Is This Old Moroccan Coin A Fake?

It appears genuine, though it does seem to have had some severe cleaning with something sharp.

A better description would be

Alawi Sharifs AE 4 Fulus, Sidi Muhammad IV, Fes mint 1288AH

This particular mint and date is very common (£2-£3) but you are right to be aware of fakes as they were faked at the time they were in use (contemporary) likely because, as they are quite crude, it was relatively easy to create fakes.

However in some respects the contemporary fakes are just as interesting if not more so and, for this series, it is not unusual for collectors to actually pay more for a contemporary fake than a real issue.

Wade - I agree also. That FAKES are bad and contemporary circulating forgeries are usually GOOD. (Excluding coins like Susan B Anthony dollars or other presently circulating money.)

Far too many people including ebay see them as one and the same. It is time that Numismatists use their own terms PRECISELY. A Forgery is NOT identical to a Counterfeit in Numismatic terms. A Forgery is a Numismatic fraud and a Counterfeit circulates as money.

I just wish that NO ONE would report properly described Contemporary Counterfeits to ebay. If the description reads properly no one is actually being defrauded - why report it? There seem to be collectors who delight in reporting these items to ebay to childishly go along with ebay's total prohibition of all "copies, replicas and counterfeits".

When this happens I have to vote to remove them. But the process ties up 7 people for each report made. IT WASTES TIME we don't have. Time we should be attacking the FORGERIES that are doing the actual harm.

The problem on ebay is FORGERIES (Modern Numismatic Frauds) not old Counterfeits made to circulate. Forgeries occur at rates of Ten or one hundred to one - higher than Contemporary Counterfeits.

When ever one of these is reported it wastes the time of our whole committee needlessly.

Just in the event no one knows - right now there are exactly 2 managers and 5 specialists at ebay (counting myself) who review Third Party Reports (TPRs) for coin auctions for the English Speaking World.

The managers receive the reports (TPRs) and distribute them to committees by specialty. For coins that is 5 copies to each of the five members. We each read the notice and review the coin - then vote on removal in a letter back to the manager stating our reasons for our decision. The manager tallies the votes and removes or leaves the auction creating a reference for EACH one. Depending on the specialist we each document the coin so we can defend our vote at a later time. The process takes a few minutes each to do right - no matter how obvious the fake is.

What we DO NOT need are reports on Bust Halves that are properly attributed with Davignon reference numbers or Machins Mills coins or Evasion English coppers or Riddell counterfeit 8 Reales being reported.

What we need are hundreds of eyes reporting IMPROPERLY DESCRIBED modern forgeries which are posted as real. That is the fraud. Not much fraud in a properly described auction. (No one gets ripped off because only counterfeit collectors by counterfeits.) I check and self report dozens a day but I can not look at all areas and I hate terminating properly described counterfeits because it is just a waste of my time.

The only people happy are likely the guys that post frauds themselves.