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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;IdesOfMarch01, post: 1906026, member: 39084&quot;]You raise some valid points.&nbsp; I have to agree that it would be unreasonable to ask a grading service to financially guarantee a coin&#039;s authenticity at a certain level of value (e.g., say $2,000 for a Julius Caesar portrait denarius) mainly due to the cost impact of such guarantees.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, I still wonder what it means for the grading service (or, for that matter, any expert) to declare an ancient coin to be &quot;authentic.&quot;&nbsp; Take, for example, the Ides of March aureus sold a few years ago:&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p><img src="http://www.acsearch.info/images/2/11237.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>My sense is that about 50% of expert dealers believe this coin is genuine, the other 50% believe it&#039;s fake.&nbsp; But that didn&#039;t prevent the coin from selling for over $260,000 in 2008.&nbsp; So if one of the dealers in the former category is willing to authenticate the coin, what does that mean?&nbsp; If 99% of experts consider the coin fake, then of course the value wouldn&#039;t be $260K, but if it&#039;s 50/50, does that mean the 50% who are willing to declare the coin authentic is sufficient to support the auction price?&nbsp; Would it have been higher if 90% of expert dealers consider the coin authentic?</p><p><br /></p><p>To some extent, my point here is that I&#039;m more willing to trust an expert, experienced dealer (or group of dealers) regarding the authenticity of an ancient coin, than I am to trust a coin&#039;s authenticity just because it&#039;s been slabbed by a grading service.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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