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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Tom Maringer, post: 172075, member: 7033&quot;]<b>Cheap ancients.... I wonder why...</b></p><p><br /></p><p>I just posted a variant of this post over in a thread under US COINS about slabs. </p><p><br /></p><p>The gist of the story is that I believe that there are a HUGE number a fake ancients flooding the market. People say that all these new coins are from new finds, because metal detectors have gotten better. OH COME ON! And the collector ethic that says that you&#039;re never supposed to touch a coin is partly to blame. </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;ve been seeing an awful lot of supposed ancient silver coins that are not only fake coins... they&#039;re fake silver. They weigh about half of what the standard weight for the type should be. I have not done a certified metallurgical analysis, but from density and chemical tests I&#039;d say they were a zinc/aluminum alloy, probably made from junk car parts. The color is good and the modeling is decent. If they&#039;re slabbed or held in a flip it&#039;s hard to tell, but if you hold it in your hand it instantly feels light. I think these are probably originating in the Middle East, particularly Jordan. I base this last on the fact that a colleague of mine does archaeological field work in Jordan most summers, and says his that the diggers he hires moonlight as &quot;treasure hunters&quot;. They go out into the desert, and come back in a week with 1000 &quot;Roman&quot; coins... every time! They joke about how they have this great spot (ha ha) where they &quot;find&quot; (ha ha) the same number of coins (ha ha) every time they go out! Starting to sound fishy yet?&nbsp; Making the coins is the easy part they tell him, the key is the aging process. Everybody has their own secret recipe, which usually involves urine, bleach, ashes, and sand, among other things, and some sort of slow cooking over a fire. They take the coins to a buyer in town, who asks them where they got them. &quot;In the desert&quot; they tell him, and he dutifully fills out the certificate of authenticity. Everybody winks and is happy. </p><p><br /></p><p>Anyway... these guys sit around the campfire and have a good laugh about people who buy these things without ever touching them, because that makes the faking job so much easier.</p><p><br /></p><p>And the gullibility of the market is incredible... how is it that these ancient coins have come down in price by nearly an order of magnitude since I began collecting? Is it possible that so many new hoards of authentic coins could be found to depress the price so much, while the collector base has expanded? I think not! Now, more than ever, extreme caution must be exercised.&nbsp; The coins I examined were purchased by a friend of mine as a gift for me from a very large and supposedly reputable dealer on eBay. I would never have even copped to the con if I had left the coins in their stapled mylar holders... but I like to get the feel of coins and knew instantly that they were not silver. It&#039;s possible that the dealer himself did not even know they were fakes... but they were good looking Roman silvers priced at under $20 each... beware![/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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