Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2652358, member: 19463&quot;]I know many of you also participate to some degree over on Forvm.&nbsp; I also know some of you avoid that place for reasons we do not need to discuss here.&nbsp; I try to post to the list that seems most likely to get a useful response or accomplish some good.&nbsp; That said, I believe Joe made a very interesting post on the subject we are discussing here:</p><p><a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0" rel="nofollow">http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.0</a></p><p>It is titled: </p><p><a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.msg126335#msg126335" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=18946.msg126335#msg126335" rel="nofollow">IF YOU DON&#039;T KNOW ENOUGH TO GIVE ADVICE - DON&#039;T</a></p><p><br /></p><p>I might not have said it quite that way but I can&#039;t say I disagree with it either.&nbsp; He goes on to say:&nbsp; <span style="color: #ff0000">We don&#039;t need posts like &quot;Looks fake to me, but I started collecting yesterday.&quot;&nbsp; </span><span style="color: #000000">Somewhere today we have a post showing a video by David Vagi who says that there is no one that is expert in all aspects of ancient coins.&nbsp; That is an understatement and I&#039;ll go a bit farther and say that anyone who disagrees with that statement is most likely a danger to himself and those with whom he deals. </span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">We regularly get posts from people we do not know asking us to expertise coins from grade C photographs.&nbsp; If we don&#039;t give a simple thumbs up or thumbs down, we are accused of withholding expertise (assuming we have any).&nbsp; Often we can state without doubt that a coin is 100% fake.&nbsp; It is much more rare to be able to be that certain from the evidence presented that a coin is good.&nbsp; I have only been playing in this pool for a bit over 50 years.&nbsp; During that time I have not developed great expertise in more than a few areas of the hobby and could be considered as likely to be wrong as right in at least half of the subjects that make up our hobby.&nbsp; If you ask the right question, I am happy to answer but when the question is whether your fuzzy photo of a fuzzy coin is real (whatever that means), I prefer to fall back on Joe&#039;s all caps directive above now repeated below:</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;IF YOU DON&#039;T KNOW ENOUGH TO GIVE ADVICE - DON&#039;T</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000">Most of our opinions here are worth what you paid for them.&nbsp; If that leaves you cold, I suggest that you, like Steve has done, send Mr. Sear or Mr. Vagi your questions with a check.&nbsp; They are paid to agonize over the yes, no and maybe-so coins and at least they get to see the thing.&nbsp; Of course you could take the other path and stop buying coins from sources that you do not know well enough to trust or that do not accept returns if you feel uneasy about the item.&nbsp; Buying, handling, seeing and looking at photos of a few thousand coins will make you ask questions that the rest of us will be happy to see but not necessarily more capable of providing that definitive answer we all would like to see.&nbsp; This is the state of my hobby; yours?</span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"><br /></span></p><p><span style="color: #000000"></span>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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