How to avoid buying fake ancient coins.

Here is some very good advice that will help you avoid fakes.                revised Jan. 7, 2010

1)  There are many criminal fake sellers who use eBay. The best simple way to avoid fakes is to
never buy from anyone on this list of known eBay fakesellers.

There is a Yahoo e-mail group (the CoinForgeryDiscussionList) that keeps a similar blacklist of fake sellers. If you intend to buy ancient coins you should join it. You can ask about particular items and receive frequent updates about fakes and fake sellers. 
Never buy from dealers on the Yahoo group CoinForgeryDiscussionList blacklist. 
You may have to "join" to see it but you can easily check a box to not to get any commnications if you don't want them.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CoinForgeryDiscussionList/message/25758

2)  If you question a particular coin, look at

http://forgerynetwork.com/

which allows people to post fakes they have spotted. Go there and enter in the identification in the search box, 
or "select" 
coins (wait a second while it finds that category, and then select)
ancient (wait a second while it finds that category, and then)
your search term (say, the name of the emperor) 

Here is more good advice:

    3)  Never bid on "private auctions" (where the names of bidders are private).
    4)  Never bid on auctions where the seller's feedback is private. (What could be the possible excuse for that!)

Particular web sites with more information are discussed below.

By the way, do NOT assume that a large number of good feedbacks means the seller is okay. Many sellers of fakes have 100% feedback because the suckers who bought from them do not know they bought a fake instead of a bargain (and, they did not read this page!)

The advice above is enough to avoid most fakes. Continue if you want more details and web sites.

Criminal techniques:

Most fakes are sold by criminal dealers with one or more of these techniques:
    1)  private auctions  (where the names of bidders are private, so the good guys can't contact the bidders to tell them they are bidding on fakes). Never bid on "private auctions" 
    2)  Never bid on auctions where the seller's feedback is private. (What could be the possible excuse for that!)
    3)  Do not bid on 1-day to 3-day auctions. (Honest dealers want buyers to have more time to find their auctions and always select 5 days or longer.)  Criminals sometimes select short auctions so the good guys don't have time to get eBay to shut them down, although eBay rarely does anyway)
    4)  all feedback (often less than 25 feedbacks) recent and earned on low value items (many times the feedbacks are on items costing only a couple of bucks). Unless you are very knowledgeable about ancient coins, only bid on items where the seller has lots of feedback established over months (not days).
    5)  Do not buy coins from Bulgaria or other eastern European countries. It is illegal for them to sell genuine ancient coins, so they don't. You will almost always be buying a fake. 
    6)  their current coins are much nicer than the coins they earned feedback on
    7)  photos from items in their previous sales are taken down already (so that proof they are selling fakes is no longer obvious).

Do not bid on eBay auctions with any one of these characteristics. Avoid them and you will avoid the majority of fakes.

    There is another new stunt. Somehow eBay allows sellers to switch item categories during an auction. Some bad guys put fakes of valuable ancient coin types in obscure cataegories until the last day when they switch to "ancient coins."  Then, of course, they seem to be going low so people jump in without much time to consider the mistake they are making. Also, the good guys have even less time to get eBay to shut down the auction.

Sites with information and advice

Doug Smith's good advice about fakes.  http://dougsmith.ancients.info/fake.html

Ancient Coins and Modern Fakes:  How To Tell The Difference. An Authentication Primer,  by Dennis J. Kroh
               http://www.mindspring.com/~kroh/Empirecoins/fakes.html

"Brad's Introduction to Ancient Coins" with information about fakes.   http://home.avvanta.com/~brad/coins4a.htm
 

Sites with lots of fakes illustrated

A huge and important page (I hope you have a high-speed connection) with a great number of fakes offered on eBay:
http://www.chijanofuji.com/online_liquidators.html
The site also has notes on the MO, and seller names, of this person, or group of people, who sell fakes on eBay. If you see a nice coin offered in a "private auction", beware! Some of us who can recognize fakes e-mail buyers to warn them not to pay. However, sellers can prevent that by making the auction "private." Not all "private" auctions are of fakes, but it is a major warning sign. Fraud on eBay is primarily (but not exclusively) conducted using "private" auctions.

Some denarius fakes that appeared on eBay in December, 2003:  http://tomross.ancients.info/images/Fake%20Coins/fake_coins.htm

"The Slavey Catalog" by Twelve Caesars, an extensive illustrated list of some of the most common fakes by the famous Bulgarian forger Slavey and his school.
http://www.ancients.info/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=511

Reproductions from the Bulgarian engraver, Slavei Petrov    Greek coins:  http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/gossett/slavei_repros.html

More "Bulgarian School" counterfeits:  http://www.rg.cointalk.org/bulgarian_school/
    a subsite of  http://www.rg.cointalk.org/bogos/

AncientCoinArt's gallery of fakes:  http://www.ancientcoinart.com/fakes_gallery.html

John Jencek's page "Modern Forgeries of Ancient Coins:"  http://66.201.77.219/shopping.asp  

A French site (CGB) with many forgeries illustrated:  http://www.cgb.fr/monnaies/articles/faux/indexgb.html

Fakes of coins of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander (AD 222-235)  http://www.severusalexander.com/fakes.htm   

Ed Snible's site on the infamous "Black Sea Hoard and other Apollonia diobol fakes"   http://www.snible.org/coins/black_sea_hoard.html

Sites with a few particular fakes individually discussed

Calgary Coin Gallery's Pages on Forgeries. Four fakes discussed. http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/fakes/fakes.htm

Counterfeit of a Decadrachm of Syracuse by Kimon, 405 - 380 B.C.     by John R. Gainor
http://www.nunet.ca/cmns/cmns7.htm

Copies of a Sasanian-style coin of the huns: http://www.grifterrec.com/y/gobl_8-9_comp.jpg 

Other

Chris Hopkins' pages on counterfeits of Parthian coins, at Parthia.com
http://parthia.com/parthia_forgery.htm

A pdf file posted by the Celator about Becker the Counterfeiter. http://celator.com/cws/becker.pdf

Some firms make "reproduction" ancient coins. If you buy from them, you know what you are getting. If someone else buys from them and sells to you, you might buy a fake. Here are some sites:

Museum Reproductions, another source for coin reproductions.  http://www.museumreproductions.co.uk/roman.htm

A Czech company that makes copies:  http://www.antiquanova.com/

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