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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Insider, post: 2503597, member: 24314&quot;]The only thing necessary to authenticate a coin is to know what the genuine specimen should look like.&nbsp; Then, if something looks out of the ordinary, you may not know for sure that it is bad; but you&#039;ll know it is different and be cautious. </p><p><br /></p><p>The surfaces of your two coins LOOK NOTHING like a genuine coin.&nbsp; If you wish to learn authentication you can start by using magnification to look very closely at every &quot;vintage&quot; coin you can.&nbsp; Unfortunately, this is more difficult today than when I started decades ago using a stereo microscope to do this. That&#039;s because many of the state-of-the-art new counterfeits are even passed as genuine by the TPGS until they are detected.&nbsp; Not to worry, I know that at least one TPGS is looking and working on methods way out of the box on things you cannot imagine in order to detect deceptive new fakes in the future.</p><p><br /></p><p>I was in a counterfeit detection class in the 1980&#039;s when our instructor told us that &quot;the days of using a hand lens for authentication are over!&quot;&nbsp; I can tell you that the days of using a microscope for authentication will be over in my lifetime and I probably have less than ten years to go. </p><p><br /></p><p>Oh, that should make a few folks here happy!&nbsp; <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie8" alt=":D" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /><img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie7" alt=":p" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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