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Message:: [QUOTE="Valentinian, post: 3007894, member: 44316"]A member of the CoinForgeryDiscussionList<a href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CoinForgeryDiscussionList/info?yguid=116957790" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CoinForgeryDiscussionList/info?yguid=116957790" rel="nofollow">https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CoinForgeryDiscussionList/info?yguid=116957790</a> lamented that members of that list condemned fakes but rarely explained how they knew a coin was fake. I took a shot at explaining the sorts of coins that were exposed. I reproduce my comments below and welcome your contributions. You can join that Yahoo group and set it to send you e-mail once a day (or not at all). You would average a few eBay sellers condemned each week. My comments to the list members: There are different degrees of deceptiveness in fakes. This list rarely uncovers the most deceptive. We mostly use two techniques. We recognize poor replicas and we recognize cast clones.  Those who made ancient Roman and Greek coins were amazingly good at what they did and you can, after a few years, recognize the the style which is remarkably consistent for any given issue. There are businesses who make "replicas" for sale in museum shops who don't need to reproduce the old style accurately. Parents buy them for kids at the shops. Criminals buy them and put them on eBay with some con-artist story. That level of fake is most of what we catch and report to CFDL and put on the blacklists.   If you want to be able to recognize that type of fake, study lots of genuine coins of any given type and when you see a replica it stands out as far from the norm.  A second type we can expose on this list is casts. Roman and Greek coins were not cast (with few exceptions). Casts may have perfect style, but casts are usually a bit "soft" like the difference between a new bar of soap and one that has been used. Modern casts can be superb and the best of those we don't catch those by noticing softness. We probably don't expose top-quality casts on this list. Most casts we do catch are pretty bad with "casting bubbles" or other typical signs of casts. They usually have "casting seams" around the edge (or file marks erasing the seams) which is why some sellers show a photograph of the edges of coins.  Another way we catch fakes is my noticing two identical coins. That is, identical except possibly for recently applied surfaces. Ancient coins were struck by hand. No two have exactly the same strike, flan flaws, and centering. If you can find two coins that are identical in enough ways, they are likely both cast fakes, although it is remotely possible one is the genuine "seed" and the other a cast from it. Sometimes you hear the term "clone" in this context. Criminals may tone one brown and coat another with sandy surfaces, so you must look beyond the color to see if they are "identical."  Here is a true anecdote. A man bought a Byzantine copper of a very specific type he collected. He had over 40 examples of one Sear-number type. This example was one of his favorites for being so nice. Then, another six identical examples were discovered. Same flan cracks, etc. Oops!  All fakes! Even experts can be fooled by some fakes.  There are firms that openly make and sell very good replicas that are far more deceptive than museum replicas. But, they usually make only one die of any given type and if you can perfectly match a coin to their replica it is because it is one of their replicas. Many of these are illustrated at ForgeryNetwork<a href="http://forgerynetwork.com/" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://forgerynetwork.com/" rel="nofollow">http://forgerynetwork.com/</a>(Ignore the search boxes for "class" "category" and sub-category" and just search on "Keyword(s)").  Perhaps a collector would like an example of an expensive Greek coin he cannot afford. He can buy a $10 replica to fill the hole in his collection. Or, he can buy a $10 replica and hope to sell it on eBay for a huge profit!  There are professional counterfeiters who worked in the past and whose fakes have been published. Match one exactly and the coin is a fake. We catch some, but not many of those. Many are illustrated at ForgeryNetwork.  There are professional counterfeiters who work in the present and whose fakes pass as genuine. I have heard of people buying excellent coins and reproducing them with 3D printers!  On this list we use photos on eBay to expose coins as fakes and sellers as fakesellers. Photos are not much information. It is not like inspecting a coin in hand. It takes a pretty poor fake for us to catch it. We don't usually explain why we think replicas are fakes because most are so far from normal style that they are "obvious."  We do point out clones and try to note two examples when two coins are identical fakes.   If you want to learn how to spot fakes, go to the coins we identify. Compare the style to the style of genuine coins. Looks for signs of casting--especially "softness" or "casting bubbles" or a "casting seam". Look for "identical" examples at ForgeryNetwork. That's most of what we do to identify fakes.<img src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]

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