Fake Ancients To Be Recorded Perhaps From Lac

jskirwin;

Thanks so much for your reply! You can see these coins, most of the 73 fake coins they list, are sadly quite good and would be quite a challenge to whoever might be unlucky to purchase them. And also notice not all say "buy it now" many are already sold to hopefully people who will label them correctly and take them out of circulation. I do hope someone gets to record these before the auction house takes the link down. I posted the first of the 72 in the sticky fake thread.

This is a very disturbing trend. Recently Spence lamented the inclusion of a listed fake among the legit coins in the latest auction at VAuctions. I posted a couple of listed fakes from the last Frank Robinson auction. Now these from Deamoneta.

Just a matter of time before some of these end up back on the market, listed as genuine.

Sad. In the old days dealers would relegate these to black cabinets, taking them off the market and, by doing so, protecting collectors. Now they list them for sale, knowing full well that the buyers might well be dirty, intending to resell them as the real McCoy. These dealers are willing to be accomplices in order to make a bit of money.

If they genuinely desired these fakes to be used for study, they would simply submit good quality photographs to fake coins sites, along with detailed descriptions (weight, dimensions, metal, die axis, etc.) so that any interested party could learn from the posts.

Yeah, very disturbing. For what it's worth, Joe, I took some screen shots of the Deamoneta listings.

Thank you for sharing.

It makes no business sense for a dealer to pollute their listings with fake coins. The "profit" on all the fake listings is not worth losing a single customer over. It is short mindedness and evidences a lack of basic commercial acumen.

What happened to conspicuously stamping "COPY" in the field somewhere? It's law in the US, and I thought the EU was following suit. Some of these are very good fakes that I wouldn't hesitate to buy from a trusted seller.

And asking anything over melt for a fake is just plain unethical.

Perhaps not illegal, but it can be unethical - if the fakes are "dangerous."




I personally don't consider the selling of most museum replicas, 19th century electrotypes, documented Slavey's, or, especially, Paduans - all of which are quite collectable - on the same level as the selling of the type of dangerous fakes that louisvillekyshop linked us too.

Here are examples of replicas from Forum - electrotypes and Paduans and such:


Now some examples of dangerous coins from Deamoneta, with their faux blemishes, convincingly irregular flans, off-center strikes, etc.:


I do think there is a visual, qualitative difference here. But, yes, even a museum replica can fool the "uninitiated" - and so, in a way, all replicas are potentially dangerous.

Basically the same response that I got from John C. Lavender at Triskeles Auctions (Moneta Numismatic Services, Inc.) regarding the modern forgery that they were selling recently.

This is a thornier problem than it at first sounds, bad as that is.












Bob put his finger on it when he described this openness to selling fakes as a "trend." You are not bucking an under the table effort by an isolated dealer. You are bucking a change in attitude that is growing within the hobby.

Dare I point out that at least in terms of timing this "trend" seems to be going and growing hand-in-hand with another trend - slabbing.


An entire generation of collector is on the horizon in which few will purchase coins that are not in slabs, because the slabs guarantee grade AND authenticity. (They don't do that now, but they will when the demand is there.)


It is decidedly to the financial advantage of today's dealers to promote and take advantage of the sale of replicas/fakes. Hobby protection is for those who can afford it, right? But where there's money to be made. . . . . - .


In the US this will need to be accompanied by a relaxing of diligence in the hobby protection act. Talk to Wayne Sayles about the importance of that (and let us not forget our gratitude to Peter Tompa).

Meanwhile it is to the advantage of the U.S. State Department to promote the collecting of coin replicas over authentic coins, since this will ease the kind of demand about which the archaeologists have been up in arms. For the latter, anything which will destabilize the US market in antiquities (including coins) is a positive step.

Trends.

Good luck trying to beat City Hall.

I don't want to hijack this thread, but I wonder whether the mods (Ron others?) would be open to having a sticky thread where we describe specific vendors on vcoins that we cannot recommend. Not a blackball list or call for boycott, but rather a rational argument for thinking twice about purchasing from them. I gotta imagine that someone over at vcoins occasionally lurks here at CCF. Perhaps this could spur some action, because so far I'm not seeing much of a response to what I feel are pretty reasonable requests.