Dear fellow coin collectors,
We need to do more to stop the avalanche of
forgeries. Not only do they constitute a
fraud, but they threaten our hobby (and they mess up my research as well). One thing we can do is to publish known
forgeries, for the benefit of all.
We must also ask the dealers to spend a greater effort in researching the coins they sell.
I will here give a disturbing example of a large number of
forgeries. They were published already in 1989 and 1990 in the Bulletin of
Counterfeits (BOC). Unfortunately, the Bulletin is a collector’s item rather than a widely used reference (a
complete run of the bulletin was sold in 2015 for over $2,000).
You who read this may well be the unlucky owner of one of the
forgeries shown below. They have all been sold to someone. The sellers include a dozen of the major
auction houses as well as respected dealers. They have sold the coins as genuine, unaware that they are
forgeries. Sadly,
had they checked the BOC they would have recognized that their coins were not genuine. But they didn’t.
These
forgeries are so deceiving that it is almost impossible to identify them individually. I have bought two of these to study, and they are near perfect, but not entirely. I will not reveal what details in the coins themselves that show them to be
forgeries because that information would then become available to the next generation of criminals. However, by die matching (see below) I can show that they are
forgeries.
If you own further examples of these
forgeries, or know of any, please let me know.
Lars Ramskold