Byzantine fakes

Some time ago, when the interest on byzantines started sprouting, one of the few dealers I patronize on ebay listed a follis of Justinian I, mintmark NIK, officina A, year XII. It seemed a strange listing, considering the other coins in the batch, so I searched it, found out is a fake and wrote to the guy. He promptly cancelled the listing, checked, and relisted it as a "museum quality reproduction etc etc".

Several months later, last week, I have seen this coin four times. Twice at the Numismata Frankfurt. Once with each of these two known dealers below. If you hurry up, you can still buy one (ebay item no. 303364309528). I wrote to Savoca after the auction and they answered that will pass the message to their descriptor. Saw here on the forum that this is their standard answer. The coin sold for 32 EUR. Maybe will not be delivered. Lanz did not bother to answer, and I expect that their experts will ignore the opinion of a bottom feeder novice and will finalize the transaction for this great piece of modern history.

Please share your experience with byzantine fakes, preferably with photos, so that the beginners like me can learn.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Lanz does not reply as a rule, but if you show proof of a coin being forgery they will consider withdrawing it. In 2013 I wrote to them about a cast siliqua of Valens of a rather rare type with exact matches in known fakes lists and they cancelled that auction.

 

Very disturbing. Not just counterfeit - but counterfeit bronze! It looks good, too - the fake-patination guy does good work, alas.

 

This is not the first time I have heard of Savoca being connected with fakes. Makes me a bit leery of bidding with them anymore. I wonder if biddr ever takes action if there are auction houses with consistent issues with authenticity the way VCoins used to.

Lanz just seems to have a generally bad reputation from what I have seen on here.

 

That pontica diobol i won not long ago that turned out to be fake was from Savoca, they still havent emailed me back about it.

 

No answer this time. And whoever missed the 73 EUR previous fake has a second chance now. I believe i will simply stop buying from them.
Sometimes i wish to have an effective way to draw buyers' attention, although some deserve to pay for their ignorance.

 

I am not a big fan of Lanz, but occasionally they have some very nice coins that you normally don't find. The big problem with them is when you do win their auction, there is a possibility you won't get your coin! Lost several coins from them and had to go through Ebay/Paypal to reclaim the funds.

Its like anything else, know what you buy! The same goes for Savoca. Both of them have pedaled fakes in the past and present, knowingly or unknowingly...

 

If you or others are aware of more byzantine fakes from Savoca I would be glad if you could list them here since I want to study the images.

 

You can find photos of byzantine fakes on forumancientcoin.com , fake ancient coin report section. You will need a Forum account for accessing the info (free).

 

I know - And I have already downloading them all to study them. I was just wondering wheter Savoca sold fakes byzantines besides those mentioned ones.

 

Jeez, it's tough enough detecting counterfeits among modern coins where you have formal minting procedures and standards and the coins should look "pretty good" overall (EF or better)....how the hell can you detect fakes with coins which have taken a beating over the centuries (millenia! ) and are very worn ?

Do they carbon-date these things ? As a type collector, I might pick up 1 or 2, and I doubt I will spend years getting up to speed on being able to detect basic fakes in this area, given my slow learning curve with American moderns.

 

I do believe they were unintentionally selling that one and they are fine. Fakes will always find their way through. There is just not enough margin to spend hours per coin for analysis with low budget coins.
GoldFinger - read this. There are some links inside a well. Your answer is probably "style, fabric and experience". A few fakes on the way are very probable. If you have doubts, research, do not buy and/or ask. Be sure that there are either inexpensive (cost of the learning curve) or you can return to seller.
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Ancient Coin Collecting 101

 

I agree completely. We do the best we can. We buy from dealers we trust and in whose expertise we are relatively confident. We understand that things that appear to be too good to be true often are not and greed on our part rarely pays off. We learn from mistakes and try to make different mistakes next time. I am relatively confident that I have a few undiscovered fakes lurking in my 3000 coins and probably could select about 30 coins that I mistrust enough that I could not sell them to anyone. If the 30 contained 3 actual fakes, I could live with that writing them off to educational experience. Collecting ancient coins is a journey more than a goal.

 

So, you bought coins that you mistrusted and added it to your collection?

Or did the mistrust appear AFTER purchasing?

 

I vaguely remember someone saying these French guys do not sell fakes.
https://www.biddr.com/auctions/cgb/browse?a=1044&l=1107252

 

They do it so easily and repeatedly at some reputable auction houses, as if forgery is some sort of pride. SHAME indeed.

 

I emailed them yesterday and this morning the lot was withdrawned...

 

Here's my example of the phony Justinian follis. What's interesting, and something I never noticed before, is that both the planchet shape and the position of the design of both the obverse and reverse on all examples are exactly the same. Only the applied patinas are different.

 

For comparison here's a real one from Nicomedia .

 

True enough, but I have recently seen several well known dealers, with good reputations, who acquire hundreds of new coins at a time and throw maybe thirty or forty a day up on online sites. Many seem right out of the ground. With volume like this how can they verify each one?