To fake or not to fake: it's a fake!

Hello everyone! Hope everyone is doing well. I was in doubt whether to share the following story or not. Despite the - in hindsight - reasons for doubting this specific coin, at the time of pruchase and the years after, I did not expect it to be a fake. Yes, this is a little tale about a fake coin, that recently has been unmasked.

It began while adding some latest coin acquistions to the coin-display in my cabinet. I decided to share two of these acquisitions with this board. I did some additional research, going through the regular online sources, when, for some reason, I ended up on a biddingplatform (not ebay) I use frequently to check out the latest auctions. I stumbled upon a coin that is # 1 on my want list. But after looking closer and checking out the seller data, I found something suspicious and ended up browsing through forgery network and FAC's fake seller reports. I was shocked however, to stumble upon, purely by accident, an exact match of a coin I've own for a few years now! The report on FAC was from late 2019, and I realised I most likely have in possession, a fake coin in retrospect. I contacted the sellerplatform via which I won the coin, and found out the seller has been inactive for almost two years. Disappointment. This story is not finished yet, however, and I have wait and see what happens next.

I alleviate my feelings of shame by thinking of the necessary steps taken at the time of purchase. Browsing the obvious fake databases, buying via a platform (not ebay btw) and not private, comparing coins in databases to see if the style is wrong, and so on. Whether this truly is a case of back luck or poor preparations, I don't know. In the last years I raised the bar when it comes to coin purchases. Fakes, like my fake coin of Pompey last year, are ghosts from the past I believed. However, this case got me in doubt. What is the value of a guarantee when the seller is inactive? What is the value of 'authenticity guaranteed' when new fakes, good fakes, appear? Oh well. The financial disadvantage is relative compared to the dent in my faith, trust, and self image as an amateur collector. I keep learning and, c'est la vie, I guess. But the latest coin additions will have to wait for another time.

Thank you for reading. I would like to take the opportunity to thank @Okidoki for the necessary information concerning the fake coin.

Please share a story of which you are not particularly proud of. And be honest, would my coin have fooled you too?

Here are some pictures. Me, when having fun with my display and modest collection of Roman silver (and provincial of Britannicus):


The main character of this story:

 

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I see nothing in the photo that would tip me off but finding an exact match is a problem that far exceeds our hopes.

I have a story told before. Long, long ago in a coin show in Baltimore I was looking through a junk box of a 'big name' seller. When I was handling this As the dealer said, "I'll give it to you for $8 if you can tell me who it is."


I said, "Clodius Albinus", paid my $8 and left with my prize. When I got home and looked more closely, I noticed the bright silver spot on the reverse edge at 10 o'clock and realized the coin was a lead cast painted copper.

When I saw the seller at the next show, I told him of the matter. He replied, "Even so, it was worth what you paid for it." He was right. I saved a lot of money never again buying from him. I did however have one more contact with him. I bought a somewhat beat up but rare coin of Julia Domna from a seller then unknown to me but later discovered to be of questionable integrity and also placed on my list to avoid. Researching the coin I saw what I believed to be a match in a printed auction catalog a few years earlier by the Clodius Albinus seller. At a show, I told him of the match and asked what he saw in the matter. He explained that it was probably the same coin since my coin had all the beauty marks of the one he sold and a few extra and his buyer was "famous for cleaning and ruining coins". I continued to doubt the coin but the death of the seller made returning it impossible even if he would have refunded it.

Later, I discovered that the coin was ex Dattari/Savio (that made me feel better) identifiable from the pencil rubbing in that reference. About that time I considered sending it off to be expertised but decided that spending $50 on a $100 coin was not cost effective and I would never sell the coin anyway. My coin is the bottom one below. The top coin showed up in a CNG sale.


The CNG coin showed the marks shown on the old catalog and in the D/S rubbing but not the extra ones on my coin. I assume that it was the mother from which my coin was cast but I have no idea when or by whom. That, I would really like to know!

Again, I am out the money (this time $100) but have learned about that much from the experience. Tuition is expensive. I am not a fast learner. I have another coin I question to the point I could not sell them to anyone but a dealer who claimed to know more than I do and believed I was wrong doubting them. I am waiting for CNG to publish their mothers so I will, again, be shown to be the fool. That, too, is part of the hobby as I know it. I could send them off to get opinions but I have not. Maybe, someday, I will know but I really doubt it. We tend to hope for the best even when we should know better. It is also wrong to condemn good coins for problems we imagine but that does not mean that we have to buy coins in this class. I pity the guys who make a living expertising coins. They have to deal with making close calls and can't just walk away from them. I am, slowly, getting better. At my current rate, I'll be pretty good when I celebrate my 100th anniversary in the hobby (2060 give or take a few years).

 

Limes, Your coin looks like a quality fake that would have fooled me on 1st glance too . I've bought more fakes than I care to disclose , but that's part of this hobby if you've been in it long enough. Don't get discouraged .

 

I, too, would never have suspected that the OP was a fake.
Scary.

 

..there are some purdy good counterfeiters out there...the only thing that maybe i see is the face seems too big...sometimes it comes down to opinions....

 

If it is any consolation, I would have been fooled by that one as well. It sounds like you are being incredibly hard on yourself for no reason. In a domain like ancient coins, there will always be the possibility of being fooled by a high quality fake, and as you point out, for all the assurances and guarantees, if a seller disappears it does no good at all.

All we can do is do the best that we can.

 

If it is a fake, and it likely is, that was a talented forger, unfortunately.

 

Its kind of an open secret. All of us here probably own fakes. I am not talking about your black cabinet, but coins you think are real but aren't. I am certain of it. If I knew which ones they were I would move them to my black cabinet, but I don't.

Getting mad about it will only ruin your enjoyment of the hobby. Be mature like @dougsmit , chalk it up to tuition, and move on with life. Do not be hard on yourself OP. I bet you even great dealers have bought fakes. They just don't like to talk about it much, since they know such talk could discourage some collectors.

Do I wish they didn't exist, along with tooling and other forms of subterfuge in our hobby? Sure, but that wish will not change anything. Buying from reputable sellers will guarantee about 99% authentic coins most likely. Good enough for my hobby.

 

Here is my fake (learning experience) still do not know what to do with it.
I pulled out of my collection.

The story:
I bought it on another bidding platform and had the security of getting my money back if it was not real. Upon receipt of it I did not look very close but after about a week I looked real close and thought something was wrong with it. I then read up some on different kinds of forgeries and what to look for. I noticed the coin I had purchased had what appeared to be casting pearls. So I contacted the seller and auction platform and was assured I would get a refund after sending it tracked all the way back to Europe. Well turned out it cost more to send it back that way than the coin cost me (about $20). So I still have it.
Here it is, I have circled the casting pearls in red.

 

Why is the Hadrian supposed to be fake.
Looks imho struck and authentic, but surface was harshly cleand with a brush and so you have very fine scratches (I only write if I am 100% sure about something).

 

Thanks everyone for replying. It's troublesome on the one hand to read that this coin could have fooled many. On the other hand it alleviates my troubles a bit.

Thank you for replying @Lolli. I appreciate your opinion. You might have seen the responses below the specific thread at FAC. In particular, the opinion of Joe Sermarini:

"Your coin is very likely fake. First, there is only going to be one genuine coin like this and likely many fakes. Second, the known cast fake does not have the scrapes. It seems unlikely someone would have scraped up a genuine coin after using it to make fakes. More likely the scrapes are an attempt to hide evidence of casting. And, third, I think your coin simply looks cast. I think I see wavy fields, abnormal porosity, and the cracks are likely filed. Also, although genuine coins are sometimes polished to leave darker areas around the type and legend, it is very common "aging" on fake coins. Natural toning is more likely to be lighter in recessed protected areas and darker in the open fields."

What I wonder is, what are the odds that the coin sold by a notorious seller and that appears over more then one year later, is a copy of my would-be-authentic coin which I have had in possession during that period? Would the fake seller have held his coin in his stock during that time? Or do more of these coins exist in private collections, that have not appeared online yet? And would that mean that the original is somewhere out there, perhaps in possession of the person who makes these fakes, and these two coins - albeit different in detail, quality, are copies from that same authentic coin? Too many questions remain. Perhaps sending it to Sear is an option. I will consider it.

 

I have now read forvm and found the casting twin and seeing your pictures of the edge makes me even more believing that your coin is genuine.
The edge of your coin looks normal and the egde cracks not filled and no file marks (if they removed the casting seam and sprue at edge with a file) and no casting seam or sprue visible on the edge. I will add the picture you have added to forum of your edge.

That your coin comes from nfs is a bad sign but needn´t mean that it must be fake, I have bought authentic coins from fakes sellers, too. The nfs possibly bought your coin cheap at local market with other coins and later he sells the authentic ones and then the cast fakes he made with them. And many fake sellers are now mixing fake coins with cheap authentic coins to make the fake coins look more convincing if they come together with authentic ones.

Have you never wondered how and where they get the imprint for casting moulds of authentic coins from?

I found this post too on forum and I agree that the casting twin from fake reports is a really bad cast fake and on bad cast fakes fine details like scratches can not be copied or not completely copied and the picture of the cast fake is so really really bad that I do not understand how Joe can see if there are still scratches on the cast or at least traces of the scratches left on the cast fake from fake reports.
And I agree too that the quality of your coin if it comes to surface and details is on a compeltely different level that of the cast fakes with soapy smooth washed out details and with holes from air bubbles. And if there are only two coins known and yours is from much superior quality you can either assume yours is the authetnic host or that 2 different forgers, one complete beginner forger and one really good and sophisticated forger got their hand on an authetnic coin (mother of whihc we do not know where she is) and each produced one cast fake (more are not available in internet but possibly on local markets.)


"The coin in first picture looks imho most likely authentic but harshly cleaned creating this fine sratches.
I have searched acsearch, coinvac (ebay archive) and google and I was not able to find any further twin or possible host.

Martijn Peeters, does not seem to have any typical casting problems or anything else that would imply it must be fakes except that a cast twin exist, which was most likely made from his coin.

The Bulgarian cast twin is a very very very bad cast fake (like all cast fakes from this fake seller), extremely soapy details, and circular holes from gas bubbles and massive detail loss which explain why the fine scratches from harshly cleaning of the authetnic host were most likely not captured on the cast fake or hardly captured. Very bad cast fakes can not capture very fine details. The picture quality of the picture of Bulgarian cast fake is terrible that it would be imho impossible to tell if some of this these scratches from authetnic host were even copied to the cast fake or not, we would need better pictures of the Bulgarian cast fake to tell for sure.

So we either have the case that two different forgers took imrints of the same mother and both created each 1 cast fake with this mould.
And one of this forgers was a complete amateur if we consider the quality of the Bulgarian cast fake and one forger must have been a professional very experienced forger if we consider the quality of his coin.

The quality differences of details and surface of both Hadrian coins is extreme, that they can be impossible from the same forger or workshop."

Do as you wish but I think that your coin is not precious enough to pay an expensive authentication service. Maybe better pcitures of your coin can help to get a more reliable authentication.