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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;ambr0zie, post: 7780893, member: 80952&quot;]Late for the party. </p><p>The top coin immediately raised red flags for me and I wouldn&#039;t have bought it under no circumstances. I am not an expert but it &quot;feels&quot; fake - and a bad one. </p><p>Spotting fakes is still my weak spot as I still have situations where experienced collectors (also on CT) notice a fake straight away but I sometimes don&#039;t.</p><p>I remember there was a topic a few weeks ago about an auction full of fakes. What beats me is that the genuine coins were cheap (Probus, Victorinus) and the fakes they sold were not in perfect &quot;conservation&quot; so I don&#039;t understand WHY. </p><p>Not that I understand or approve the production of truly deceptive expensive fakes.</p><p><br /></p><p>What looks more dangerous for me - &quot;suppliers&quot; such as that website mentioned by [USER=115909]@Gam3rBlake[/USER]. Some of the products there - I can&#039;t call them coins - could have fooled me, seeing them in an auction, among genuine coins. The only flag I see (again, I am no expert) is the perfect centering for all, the soapy aspect and the unnatural wear pattern. But a few of them - I would have been tempted to say &quot;overcleaned and this is why it looks soapy&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>I respect NGC for their experience and I would love, sometime in another life, to have a similar job. But relying on NGC only limits the pleasure of the hobby. When I see a coin, I do a research - what is it (if it&#039;s not fully attributed), what does it represent, how rare is it (how often were other examples sold in the last years), what is the actual conservation, compared to others on the market (some of the grading provided by auction houses are jokes), a correct price and, unfortunately, I compare it with spotted fakes. I say unfortunately because this is the major problem with ancient coins ...</p><p>Does buying a slabbed coin allow the same research? Of course it does, but if somebody limits to slabbed only, I am not sure if it&#039;s the same game.</p><p>I see that you are buying expensive coins, [USER=115909]@Gam3rBlake[/USER] . I fully understand your concern regarding fakes. But as others mentioned, you will have the same safety (at least) when buying from a serious auction house. Those are also checked by experts - and I am tempted to say a person from a big auction house, specialized in ancients, is at least as skilled as a NGC grader. </p><p><br /></p><p>Again, I have nothing against NGC and I am sure somebody working there is indeed a specialist. </p><p>But I know several cases where NGC did a very bad job - coins from my country - modern coins. One was a poor modern fake and I am really not sure if the person grading it had a really bad day. Others - overgraded or undergraded. Of course this is my subjective opinion, but I remember a modern coin that got XF40 grade but it was a low end VF. And a splendid MS that only got a 63 and this was a shame, as the coin was common and 63 means nothing, even if, again, in my subjective opinion, the correct grade was 65 or 66, this would have meant a lot of extra money. This doesn&#039;t delete the other 99,999999% of the well job done, but ...</p><p>Bottom line, in my opinion - buying an ancient slabbed coin only means that a skilled person had a look at that coin and considered it is genuine and gave it a surface grade and a strike grade plus the overall grade - VF, XF...</p><p>Bear in mind that the same thing happens for a serious auction house - they do not provide the strike and surface grades but I don&#039;t think this is so relevant. They also provide a detailed attribution. And they might be more skilled in ancients as it is their main area.</p><p>I have recently bought some (cheap) coins from a smaller auction house and I noticed that their attributions are often wrong. This simply tells me that they do not study the coins carefully ... so&nbsp; I wouldn&#039;t buy I coin I am not at least slightly familiar with.</p><p><br /></p><p>[USER=111387]@Herodotus[/USER] the &quot;dangerous coins&quot; almost made me spill my coffee, I downloaded the pics. Nero and Julia Domna made my day.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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