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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 679537, member: 19463&quot;]I was pretty much in agreement with this post until we got to the above but since I&#039;m one of those people on Forvm, I have a few points to make.</p><p><br /></p><p>1. Somewhere someone got the idea that &#039;experts&#039; (real or self proclaimed) should be able to spot a fake from photos posted.&nbsp; It does not work that way.&nbsp; If I had the coin (any coin) in hand, I&#039;d feel 95% certain that I could say it was genuine unless it showed one of a few very specific signs that guaranteed that it was a fake.&nbsp; The best &#039;experts&#039; miss some of them.&nbsp; I&#039;m not the best, I don&#039;t even collect coins of Alexander beyond the half dozen or so I have in my general collection and I don&#039;t own the $300 worth of references needed to even catalog the thing let alone expertise it.</p><p><br /></p><p>2.&nbsp; Dealers and advanced collectors develop and rely on a couple defense mechanisms.&nbsp; One is a three level scale of telling fakes from real coins.&nbsp; They buy coins that are almost certainly genuine; they decline coins that are certainly fake (possibly even telling the seller that the coin is fake) or they avoid without comment coins about which they have a less than warm and fuzzy feeling.&nbsp; Even professional experts like David Sear will occasionally decline opinion on a coin (very rarely) but most just tell the seller that it is not what we are seeking at the moment.&nbsp; The coin that started this question falls into this category.&nbsp; I believe, as I stated high up in the posting,&nbsp; that the coin is an unofficial but ancient copy.&nbsp; My degree of certainty that this is correct is less than would allow me to buy the coin for what it should bring if I wanted such a coin (I don&#039;t) or as a resale item that I could support with my &#039;good&#039; name if I were a dealer (I couldn&#039;t and I&#039;m not).&nbsp; The correct answer for this coin is to send it off to David Sear and pay him about what the coin is worth for an opinion that would still leave some little doubt one way or the other OR to just keep the coin with the footnotes that the coin has unresolved issues when it comes to fitting into the history of coinage.&nbsp; If we knew the history of the coin since it was unearthed (or made) these questions would clear up nicely.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>3.&nbsp; Get over the business about cleaned coins being defective.&nbsp; That is a current opinion suitable for modern coins that simply does not work with ancients.&nbsp; The question is how well or poorly the coin was treated between the time it was rediscovered (a few ancients have been in collections continuously for over 500 years but more are more recently unearthed).&nbsp; If you are willing to accept a coin as uncleaned, chances are very good it was cleaned well or cleaned moderately well a long time ago.&nbsp; Certainly it is appropriate to pay extra for well &#039;conserved&#039; coins than for those that have been butchered but the chance of your ever seeing a decent looking ancient coin that was not at least washed off is very slim.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;4.&nbsp; Being dirty is no sign of being genuine.&nbsp; Some &#039;uncleaned&#039; coin lots have dirt (and some fakes) added.&nbsp;&nbsp; Fake coins are &#039;processed&#039; to make them look more believable.&nbsp; Many so called experts condemn a coin as fake because its surface looks like it was retoned, repatinated, or freshly scratched.&nbsp; There is nothing that will prevent someone from taking a genuine coin, butchering it to bright metal, passing it through the intestines of a goat or baking it in a sulfurous soup just like they would do to a fake.&nbsp; I once knew a dealer that was carrying a $1000 coin of Uranius Antoninus in with his pocket change to make it look more natural.&nbsp; If a&nbsp; gentlemen carries a Roman sestertius in his pocket as a fingerable toy (a &#039;pocket piece&#039;) it can get very slick and unnatural. The same goes for gold pieces removed from Victorian jewelry.&nbsp; How one tells a gold aureus treated in this way from a high quality fake similarly processed is beyond me (so I don&#039;t buy them). </p><p><br /></p><p>Don&#039;t be so hard on the people on Forvm.&nbsp; Some were trying to help and, as you noted, some of us should reread the Forvm instructions where it suggests not offering an opinion if you don&#039;t know anything about the question.&nbsp; </p><p><a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0" rel="nofollow">http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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