Spotting Fakes

It really takes time to spot some of the best fakes. I would suggest looking at and evaluating lots of coin. If you can't do this in person at a coin show, coin shop, or other, try visiting online auctions sites and view coins there. You will get used to some of the characteristics of authentic coins and if you get enough experience you will be able to notice some of the best fakes, coin cleaning and post mint alterations. You will also gain a ton of information on this site as to identifying fakes as well.

Luster, weight and die markers are a few things I've seen mentioned here. Some of the experts on CCF just know by looking, but I can't do that.

Although sometimes you just know. Like my 2 headed '74 Cent. I'd bet it's fake.

OK but I'm still having problems identifying fakes. My fellow collector just brought these coins over to identify (he is very new at this). The second is an obvious Julius Caesar; however it seems too well preserved. I cannot find one on the Fakes pages that matches this coin. The First coin, I have no idea, but it too seems to good to be true (whatever it is). BTW, if you can ID the coin, my friend will greatly appreciate the help.

With ancients the best way to learn is to study genuine examples of the types that you are buying. Learn what the correct style looks like. Look through fakes databases for the types too to see if you can learn what the fakes of the type look like. You will learn what the warning factors are. Too nice to be real isn't really true as many ancients are available in superb state. Factors such as flan shape, wrong surfaces etc. can be warning factors from images. Some coins are cast from real coin then the style will be correct. You then need to learn the factors that make up a cast. Sometimes this cannot be easily identified from a photo unless you find an EXACT match. This takes practice.
No two ancient coins are truly identical since two coins struck from the same die pair have the same strike, flan and wear pattern. If you find two coins that match to these factors then those are warning bells. Fakers do take casts though and file areas of the edges to change the flan shape, tumble the coin to change the wear pattern etc. just to try and mask these things.

With regards to the two coins above. They are both modern fakes.

The Miletos Tetradrachm is from the same dies as this following example, which is a modern fake created from modern dies. Here stamped with the word "COPY".



These are then taken and aged etc. to try and make them look older.




The Julius Caesar is a modern Bulgarian fake. This has been published in 2005 by Dr. Ilya Prokopov.



Regards,
Martin

Just an update to all those involved in this thread. A full refund was issued by ebay for the two coins pictured above. NO questions asked. How about that. I am surprised there was no fight for the refund.