Suspicious Macrinus Denarius

[gibfrog]

I found this pair of denarii rather suspicious.  I suspect modern pressed fakes.  Any opinoins?

[Rupert]

Well, if they are, they are damn good fakes, I'm afraid. What makes them suspect to you? The sellers? Something else? Or could they just be die-identical genuine coins?

Best regards,

Rupert

[Potator II]

I would not have suspected a fake here either..

Potator

[ROMA]

 Can you elaborate a bit more on why you suspect these coins besides being a die match?

[gibfrog]

I cited theses two coin as SUSPICIOUS in order to generate discussion and possible get some help in determing the likely truth.
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1) The seller is known as a good wholesaler/retailer.  He sold and is selling over 1500 during the last 30 days on ebay.  I have found a mere 4 fakes in this 1500 coins, not very many and one Julius Caesar fake is from 12/30 so it is outside the 30 day window.  The four fakes are the two previosly cited new Julius Caesar cast fake denarii with banker's marks and the two Alexander III tet's appended below.

However, if you only look at coins which closed or will close at over $160 and eliminate the Athenian Owl tets, that leaves 10 coins, or 11 with the first Alex tet that is not yet over $160, but will surely close over $160 if my post does not disrupt the sale.  So now we have 3 fakes in 11 coins and this is a significant percentage.

1300+ of the 1500+ of the sellers coins were sold for $28 or less.  So this seller does not specialize in higher end coins.  The Macrinus is the most expensive coin in this 30 day window at $321 and in my opinion the sellers higher end coins (except for the Athenian owl tets which I did not review) are currently a bit problematic.  However the problem is cast fakery not modern pressed fakes, but both types of fakes are sold by in the region that the dealer buys his supplies from. 
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2) The Two Macrinus Denarii are not just die matches, (die matches are not an issue) but are
2a) Close in issue, if you look at the smal horozontal "die crack" above Aequitas' right hand, it has only grown a very little between the strikes.  Close in strike and close in wear, AXF.
2b) Sold by the same seller over 1 year apart
2c) These dies are not found in coinarchives, http://tinyurl.com/2zhbz9  This one was sort of close, but none looked like they were even from the same engraver as the two suspect ones.
http://imagedb.coinarchives.com/img/nac/042/00376q00.jpg
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3) I still have unresolved issues with these two coins. I am still trying to understand my suspicions and I am looking at other much more subtle factors, like the fields, the top of the "R" in MACRINUS, etc..  Times like this I miss Alan....

Sincerely yours,
Cliff Laubstein

PS. Information for this post has been extracted from a number of my recent CFDL posts.

[Joe Sermarini]

Other than the known fraudulent fake sellers list, this board is about coins not sellers.  So much of your last post should be on the For Sale on eBay board, if anywhere on this board.   I don't think it really belongs their either.  They are either a fraudulent crook and get named or an honest dealer and don't get named.  Talking about them without naming them either serves no purpose or allows people to figure out who they are, in which case you might as well have named them. 

I think the portraits have a Slavey look to them but I do not know that they are not ancient.  They don't particularly look pressed to me.  I think before condeming them it is  necessary to look at a lot more dies than are on coin archives. 

The Alexander tets are worthy of a thread or threads of their own.  You don't say how you know they are fakes.  That would be useful. 

[gibfrog]

Joe:

All is not black and white - honest & dishonest.  Someone may be honest but buy from dishonest suppliers and not be able to determine that he is being cheated.   A dealer may sell certain coins that he is not really qualified to authenticate and just trust his supplier.   Then through honest error, resell some fakes believeing that they are authentic ancients.  So I do not name the dealer, but what about the buyers of the two cast fake Alexandrian tets and the two cast fake Julius Caesar denarii?  I do not like seeing someone cheated of more than $100.  If I notify them, I break ebay rules.  Ebay has sort of placed me on "double secret probation" and severely limits whom I may contact if I do not have a current transaction with them.  You worry about honest dealers getting bad publicity, I worry about innocent buyers getting ripped off.  Next time I will remove the ebay number from the file name prior to posting it here, but the readers who know me, know where they may find the "rest of the story".  All my recent threads, except this one, were posted elsewhere first, with Forvm forbidden data.   
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The first cast fake Alexander tet is in the fake reports. (It is a very deceptive cast fake.) However, I have these ready Forgerynetwork  links to these cast twins
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=tXwZSys4Fz4=
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=~x~euHFr7i~x~2E=
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=pTzY0pg8f~x~k=
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=xIbAN0~x~KZfQ=
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=TJ9BAD~x~Z~x~2M=
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=kk/wqRqKujw=
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I did not check the  fake reports for the Babylonian cast fake Alexander tet (the second one) compare it to these cast twins from the Forgerynetwork.
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=TYt/dvKaD5o=
http://www.forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=EXXjsBJOW0E=
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Suspecting a coin is not condemning a coin.  When anyone asks about a coin, they ask because they suspect it may be be authentic.   
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Sincerely yours,
Cliff

PS. Virtually every coin that comes from eBay, even without the auction number may be readily found from the information in the thread.  I found the auction & dealer name for the Carus Aureus from another recent thread without much problem. 
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=43587.0

[Joe Sermarini]

All is not black and white - honest & dishonest.

But is is black or white here.  It is either intentional fraud or not.  If it is fraud I support ensuring that the criminals name is published for all to see.  If it is not fraud, then there is no reason to talk about the seller or what some unnamed seller is doing. 

If there is fraud there isn't much to talk about either, really.  They just go on the list.  It is black and white here.  This discussion board is, as much as I can make it without being too pushy, about coins, not the business of buying and selling coins.   Personally I like reading about coins.  Even though I am a dealer, I find reading about who is buying or selling, this or that about prices, or what eBay is doing really boring.  I like to read about coins.  I like this board to be about coins.  I encourage posting about coins (fake coins too of course). 

I did not mean to imply that you had condemned the coins.  Just that I don't think it is possible without looking at more than what is online.  That, as is most of what I say on the boards, wasn't specifically directed at you, the original poster, but rather to all readers of the thread.     

I know it is easy to figure out who sellers are from a coin posting, but a post about a coin is not a post about a seller.  If someone wants to figure it out, I don't care. 

[Robert_Brenchley]

I was getting a bit irritated by this thread as well. What about the two Macrinus coins that started it - are they two genuine coins, struck with the same dies at about the same stage in its life, or are they fakes? If there's no way to be xure, as I suspect, let's say so and have done. One thing I've noticed; the flow marks on the two appear to be identical or almost so. How likely is this in two die-matched genuine coins?

[moonmoth]

Robert -

As flow marks are actually the impressions of hollows worn into the dies through the repeated movement of metal across their surface, they ought to be similar or the same in two genuine die-matched coins, unless the dies were in very different states of wear when the two were struck.

Bill

[Robert_Brenchley]

I know it's an indentation on the die, but I'd have thought that something so slight would very soon show changes. If the coins were struck immediately after one another, then OK, the marks would be identical, but how likely is that?

[ROMA]

It's certainly not impossible that the coins were struck close to one another. Certainly not enough to condemn a coin, plus i think the coin needs to be examined closely in hand before making a positive opinion about impressions on the coin.

[moonmoth]

I know it's an indentation on the die, but I'd have thought that something so slight would very soon show changes. If the coins were struck immediately after one another, then OK, the marks would be identical, but how likely is that?

OK, this is theoretical; but obviously the indentations aren't going to go away.  The grooves are caused by repeated flow in the same pattern, so the same pattern of flow should continue and accentuate the same set of grooves as the die ages; so the grooves will probably not be "overwritten" by different grooves later.  So I would expect to see the same pattern with perhaps different amounts of emphasis; more and deeper marks as the die gets older.  Not identical, but you should be able to overlay one pattern on another and see a match.