Featured How to Detect Forgeries

There's been a lot of discussion recently on this forum about forgeries so I wanted to bring to your attention a series of great articles on on how to detect counterfeits at CoinsWeekly by Ursula Kampmann courtesy of International Bureau for the Suppression of Counterfeit Coins (IBSCC). These 4 short articles provide a great education on the basic types of ancient coin forgeries.

I. Forgeries from newly cut dies:

http://www.coinsweekly.com/en/How-to-detect-forgeries/8?&id=11&type=a

II. Casts:

http://www.coinsweekly.com/en/How-to-detect-forgeries/8?&id=13&type=a

III. Electrotypes:

http://www.coinsweekly.com/en/How-to-detect-forgeries/8?&id=14&type=a

IV: Transfer Dies:

http://www.coinsweekly.com/en/How-to-detect-forgeries/8?&id=16&type=a

 

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Someone should pin this thread to the forum, so that newbies browing this forum in the future always have a reference point to get them started in the detection of genuine from forgery.

 

Everyone should pay particular attention to item IV, Transfer Dies. That's the wave of the counterfeiting future; when skillfully done, very very difficult for even the most savvy and experienced dealers and collectors to detect.

 

I've copied all four parts and saved for future use. Thanks so much for posting these @Carthago

 

Wow

 

Nice links, great for the collectors to have them as references. I only know a little bit about the dies. Looks like a lot of work to verify the coins authenticity.

 

Thanks Carthago!

 

Thank you very much Carthago!

 

Thanks. I subscribed.

 

Yeah, last week´s editorial was about that. They asked people to recommend but also to subscribe, since that´s the way they get funded (by number of subscriptions). Glad you did.

Thanks Carthago! This is usefull for many!

 

Scribd

 

whoww some are quite difficult to see...what a hobby we have.

 

Yes, they can be!

As Volodya aptly pointed out, IV. Transfer Dies is the biggest threat. They employ the correct style of authentic specimens with the physical manufacture of striking or pressing, usually on an ancient flan so the metal is also ancient. The key to transfer dies, aside from being able to recognize overstriking or signs of pressing, is that there will usually be variations in the authentic style due to the forger having to touch up the final dies for areas that didn't transfer well or weren't on the host coin used for the forgery. To recognize this, you must become intimately familiar with the most minute details when comparing a potentially fake coin to a known authentic piece from say, the British Museum or other authoritative source. It is true detective work.

For those who are interested in an in-depth education on the process of determining transfer fakes, please read this paper about how a forgery of an unbelievably valuable Athenian Dekadrachm was proven false. This just happened a few years ago, as this coin was offered as an auction headliner at NYINC a few years ago and had passed through some very, very experienced dealers' hands on the way to the auction block, only to be pulled at the last minute. I learned a lot by reading this paper and employing it's methods, where I have identified transfer fakes of rather large significance, having more than one pulled from auctions because of it.

http://stannard.info/stannard_fischer_bossert_dies_hubs_forgeries_and_the_athenian_decadrachm.pdf

 

This prompted me to produce my own book on contemporary counterfeits. My book will deal with fakes from 1500-present and uses Material Analysis (i.e., XRF and SEM/EDS specifically) heavily to confirm these fakes or collectible contemporary counterfeits. As withe the Gurney book on Counterfeit 8 Reales (Amazon Books) period fakes or contemporary counterfeits carry a premium but modern forgeries mostly transfer dies such as from China certainly do not. Casts normally do not but some electrotypes are collectible like with New Jersey coppers from Dr. Maris NJ book. Its true transfer dies are tough to decipher but after a few pieces one has an eye to detect these - hopefully my book can aid the collector. Its being titled after Bill Anton's Forgotten Coins book (Krause Publications - 1992) but I add in Foreign coins and Chinese fakes in the mix. Around December 2016 - possibly earlier for this 25th Anniversary release.

John Lorenzo
Numismatist
United States

 

Can materials analysis help spot forgeries if an ancient coin is used to strike the fake?

The most worrisome case is when the forger buys an F grade version of a coin and resstrikes it as an EF using a transfer die made from an EF version of the same issue.

Would the metallurgy be the same making the forgery hard to detect?

 

Let me know when the pre-order is available! Some of my own research is on hold until I can see your findings.

 

PLEASE LET US KNOW WHEN IT IS READY (I want two copies)

 

I want to thank the contributors to this thread. As a neophyte I find the links to the readings particularly helpful. I do not collect Ancients. However, I have a variety of medieval Irish and Portuguese coins that one needs to pay attention to.

Thank you again.

 

I am a bit confused. Perhaps my poor English caused it, but how exactly are the transfer dies made? The author did not explain it as she only described how to detect them.

How can you put the obverse side of a coin and combine it with another reverse side of another coin? How can you press two genuine coins together?

 

This can be a hard concept. I don't chose give you a complete answer as I don't have the time. I'm sure if you do an Internet search you'll find a much better answer than anything I can write here. That said:

1. The "tools" (dies & hubs) that make coins can have their design raised or sunken.
2. Transfer dies can be made by several different methods.
3. In the article, if I make a mold impression from a coin w/a raised design, the "transferred" design will be sunken into the mold. An engraver can make changes to this. When the forger makes a "transfer copy" of this mold. The new piece will have its design raised. The engraver can also make changes to this.

If you wish to see the transfer process "worked out," take a 1943 steel cent, place it on a hot Lincoln cent planchet and hit the sandwich with a sledge hammer. You have just made a crude "transfer die." I will not go any further as we don't want to tell everyone how to make counterfeit mint errors!