless BUYERS BEWARE

 

I believe he was nominated for the NFSL. I'm unaware if he was put on or not. I will look into it more.

 

It is scary! And you can't always know. I imagine even experts get tripped up sometimes. It's the dark side of the hobby that we have to deal with and combat - but hopefully not get discouraged by. I think the most important takeaway from this is that we need to be active in building and maintaining our resources. If I had found these coins reported as fakes earlier, it might've saved me some time and hassle. Better late that never though!

 

These have not been published anywhere before. This is a new group that appeared late last year. The groups I saw were bought from a major US dealer at the NY International in January. When they arrived at our office, I new as soon as I opened the box that they were fake, so I showed a few to David Vagi and his initial gut reaction was the same as mine, these weren't even close to being authentic.

What was wrong with them? I've handled maybe 1000 Ephesos drachms and seen photos of 100's more. What first struck me was the color was a bit off. Next the punches looked completely wrong, they were too shallow and lacked any real texture. There were no flow lines along the edges of the incuse. That was my initial gut reaction, and my gut is right 99% of the time. It took about 2 seconds to realize these were forgeries.

After looking at them a bit longer I started to see what was wrong with them from a technical standpoint. These are curved wing bees with tendrils at either side of the bees head, making them fairly early in the Ephesos series circa 5th Century BC. But these aren't like normal curved wing bees, some of these are more like droopy wing bees. The way the wings are attached to the bee's body is incorrect. Some of these look more like the bee is wearing a shawl or something and the wings are draped across the bees wings, not attached to the body at a point. Since these are early curved wing bees, the punches should be fairly deep and much more irregularly textured, yet these were very shallow, more like you find on later straight wing bee drachms of the mid 300's. Here are photos of what these should look like:

Notice how the wings are curved, not droopy. Note how the wings are attached to the bee's body but are clearly separate parts of the bee attached at a point. Finally notice the incuse punches and the texture and depth of the punches.

Looking at the reverses, you have shallow punches that look closer to 4th Century drachms, not 5th Century drachms. But even here the surfaces lack the texture they should have. Here are a few 4th Century drachms for comparison, but notice when you have these more shallow incuses, you have straight wing bees without tendrils....

So with this group you have bees that have the features of 5th century drachm obverses paired with reverses of 4th Century drachms. That's just not possible.

The metal tests we performed were just an afterthought. We were about to ship them out and I decided just to see what they were made of. I tested 3 and they were all over the place in terms of purity. So I tested 30 and the fineness ranged from 20% to 80%. If these were real you wouldn't see that variability. Also, I've tested 5 authentic ones since and these should be 95-99% pure.

Barry Murphy

 

I just did an Ebay search for Ephesus Drachm, closed auctions, and every one of these from Germany being sold by Apollo_archeology is a forgery.

Barry Murphy

 

The ancients forum is really lucky to have someone like Barry Murphy who can provide expert info! very cool!

 

Thank you so much for the explanation. I'm grateful for your expertise and you're doing a great service to the community. Is it possible to publish some of these photos anywhere?

 

Am I reading this correctly that the fakes were made from original modern die engravings rather than poorly transferred copies of genuine original dies just paired inappropriately? My untrained eye does not see any relationship between the fakes and the styles shown in either side of the originals. I also fear that spotting something like this as an anomaly would be more likely with a box of a hundred as opposed to a single specimen which is the way the rest of us see such things.

I, for one, benefit from hearing not only that a coin is a fake but what was done to produce these results. This post was far better than most we see in this regard. To me the first photos of the fakes appeared poorly struck rather than cast or machine pressed. Yes? Is there a rational explanation for the 20% to 80% range? I don't see signs of them being overstruck on random old coins but it would seem that is quite a spread for any on the common sources for suck blanks (melting old European coins for example).

You frighten me most with the 'gut reaction' matter. My, again limited, experience is that I am more likely to talk myself into a fake the longer I think about it and would be better off just walking away when my gut first grumbles. I can walk away and wrong perfectly good coins since I only go public when I am 99% sure of the thing being fake. You and all in the business do not have this luxury. We are, indeed, lucky to have Barry here on CT.

 

Modern dies, not transfer dies and they are struck (or pressed). Honestly the punch side is so wrong seeing one was enough to be certain they were fake.

Barry Murphy