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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3665076, member: 19463&quot;]I strongly disagree!&nbsp; Photos are perfectly capable of showing all we need to tell some coins are fake.&nbsp; Some fakes are obvious from the worst cell phone photo taken from too far back and poorly exposed.&nbsp; They can be separated by feel in some cases.&nbsp; What can never be proven by even the best photo is that a coin is genuine.&nbsp; I might go so far as to say that we can never prove a coin is <u>certainly</u> genuine no matter who has seen it, analyzed its metal, sawed it in half or whatever.&nbsp; The <u>opinion</u> of guys like Barry Murphy and David Vagi might be right 99.9% of the time but saying that should be taken as an offence to them because it suggests they make a mistake in every thousand coins they see.&nbsp; Since they see that number in a week (that number is a guess but I stand open for correction) I hate to accuse them of slabbing 365 fakes a year so I&#039;ll guess their rate may be closer to 99.99% or 99.999% <u>in hand</u>.&nbsp; I also suggest that many people can be right up to 99% of the time <u>from photos</u> but that really is not all that great accuracy when you think of how many coin photos some of us see every day.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I hope my personal in-hand error rate is 99.9% which means my 3000+ coin accumulation might only have three fakes I do not know about.&nbsp; I could deal with that.&nbsp; (I wonder which three they are???) I am not claiming that level of expertise so I&#039;ll back off to 99% and feel really bad if I own the 30 fakes that suggests.&nbsp; Of course, I cheat and I recommend each of us cheat by avoiding coins we can not accept fully.&nbsp; In the last year I have walked away from a dozen coins that made me worry.&nbsp; Of them, lets guess six were fake and I was just plain wrong on the others.&nbsp; I apologize to those coins.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>As I have said many times, we can not, must not let the possibility of a 0.1% or even 1% error rate ruin the hobby for us.&nbsp; If we make a $100 error every so often, we might just chalk it up as tuition in the numismatic school of hard knocks.&nbsp; Those who can not deal with this might be better off collecting something else.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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