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 Replies: 11 / Views: 3,090 |
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Valued Member
Germany
194 Posts |
Here's a good one that can still teach all of us a valid lesson: http://www.ebay.com/itm/1801-BOLIVI...roken=cUgayN So the seller knows that the countermark is from Costa Rica, and he realizes that it does only roughly resemble but by no means match the original. But instead of admitting it's a fake and throwing it into the melting pot, he puts it up on ebay, feigning ignorance about countermarks, knowing that he's definitely gonna fool somebody out there. This is the best proof that you can have 11,500+ feedbacks with a straight 100% and still be a shameless crook!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1962 Posts |
Crook is a bit harsh, no? He's giving us decent pictures and admitting that it doesn't match the standard mark - he's literally telling us "you figure it out". He may have the notion that it could be a contemporary counterfeit, or some kind of variant mark that he's not seeing in Krause or major auction archives. If you don't know counterstamps well enough to be perfectly confident classifying something as modern fake (stamp and/or host) vs. contemporary counterfeit vs. genuine, but you know ENOUGH to know that the markets for Latin Amer. counterstamps and/or Costa Rica can be volcanic for interesting material, and that sometimes there ARE weird quirks/varieties to these marks... short of waiting to get it checked by an expert, this is probably the course of action to take - Here it is, it's weird, you figure out what it is.
I would also say that anybody considering a piece like this KNOWS they aren't cheap and require research/experience.
Melting, btw, is just silly - I understand not wanting it to get into the hands of a real schemer, but even if the mark is a modern concoction, it certainly has a cautionary teaching value to it.
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Pillar of the Community
778 Posts |
Truly sad to see so many people taken in!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1962 Posts |
So what exactly do we feel this is? Haven't studied it all that closely yet... but on first glance the mark seems SO wrong that I'm inclined to think it's a contemporary counterfeit rather a modern numismatic fake. If it was a numismatic fake, wouldn't they try harder?
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Valued Member
United Kingdom
152 Posts |
Most collectors want to believe in what they are buying.
To be honest I had a shop for 12 years and 99% of collectors new really nothing about what they where collecting.
You could tell them any old story and they would believe it.
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Valued Member
 Germany
194 Posts |
The seller was able to attribute a countermark that does not read "Costa Rica" to Costa Rica and find it in Krause. He finds out that it would be a four-figure coin, but the counterstamp does not really look like the one in the catalog. As a coin dealer with 11,500+ transactions, what would you think? If you found a "PEASE" dollar, looked into the Red Book and saw that it should actually read "PEACE", would you say "Hey, I don't know anything about dollars, I'll let you be the judge?" No, I guess you'd go to somebody who knows, hoping he tells you it's one of these famous rare and sought-sfter errors. That's why I say the seller knows it's not good and decided to sell it without reserve on ebay. If he had the slightest hope of it being a 1,000-dollars-coin, he would have gone to a LatAm numismatic expert. If "crook" is a bit harsh (after all, this might be the only counterfeit he's ever sold, as far as I know), I would settle for "ethically questionable". The interesting part about this product is that while the stamp is blatantly wrong, the coin even has the little test mark in the legend which is found on most of these coins and very few people know of. |
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Valued Member
Spain
110 Posts |
Thank you for the link and the lesson dosmundos.
Nice fake
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1757 Posts |
Agreed Dos Mundos and Realeswatcher. To me its 50/50 - I know you guys are not into U.S. Colonials but the biggest sale of the year is normally the Americana Sale. If you look one of the great Colonial Collectors and an old past friend & coin dealer who is no longer here Mike Ringo had an interesting run of contemporary counterfeit foreign pieces. This is probably the last of his holdings which took several years to disperse starting in 2008. This was in the recent Americana Sale at Stacks/Bowers (SB) in 2014. SB DID NOTHING wrong with the cataloging - but having collected world contemporaries now for 10 years and having full XRF analysis on all these alloys - about 200 specimens - these INDEED were rare but NO BIG DEAL IMO. My point - not $2,000 EACH - rare - INCREDIBLE! My second point - in this sale Colonial collectors save up there big allowances and normally drop a big portion of that in this sale. This year was pretty lean and crappy in the material. I did warn them - CONTROL YOURSELVES! <VVBG> Who listens? $2,000 for a brass host foreign 18thC CC? My final point - DOS MUNDOS - there is a lot of DUMB MONEY out there EVEN in an advanced field as contemporary counterfeits - and realeswatcher - there is nothing you can do about it !
John Lorenzo
United States
Edited by colonialjohn
03/21/2014 12:45 pm
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1962 Posts |
Regarding the seller being able to attribute it w/o it being marked, he's been listing a decent grouping of Costa Rica over the past month or so - presumably it was already attributed or it wasn't hard to narrow down considering everything else it was with. Aside from that - again, he's telling us outright the mark is not standard and thus iffy, so you figure it out. Yes, he knows it's "not good" - in that it's not standard - he said so! That is enough of a warning to any buyer who may be seriously interested in (i.e., would offer enough money to come close to winning) such a piece to do their own legwork... Let the experts come out of the woodwork to do their picking. I don't think you can compare something like this to a highly standard coinage like a Peace dollar where maybe there's an odd error or anomaly - Central American coinage/revalidated coinage of this period is a tangled web, even without any interference from modern numismatic fakery (which of course DOES interfere). Several common marks from the 1800's (or should I say, mark designs) such as the El Salvador marks have lots of variations. Then, there are contemporary counterfeits of issues such as the Guatemala 1840ish "Type II" mark - I have seen at least a few contemporary counterfeit marks on what appear to be genuine hosts... Occasionally, you will see a specimen where the entire thing (host coin with stamp) purports to be a contemporary counterfeit, rather than modern cast. Also complicating matters is that sometimes marks appear on hosts that weren't previously recorded... The point is that it's perfectly feasible for an average "world coin dealer" - even an experienced one - to only be partially knowledgeable in this arena. So then, as was floated, yes, you could run it by an expert to be absolutely certain. Instead, he is throwing it out there for the people who know enough to figure it out exactly. This isn't a fake Chinese pillar 8R or German thaler... it's a questionable piece from a convoluted area of coinage. In the end, top few bidders WILL know exactly what they are dealing with here. If they don't, and yet bid high enough to win such a piece, the bidder(s) are morons. ------------------------- By the way... dosmundos (or anyone else - Carlos, are you seeing this?) - you've been saying "fake", "not good", IMPRECISE terms like that. I feel imprecision in communication leads to great waste of resources amongst mankind - but that's neither here nor there... So, what do you think this is exactly? The host coin appears genuine, so I'll work under that premise... then, do you think it's a contemporary counterfeit stamp (done 1840s, at the time of the original)... or simply a "later" numismatic forgery stamp? |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
5362 Posts |
My somewhat late take on this coin may be slightly skewed because I know the seller rather well. I regularly purchase counterfeits from him. But he is not an expert on what is and is not a counterfeit and certainly NOT what is modern versus contemporary. He sends pictures and I tell him which are actually fakes. I usually buy all the fakes. That said - I tend to see this a "perfect" ebay auction. First - who on this forum can prove beyond ALL doubt from these pictures that the coin is a "recently made numismatic forgery". I daresay that a Contemporary Circulating Counterfeit is not 100% ruled out. When I reviewed this coin (on my own not as a result of an ebay TPR nor at the seller's request) that was my own conclusion. I could believe it was either because there was not sufficient proof to rule out a period or even early circulating counterfeit. You all know that my opinion is that demonetized Contemporary Counterfeits are legally permissible coins for sale under ANA rules "provided no representation is made that the coin is genuine." This coin was described in such a way that it met the test. I believe there is no violation of ANA rules and ebay effectively uses ANA rules. Now as to the way the sale proceeded. The starting bid was $0.99. Everyone would likely pay that much for an ostensibly silver coin even if recently damaged. Whose fault is it that 46 bids were placed on such an "uncertain coin"? Certainly not the seller. It is the myriad of bidders who failed to perform due diligence. No fraud here. Plenty of very foolish bidders. Remember - ebay is not an auction in the sense of Heritage or Stacks - it is an electronic venue where sellers meet buyers electronically with NO guarantees implied. Fraud is punished by ebay and coins that are reported and found to be illegal or fraudulent beyond doubt are removed. That is as safe as it can be. We have to protect ourselves - NO ONE IS WATCHING OVER OUR SHOULDER TO KEEP US SAFE. We live in a free society we are NOT ENTITLED TO PERFECTION of results especially if we ourselves MESS UP. EVERY BIDDER after the one with 1124 feedbacks needs to get a brain check unless they are Counterfeit Collectors like myself. Most idiots like me would go to about $100 to see for ourselves what it was. |
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Valued Member
Germany
194 Posts |
Okay, to sum up the discussion: The seller knows it's not the real thing (I take this as granted, because he would not offer it on ebay starting at 0.99 if he thought it were good. He would have sent it to one of the big auction houses instead. Probably he had already done so). Yet he cannot sell it as a fake or even possible fake on ebay because he is not allowed to do so under ebay rules. In order to maintain the coin listed, he has to avoid the word "counterfeit". He circumvenes this predicament by describing the issue as a "buyer's call". This is in accordance with ebay policy, and it's also fine with collectors of counterfeits / contemporary counterfeits, who like to buy these items as such. If somebody then wants to shell out 1,500 dollars for this thingy (as they did, looking at the final price), it should be called his or her own fault. Fine, I accept this and concede to the seller that he wanted to give collectors of counterfeits a fair chance to add to their collection. Maybe the winning bidder was indeed an extremely avid collector of counterfeits, who is perfectly happy with his coin and the price he paid for it, and not just a big sucker in for an unpleasant surprise. Who knows? In any case, it brought some nice windfall profits to the seller. This item would never be found in the catalog or the price list of a (reputable) auction house or dealer. Such a transaction is only possible on ebay. Swamperbob, I begin to understand why you say the ebay policies are wrong. If counterfeits (modern or contemporary) were allowed to be sold on ebay, as long as they are correctly described as such, the seller would have had the chance to offer this coin as such. He might not have gotten 1,500 dollars for it, but it is ebay's fault and not his that he cannot use the words he needs to fully and precicely describe the item. My sincere apologies to the seller on ebay for my harsh words - I have obviously misread his motives! |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1962 Posts |
Way too many words and too much concern over a piece that:
A) even if perfectly genuine is very much a specialist-type piece in a popular area of collecting, Costa Rica (with popular defined as "if you want interesting material it's going to be expensive so you had better be knowledgeable").
B) was listed with a clear "you verify" disclaimer in the description. Does it need to more idiot-proof than that?
Undoubtedly, this sold to a Costa Rica-specific collector (the price level was of course going to be way beyond the interest range of any generic contemp. ctfeit collector) who thinks/knows/hopes that the mark here is contemporary and as such would be very collectible within the national coinage. And again, for anybody spending this much on a piece that listed with an asterisk - know what you're doing.
The one concern is that maybe a piece like this goes to someone who will try to pass it to someone else as genuine... However, in that case, same theory applies - specialist piece, know what you're buying. It's not even that hard with piece - as you said to begin with, the mark is blatantly non-standard in appearance - ANYONE seriously in the market for such a piece is going to recognize that, and as such, this specimen is not particularly dangerous.
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Replies: 11 / Views: 3,090 |
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Posted 03/20/2014 7:13 pm
