Alexanders too risky?

[Reid Goldsborough]

Someone questioned an Alexander tetradrachm in CFDL. In response, Alan Van Arsdale suggested they were too risky to collect. Anyone else think they're too risky to collect? I tried responding to his statement. He doesn't sell these coins, focusing instead primarily on lower-end coins, and I *asked* if he said this because he doesn't sell them, suggesting a brief response. But my question to Alan was censored by Cliff Laubstein, who told me I was disparaging and rude to Alan.

The main issue is, Are Alexanders too risky to collect? I've never read or heard this. On its face, I find this preposterous. But perhaps I'm missing something. I've studied Alexanders and forgeries of them, one of my main areas. I've seen many of each, in hand and on screen. As a result of this, and as a result of reading widely and talking to many, I believe there are orders of magnitude more authentic Alexanders on the market at any given time than forgeries being sold as authentic. Maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe as Van Arsdale has suggested over and over, significant quantities of forgeries of these and other coins do make it past other dealers, with the clear implication being all other dealers except him. That would be a good reason to buy only from him. Except he doesn't sell Alexanders, not that I've seen. Maybe then I should stop buying them and focus on safer coins? The more serious question remains: How risky are Alexanders? Riskier than other coins that are valued by the marketplace about the same? Riskier than less common, higher priced coins? Riskier than common, low-cost Roman silver and bronze?

[slokind]

I wrote one of my long notes on this, but got my comeuppance when I accidentally closed Forvm and lost it.  It comes to this:
*You should cultivate your own judgment; if you're going to collect, don't collect like a proverbial movie star.
*Even if you have an eye for style, you need to train it very critically--and not just by learning rules of thumb.
*In the meantime, be very careful whom you deal with, and don't look for bargains (or let anyone massage your vanity or craving for getting in touch with Alexander, so charge you too much).
*So, note well, the 'lifetime' Amphipolis manner is superficially rather imitable.  I played safe and saved money by getting a pretty one issued by Philip Arrhidaeus and minted at Arados.  What's in a name?  The coin is great and just about as early (a friend helped me with the mint).
*Lysimachus is risky, too, and Philetairos, and Ptolemy I, and Antiochus IV--actually all tets; it's just that every new celebrity and every new coin lover just awakened from, say, software-writing, does know who Alexander was and what he stood for (or thinks so).
*How awful just to buy what an adviser tells you to buy; it's like having a stereotype of a Spanish Jesuit for your confessor!
Pat L.
P.S. Just to play fair: feel free to judge it.  Purchased in August 2000 off eBay when I had fewer than 100 coins, I have no idea from whom.  P.L.

[ecoli]

I think the post will be better served without the mention of the name of a certain list.

My general feeling is that this is not the series for non specialists like myself to go bargain shopping on Ebay like people do with LRBs, Severan silvers, Roman provincials, etc.  I do not worry when dealing with established dealers.

Pat, leave the engineers alone


Oh, and feel free to judge mine.

[Robert_Brenchley]

I certainly wouldn't recommend anyone to buy these on eBay. But if you buy from well-established dealers, and know your stuff, why not? It's not a series anyone's going to collect if they don't study because the variations are too subtle, and need some expertise.

[slokind]

Here's the Athens Num Mus Amphipolis lifetime one for ecoli, who will like it.  And a guardian lion from an Attic monument.
And here is a Leontinoi snarling lion head of c 430.  Now imagine it dead, stretched over a hero's head as a helmet.  So, to assess the understanding of a die engraver making these Herakles heads for Alex and Ph Arrhid and on down the line, you see how much he understood of what he was engraving.  This isn't for proving authenticity.  It is evidence of how many engravers there were, including many who were clueless about lions or about the tradition of making art-lions; for Alexander and his diadochous and epigonous kingdoms they were minting, to pay for very expensive campaigns and building, an unprecedented number of tetradrachms.  I happen to like the Herakles heads where I can see that, difficult as the task was, the engraver realized that he was stretching the open mouth, showing the upper jaw with the upper canine tooth, the ruffly soft flesh at the side of the opened jaw, and the lower jaw with the lower canine tooth.  Add to that the ruff and the ear and the brow and even the closed eyes.  Very, very few pull it all off.  I chose my Ph Arrhid tet because the engraver got part of it: he knew the teeth weren't tufts of hair, for example.  By the time you get to Odessos ones, they might as well be Gaulish (and actually aren't altogether unrelated).  I find it delightful to analyse all the Herakles heads in this way.  The relaxed torso of Zeus is tons of fun, too.  Every single tet is different!
And I'm only considering the genuine ones.  The types are so demanding of the engraver that fakers are advised to take high-tech casting by choice.  Copying by rote is like a Beethoven sonata or a Debussy Prelude on a mechanical, player piano.  And this connoisseurship also keeps you out of neurotic scandalmongering.
Pat L.

[Ibex-coins]

First let me say, my appologizes to anyone who takes offense with what follows, there is no intent to insult.  I find it difficult to believe that anyone would consider not collecting a series of coins just because Van Arsdale said they were to risky to collect.  I find CDFL to be too full of conspiracy theorist and I find Van Arsdale to be a little bit too paranoid to be of any real help.

Reid I would think that anyone half as experienced as you, could with a little discretion, and careful browsing develop a rather outstanding collection of Alexander Tets.  Of course anyone can be fooled by an occasional fake, but I would wager that you could develop quite a nice collection of a series that is a pleasure to view and own.

Are there a alot of fakes of Alexander Tets, probably.  But I believe that an educated collector would rarely come across a fake that would slip into there collection (by educated it implies, developing a good library, not chasing ebay bargains, dealing with known and respected dealers, etc...)

I honestly don't know why people still responds to Van Arsdale. 
Ronn 

[ecoli]

Thank you Pat.  Your explenations are always top notch.  I wonder if you ever thought of putting such insights of specific coins to paper? 

[Joe Sermarini]

I think collecting Alexander tets is a fairly safe specialty, assuming the collector has the ability to discern a cast. 

If the collector is not fooled by casts of genuine coins, then the problem is struck coins made with false dies.  If you are a specialist and very familiar with the series, the fakes struck with modern dies usually stick out as fake at a glance.  For the more dangerous forgeries, Alexander specialists have the advantage of excellent references.  It is probably possible to find at least one and maybe several plates of the same type for comparison.  The design of the type is fairly complex and the many variations provide more opportunity for a specialist to outsmart a forger, who is probably not an expert. 

If you are a collector and you have any doubt about any coin the answer is easy, just say no.  You may not be able to buy your Alexander tets on eBay for $150 each if you follow this advice.   You probably will find that you have to say no too many of the bargains you see.  Perhaps there is a reason they are so cheap?

Alexander tets too risky?  I don't thinks so. 

[coinagora]

I agree with Ibex-Coins that the CDFL is run by paranoid conspiracists. I belive they have done more harm than good to the hobby. In recent posts they have condemened David Sear as a " tired old man who has been duped or in the pay of coin frauds. Is Van Arsdale and his sidekick Laubenstein attempting to set themselves up or worse believe themselves to be the New Messiahs of coin collecting? All they seem to do is condemn everything that comes across their paths which in my opinion is off putting to new collectors. Are there any genuine coins left? Not according to them. I was aghast also to see on top of their blacklist the name of of AncientAuctionHouse. I have bought many a coin from Dimitre and always found him pleasant and well informed and someone who I trust. Perhaps Van Arsdale could be taken more seriously if he sold something other than as Reid put ot low level coins and Navaho Indian beads. I love this Forum as opinions here are educated, reasonable and moderate unlike the vicious tirades of the CFDL. I also find it quite pathetically touching that Laubenstein feels the need to protect Van Arsdale from legitimate questions that may upset him.

[Joe Sermarini]

OK, enough of the anti-CDFL posts.  Can't we all just be friends?  All I am saying is give peace a chance.

[Reid Goldsborough]

Pat L.: Your coin is a nice one, not an Alexander of course, but close. <g> Philip III was Alexander's mentally retarded half brother, and despite being in Price, his coins aren't much studied. They can be very interesting though, and among the interesting things about them is that they, and not Alexanders, were typically the coins that the Thracians/Celts copied for their own coins. You asked for specific judgments about this coin: The obverse is nicely centered, the reverse a bit off center, with the legends to the right and in the exergue partly off the flan. It's well styled and nicely enough preserved, but it's a bit corroded on obverse and reverse, though this no doubt is much more apparent in a close-up photo like this than with the coin in hand. The coloration is nice. All told, again, a nice coin. Can I have it? <g> About the Athens Numismatic Museum Alexander tet you also illustrated, it's posthumous, not lifetime, Price 113, and it's likely a coin of Alexander's son, Alexander IV, according to Newell and Troxell. These Alexander IV coins, rarely identified as such, are interesting as well.

Pat L., ecoli and Robert: I personally haven't found that there's a great risk in bargain hunting for Alexanders. These coins were minted in ancient time is such prodigious quantities that there are huge numbers on the market at any given time. You just have to exercise the same care and judgment as with any other coins. I've bought mine on eBay as well as a number of other venues. eBay is greater risk, as with any coin, but you can get greater deals there too, as with any coin. I agree with Joe's thinking that Alexanders are fairly safe, which is quite a ways different from the self-interested, paranoid suggestion by Van Arsdale that prompted this thread, that they're too risky to collect.

Ronn and coinagora: I agree with your sentiments about CFDL. I know that Joe doesn't like us discussing it too much out of concern that it will begin attacking FORVM, but I personally think people, particularly the newcomers who are sucked into it, should periodically be informed what it's about. It's better now than it has been in the past, considerably so actually, but you'll still get a distorted, biased, conspiracy-laden picture of the ancient coin marketplace and all the evil "coin salesmen" if you rely solely on it for your information. This is not to say that Laubstein's picture matching can't be useful. It can. But just take it all with that proverbial grain of salt. On the other hand, if you rely solely on some other sources, you'll get a picture that's distorted in the opposite direction, that coin dealers winnow out all fakes and all the rest. The middle picture, the truth, is that by following forums like FORVM and Moneta-L and ACFDL and even CFDL (if you're careful) and by reading and by talking with people and so on you become a more informed consumer not afraid of buying ancient coins but buying them with your eyes wide open.

P.S. I posted this just as Joe and Cliff were making their posts, immediately preceding this post of mine, which prompted me to edit my post and among other things add this. <g> I agree that a battle between FORVM and CFDL will accomplish nothing positive. Enough said, from me, about CFDL.

[Joe Sermarini]

Joe Sermarini:
You wrote "If the collector is not fooled by casts of genuine coins, then the problem is struck coins made with false dies".  However there are some very dangerous blast cast coins out, not just Balbinus Concordia Ants, Pertinax Providentia Denarii, Philip 2 Tetradrachms, etc.  I know of many respectable & high level dealers from - & the IAPN that have been fooled by modern casts.  Even Sear certified a CFDL identified cast fake Pertinax Prodiventia denarius for AAH as authentic.   BLAST CASTS CAN BE VERY DANGEROUS.  Then of course there are there are deceptive fakes from engraved dies, like UBS worn Slavey Istros stater of this thread
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=25970.0  Doctored and worn modern struck coins may be very deceptive.

I agree that both casts and modern struck fakes can be challenging to identify, particularly if they are doctored or worn.   Also, both casts and modern struck fakes can sometimes be impossible to identify as fake from photos.   

I find very few casts are dangerous in hand, but some are quite deceptive.  As we see more of these higher quality casts we, and I mean dealers in particular, will get better at spotting them.  Most often when they slip by it is due to time the constraints that all dealers face.  We just do not have unlimited time carefully examine every coin.   Any dealer that does have time, isn't making a living or is selling only high end coins at a substantial mark-up.

One factor that makes casts less dangerous is that the forger will almost always make more than one.   Cast fakes have a good chance of ending up on our fake coin reports.  As long as the collector buys from a reliable dealer with a certain guarantee, they will get their money back when the duplicates are recognized.  I think most of the time they will be recognized.

The collector has a very powerful advantage over the forger.  The collector can just say no to any coin, to any dealer, and to any buy that does not provide them with confidence that the coin is genuine.  If a collector looks at a coin and can't tell if that coin is fake because of the encrustation, patina, wear, corrosion, or anything else, and the source is not reliable and does not offer a 100% certain guarantee, they should just say no. 

[Joe Sermarini]

...I know that Joe doesn't like us discussing it too much out of concern that it will begin attacking FORVM...

It is not just that.  I also prefer to keep things here on this board positive, friendly and nice.   I know, I have had my own moments, but...

The #1 Rule of This Board is BE NICE.

Also, Cliff is a member of this board and his contributions here have been positive and valuable. 

[hitchuk]

I really think that it is as simple as educating yourself as thouroughly as possible on whatever your field of interest is.  Personally mine is Athenian Tetradrachms.  So armed with aquired knowledge of this series I'm confident purchasing them , from many sources.  God knows, I've spent as much if not more time researching the series as I have enjoying my coins.

Without substantial knowledge and exprerience, in my opinion buying ANY ancient coin from a non-dealer is too risky for me. 

Isn't aquiring this sort of knowledge part of the fun of collecting ancient???

Roger

[AlexB]

Hi

For my part I find it fairly easy to discern a fake in the hand and am not even in the slightest worried about Alexander tets. A little study and as Joe says they stand out.

I do have however a fourree tet from ancient times with an AE core from Damascus which weighs over 17g and looks identical to series in Price. Only way you know its a fourree is because of an edge-split.

Guess thats a different matter

Brgds

AlexB