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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Roman Collector, post: 3454854, member: 75937&quot;]<a href="http://rg.ancients.info/guide/counterfeits.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://rg.ancients.info/guide/counterfeits.html" rel="nofollow">About CFDL, from Reid Goldsborough</a>: </p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;&quot;CoinForgeryDiscussionList (CFDL) This e-mail discussion group, a Yahoo Group, is the largest online discussion group devoted to solely counterfeit coins, but it&#039;s extremely controversial. Much discussion involves the condemnations of fakes from blatant eBay scammers, a useful service. Sometimes high-end mistakes from large auction houses are outted as well, another useful service, one that the coin establishment doesn&#039;t provide to collectors. Unfortunately, the information published there is frequently unreliable. One expert authenticator who used to participate in the group said the false positive rate is about 50 percent, meaning half of the coins labeled as fake are not. What&#039;s more, the actions of group leaders are frequently irrational. The group is populated to a disproportionate extent by amateur numismatists posing as experts, conspiracy theorists who feel that the coin establishment deliberately cheats collectors, and people with an agenda against other dealers. Criticism of dealers other than the group&#039;s founder is encouraged, but participants who express opinions opposed to the practices of those who run the group or in disagreement with their views are shouted down, censored, or banned from the group, with the most common rationale offered being that they&#039;re criminals employed by forgers. Yet the group&#039;s founder has admitted to salting the ancient coin marketplace with forgeries to &quot;test&quot; other dealers and feels that it&#039;s OK for dealers to sell forgeries as authentic coins if they can&#039;t easily be detected. He has said that the world&#039;s premier numismatic dealer organization, the International Association of Professional Numismatists (IAPN), is controlled by criminals. He set up another forgery discussion group through eBay but contended that eBay began censoring it after criminals lobbied and/or bribed eBay. To try to provide some balance against the irrationality, the hooliganism, and the errors of CFDL, a few seasoned numismatists occasionally participate in the group, but often they&#039;re just shouted down, with most having left. According to one ancient coin dealer active online, CFDL and its reputation are what&#039;s primarily responsible for many ancient coin dealers not participating in online dicussion groups in general. CFDL is an understandable reaction, or overreaction, to attempts by many in the numismatic establishment to damper discussion about the counterfeit issue. There are benefits to following CFDL, but if you do, take what&#039;s there with a large grain of salt. It can be an interesting window into the dark side of numismatics from a number of different angles.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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