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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2385434, member: 19463&quot;]&#039;Experts&#039; don&#039;t &#039;expertise&#039; ancient coins based on seeing a photo.&nbsp; Perhaps we amateurs should not either.&nbsp; Sometimes, usually even, we can state with little doubt that a coin is fake but saying a coin is not one of the obvious, low end, tourist fakes or a duplicate of a documented fake it is not even close to saying a coin is genuine.&nbsp; I just returned a fake to a dealer who is both honest and knowledgeable but the thing fooled us both until we found duplicates that brought it into doubt.&nbsp; I had bad feelings about the coin due to it being on the extreme of proper weight but coins of some issues do vary a lot so I was able to talk myself out of bad feelings about the coin.&nbsp; Bad choice.&nbsp; We are at the point in some coins that are so frequently faked because of their high demand that we really are taking a serious chance whenever we buy an example without holding it in hand and applying decades of experience but even then we still are fooled on occasion.&nbsp; Beginners who buy from people who have less than excellent skills or less than perfect ethics are going to get fooled on occasion.&nbsp; The decision we all must make is whether this fact will change the way we approach the hobby or whether the risk is part of our hobby.&nbsp; I see it as a lot like sport parachuting.&nbsp; Packing your own parachute is part of the hobby after you get to a certain point in experience.&nbsp; Before that, you need to trust the person who packed it; after that point, at least you know who to blame.&nbsp; You don&#039;t post a photo online and ask us to sense more than the most obvious problems.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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