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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Rich Beale, post: 2408567, member: 77960&quot;]Thanks to Ancientnut for bringing to my attention lot 50 in our current sale. This has been examined, and withdrawn as a modern fake. Lot 20 on the other hand, which came in for an &#039;interesting&#039; treatment on Odysseus&#039; blog site, in fact does seem to be ancient, albeit an ancient plated counterfeit. Its lot description has therefore been amended to reflect this fact. The odd appearance seems to be a combination of dies not quite in the right style, and heavy wear that has &#039;smudged&#039; the metal.</p><p><br /></p><p>While I certainly agree that educating novice or less well informed collectors about forgeries is highly important, I feel I must point out two things. Firstly, although some coins are very very clearly fake, and deserve to be pointed out for the benefit of the aforementioned, many cannot be identified as such purely on the basis of a photograph - they may need to examined carefully under high powered magnification or physically authenticated by other means. This is why even very experienced numismatists will usually refrain from opining on a coin&#039;s authenticity without having first seen it in hand.</p><p><br /></p><p>Moreover, I cannot really emphasise enough how important it is to notify the dealer/seller/auctioneer of a coin which is known or suspected of being fake so that it can be examined, and if necessary withdrawn. Many auction houses, ours included, handle an enormous volume of coins every month which inevitably means that occasionally a mistake can be made. As has been well pointed many times before by many other people, we are all human - but the difference between a reputable seller and the other kind is what happens when those mistakes are pointed out.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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