My questionable coin arrived

This was indeed a better-than-average post on a fake ancient, and I found it most informative (thank you, Barry Murphy). Fakes deserve as much attention and care as real coins, if only to be able to cull them from the herd of genuine coins.

The OP is the kind of coin I never bid on, for 2 reasons: small silver Greek coins like this scare me, and have since the Black Sea Hoard came out in the 1980s when I was just starting to collect. World Coin News had several articles on these, and to this day I cannot tell the difference between the real ones and the fakes - Ed Snible studies these, a thread to which is here: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/fake-identification-toolkit.327472/#post-3243646

As for eBay, I avoid Eastern Europe as well - Bulgaria, etc. This might be unfair, but there are a ton of fakes listed by sellers from this area. A lurid green sestertius of Caligula or Titus from Albania is best to avoid, I think.

 

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