How Do I Know It's Fake?

Your question is short on words but huge in concept. It all depends on which coins you are going to collect( You need to be just a dd little more specific). Is your interest eclectic or do you have a specific theme. First off the principle is buy the book before the coin... but as you ask the right book. Krause is sort of helpful but it wont help in finding the fakes. If your looking at British coins.....you will have a huge range of literature in a language close to your own once you step into mainland Europe then each region will require different books. For example:

For German Coins( not Austrian/Holy Roman Empire) http://www.amazon.de/Gro%C3%9Fer-de...f=pd_sim_b_4

All though its in German as a catalogue it is understandable. { Actually for world coins I and a few other rely on http://www.amazon.de/Weltm%C3%BCnzk...ords=muenzen It is heaps more accurate than Krause which too often has significant errors when it comes to world coins}

tell us a bit more about what areas your looking at such as region, theme ( such as Napoleonic), or coin type.

You should be able to use the same principles for fake spotting that you have developed with US coins....you just need to train your eye to European coins

I would disagree that there are "tons of fakes" of 19th century European coins. There are certainly more fakes of Asian and American coins from this same time period.

One thing you do have to watch out for, not so much with 19th century coins but earlier European coins, is fakes coming out of eastern Europe. Prior to the rise of China, eastern Europe was the primary source for fake modern coins and many still come out from there. The primary targets were German and Austrian thalers and multiple-thalers, which tend to be outside of your price-range.

I am certainly no expert but here it goes anyways. With a budget of $50-$200, you can easily buy good variety of European coins form MA shop, Vcoins and certain ebay sellers who has good reputation. MA shops are on the expensive side but the sellers are reputable. Also from the coin shows I have been to you can get decent grade coins for $100 - &200.

To study the types of fakes I think searching this forum is the best way. Also forgery network below has a database of fake coins you can study,
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/default.aspx
Also check out the http://www.alibaba.com/ for obviuos fakes and replicas.

I also collect European silver crowns and with my limited experience I have seen lot of German thalers, Scandinavian riksdalers and Mexican/Latin American colonial coins being faked. However I believe fakes are available where they can even a small profit. I have bought thalers few times from the MA shops and have always being happy although I had to pay about $10 shipping and 4% for using paypal. Some time if you compare coins that sells on ebay and MA shops, there is little difference but the MA shop coins are better grade. There are good amount of German thaler and other European coins between $100-200$. I buy mostly from ebay from selective sellers and also take a chance when buying from unknown for a bargain. Most crowns can be brought under $100 but depends on what grade you are looking to collect. I normally go for VF-XF but never for AU/UNC. Highest I have paid is $150 for a Swiz shooting thaler. I have being lucky to have won two double thalers under $150with one certified.

It's useful to distinguish among contemporaneous fakes and nummismatic fraud. You will find the former mainly among smaller denominations. After all they changed hands more often, making fakes more difficult to trace. So it was easier to spend a fake 10 Kreuzer than it was to spend a fake Thaler. The latter would have been examined more carefully.

Fake small silver coins often are copper dipped in tin. They used to 'look' genuine for a while until the tin wore off.

I've seen contemporaneous counterfeits labelled as such for sale on E-bay. Less reliable sellers may just "forget to mention" that or claim ignorance.

Buying coins on line is, of course, riskier than buying in person from a reputable dealer. As with buying real estate where "location, location, location" is important to many; so, too, with buying coins (and avoiding fakes), where the seller's "reputation, reputation, reputation," is crucial. It takes time, but finding reputable and dependable dealers, whether on line or in person, is well worth the effort.

I have bought and sold quite a few 19th century world coins and at one time was putting together a type set of 19th century copper. My advice...Most $5 to $20 Coins should be safe to buy online as I have not seen any fake in that price range that wasn't blatantly obvious but always compare to catalog photos to be sure. Anything more expensive than that I would buy through a reputable world coin dealer who guarantees his coins.

DVCollector Is right - every coin series is different so to be an expert in a series requires intimate knowledge of what that series looks like in excruciating detail. You need to know every change in the process and all the die varieties. You need to immerse yourself (fanatically) until you know the coin better than your own face.

This is of course impossible for any human being - for one thing our personal interests will not allow such a broad scope of expertise unless you happen to possess a photographic memory.

So how do you do it generally?

I would like to pass on a slightly different approach which I learned back in the 1970s from the dealer who trained me to be an authenticator.

His approach was not to study the individual coins but to study the ways coins were actually made by mints and especially by forgers. Along with this you also study the science behind the methods watching when each method was first used and became common. Once you could tell how a coin was made you could reduce your workload as an authenticator greatly.

This is because most (say 99%) of forgers do not use original mint techniques in their business. If they did we would need different experts for each Country, Denomination and type.

For illustration, say I am presented with a silver florin from Spivadora that was made in 1195-1257 AD. Finding a reference for the coins of Archduke Joses III might simply be impossible. But if the coin you are authenticating has the surface appearance of a casting in nickel and it is edged with a ring die and has split tail reeds. The coin is FAKE. I do not need to know anything else about the coin.

That one fact (split tail reeds) will get you past roughly half of the fakes you will run into at any location on any typical day.

As you learn the various ways of forgery - you should study the ways mints work and their history. Did they use a roller press before or after a screw press? Who first used a closed collar coining chamber and WHEN?

You will notice that at no point am I talking about studying the features of any coin. You do not really need that for coins in your range. With a limit of $200 each and your target being Europe you simply will not run into many of the really well executed counterfeits made in precisely the same way that originals were. Of course if you collect more modern coins struck on a modern three die press it will be tougher.

So my advice is to stick with screw press or earlier manufacturing techniques and to study forgery - simply because very few forgers today use roller presses.

Hope that helps - it is not a lost cause. But I do caution that you will get out of this method exactly what you put into it. Shoddy scholarship (superficial study) coupled with haste will end up in a waste of your time and money.

The most important thing to remember is to have fun while you are doing it and pass on what you learn.