"numis18" has been busy...

[areich]

Compare with genuine examples.
 
I've done that.

Most of them are very obviously tooled.

Not to me.

If it's not clear from looking at them, it becomes clear by comparing with genuine, untooled coins. Toolers very often get the hair and folds of garments wrong.

The hair and garments on all of these coins that I have checked are impeccable.

There are however a couple of somewhat suspect features on some these coins - can anyone spot them?

Ross G.

Then you have to compare some more. Most of these are very obviously heavily smoothed and tooled. Some of the better ones, because the pictures are small, are not as obvious but whenever you see a heavily smoothed coin, you should look for tooling as well. There is no shortcut, it takes a trained eye.

[Andrew McCabe]

To be overpessimistic wasn´t my intention Andrew, it was ment has a warning for those people debating wether or not to get involved in collecting coins, your post basically mirrors my thoughts on this matter apart from your softer approach.

I feel that we both presented our concerns about counterfeiting constructively and wish all newcomers to the world of Numismatics good luck with their collections.

 

Just don't despair! There are many safe places to buy 100% genuine coins, including here at Forvm. Perhaps fleabay seems cheaper, but not when you account for the fakes, toolies and misleading photos.

I've worked hard on my collection to make sure it's 100% free of fakes and toolies, and I believe it is. But 90%+ of my coins are from "trusted retail dealers" and most of those that I've weeded out as fakes over the years came from ebay, which has turned out to be a poorer value venue than I imagined.

[glebe]

Compare with genuine examples.
 
I've done that.

Most of them are very obviously tooled.

Not to me.

If it's not clear from looking at them, it becomes clear by comparing with genuine, untooled coins. Toolers very often get the hair and folds of garments wrong.

The hair and garments on all of these coins that I have checked are impeccable.

There are however a couple of somewhat suspect features on some these coins - can anyone spot them?

Ross G.

Then you have to compare some more. Most of these are very obviously heavily smoothed and tooled. Some of the better ones, because the pictures are small, are not as obvious but whenever you see a heavily smoothed coin, you should look for tooling as well. There is no shortcut, it takes a trained eye.

A couple of these coins may have been smoothed but where exactly do you see tooling on them?


Ross G.

[Andrew McCabe]

If it's not clear from looking at them, it becomes clear by comparing with genuine, untooled coins. Toolers very often get the hair and folds of garments wrong.

The hair and garments on all of these coins that I have checked are impeccable.

There are however a couple of somewhat suspect features on some these coins - can anyone spot them?

Ross G.

Then you have to compare some more. Most of these are very obviously heavily smoothed and tooled. Some of the better ones, because the pictures are small, are not as obvious but whenever you see a heavily smoothed coin, you should look for tooling as well. There is no shortcut, it takes a trained eye.

So where exactly do you see tooling on these coins?


Ross G.

100% agree with Andreas. The tooling and smoothing on these coins is very obvious, and just as with  questions about tourist fakes, worded "what about this coin looks fake", the answer is "everything". The fields are not struck-fields - they are not metallic at all, but rather scraped and moulded. The letters are improved throughout. The interface between devices and fields which is usually gentle, with externally directed flowlines, is abrupt and cliff-like, with no evidence of flow. The hairlines and other upper surfaces of the devices look un-natural. The patinas are wrong, relative to coins of this supposed-degree of wear, i.e. supposedly lightly worn, which should have much more delicate patinas consistent with the visible detail. There is an overall 'plastic' look that is typical of tooled coins, which I mean literally - compare the image below.

If you think I've seeing problems that don't exist, bid-away!

[glebe]

If it's not clear from looking at them, it becomes clear by comparing with genuine, untooled coins. Toolers very often get the hair and folds of garments wrong.

The hair and garments on all of these coins that I have checked are impeccable.

There are however a couple of somewhat suspect features on some these coins - can anyone spot them?

Ross G.

Then you have to compare some more. Most of these are very obviously heavily smoothed and tooled. Some of the better ones, because the pictures are small, are not as obvious but whenever you see a heavily smoothed coin, you should look for tooling as well. There is no shortcut, it takes a trained eye.

So where exactly do you see tooling on these coins?


Ross G.

100% agree with Andreas. The tooling and smoothing on these coins is very obvious, and just as with  questions about tourist fakes, worded "what about this coin looks fake", the answer is "everything". The fields are not struck-fields - they are not metallic at all, but rather scraped and moulded. The letters are improved throughout. The interface between devices and fields which is usually gentle, with externally directed flowlines, is abrupt and cliff-like, with no evidence of flow. The hairlines and other upper surfaces of the devices look un-natural. The patinas are wrong, relative to coins of this supposed-degree of wear, i.e. supposedly lightly worn, which should have much more delicate patinas consistent with the visible detail. There is an overall 'plastic' look that is typical of tooled coins, which I mean literally - compare the image below.

If you think I've seeing problems that don't exist, bid-away!

But that's the problem with this kind of discussion - when you guys are called, we get no real specifics, just generalities such as they "look unnatural". (And why would lightly worn coins have "delicate" patinas)?
But not to worry - if you can't give me any specifics, perhaps I can supply them myself.
As I said before, on a couple of these coins there do indeed seem to be definite signs of reworking - or to be more exact, a lack of it.
On the Cap7 of Trajan for example note that on the obverse we see the border as a single line, where we might normally expect to see a row of dots.

Ross G.

(On the other hand check out the genuine Trajan sestertius below - the border dots aren't very obvious there).

[Andrew McCabe]

100% agree with Andreas. The tooling and smoothing on these coins is very obvious, and just as with  questions about tourist fakes, worded "what about this coin looks fake", the answer is "everything". The fields are not struck-fields - they are not metallic at all, but rather scraped and moulded. The letters are improved throughout. The interface between devices and fields which is usually gentle, with externally directed flowlines, is abrupt and cliff-like, with no evidence of flow. The hairlines and other upper surfaces of the devices look un-natural. The patinas are wrong, relative to coins of this supposed-degree of wear, i.e. supposedly lightly worn, which should have much more delicate patinas consistent with the visible detail. There is an overall 'plastic' look that is typical of tooled coins, which I mean literally - compare the image below.

If you think I've seeing problems that don't exist, bid-away!

But that's the problem with this kind of discussion - when you guys are called, we get no real specifics, just generalities such as they "look unnatural".

I gave a list of specifics. The scraped and moulded-look field is one key. And regarding lightly worn / delicate patinas, the point is that with heavy patinas you should not see these details; the details on lightly worn coins is typically only properly visible when the patina is light. With heavy patinas, you would expect a lot of randomly obscured details around hair and lettering; not seen on these coins, because these coins have been tooled in the bare metal and then repatinated in an even but thick manner, and care has been taken to make sure the repatination doesn't obscure anything. It's all artificial.

You might also consider relying somewhat on the known expertise of those ("you guys" as you nicely refer to us) whose focus is on bronze coins. In the last two weeks I personally examined 4,000 bronze coins, one by one, that I had not previously handled, and almost all of which have never been individually sold at market and certainly not photographed. All were old-collection pieces, mostly in reasonably decent condition, and most came from very old group lots that had hardly ever been examined, let alone tooled. Among the 4,000 coins, I pulled out and marked less than 10 that I consider over-cleaned or tooled, along with 2 or 3 fakes. So I don't jump the gun. I consider each coin on its merits. I'm cautious about condemning coins. Yet had the numis18 coins passed through my hands I'd have pulled out all of them.

[SRukke]

His negative feedback says - numis18 = johan2850 = ardenias21 so maybe he has other accounts.

[glebe]

Here's one that actually is obvious (from numis18's recent Ebay sales).  The hair and beard are inconsistent with the rest of the coin.

Ross G.

[Mark Z]

Here's yet another current listing on fleabay from "numis18."

Trajan Sestertius.

Fake Report added.

Regards,
mz

[Caesarincarnate]

Thank god for this site. I am very new to numismatics and as such I do not have the trained eye required to spot the numerous fakes out there. But something just seemed wrong about this guy. Initially I was bidding on a current listing of his which would have run upwards of $400-500. But then I got suspicious and decided to do some research. On the net are numerous examples of very similar sestertii in fantastic condition that he has been selling to unsuspecting collectors and made thousands at it. The smoking gun was when I typed in numis18 fake coin. That's when I found this page. Thank you all for the work and research you put in to provide this valuable service to us amateurs.

[HELEN S]

Thank god for this site. I am very new to numismatics and as such I do not have the trained eye required to spot the numerous fakes out there. But something just seemed wrong about this guy. Initially I was bidding on a current listing of his which would have run upwards of $400-500. But then I got suspicious and decided to do some research. On the net are numerous examples of very similar sestertii in fantastic condition that he has been selling to unsuspecting collectors and made thousands at it. The smoking gun was when I typed in numis18 fake coin. That's when I found this page. Thank you all for the work and research you put in to provide this valuable service to us amateurs.

 welcome to the forum you have learnt a valuable lesson research not only the coin but the seller looking forward to seeing your coins 

[Caesarincarnate]

I called eBay and reported this jerk. It seems as though they are putting a restriction on his account so maybe they will finally do something about him. Oh and yes I do have some really beautiful coins I will be posting soon. So nice to have a forum to share my interests with like-minded people.

[Mark Z]

Caesar,

This one was posted on fleabay about one hour ago.

I originally caught it back in very early February 2013. Scroll back up to the top of this thread to the post dated 02/03/13.

It is either the exact same coin with different lighting or ANOTHER coin from the same mold. Either way, it is the same fake.

As for fleabay restricting his account, they are pretty liberal when it comes to complaints against sellers, requiring indisputable evidence before they ban a cash cow like this guy.

Regards,
mz

[crawforde]

Here's yet another current listing on fleabay from "numis18."

Trajan Sestertius.

Fake Report added.

Regards,
mz

I'm not sure what is going on, but I see a picture of Andrew's avatar instead of the fake Trajan mentioned in the post.  Is it just me?

[Molinari]

Here's yet another current listing on fleabay from "numis18."

Trajan Sestertius.

Fake Report added.

Regards,T
mz

I'm not sure what is going on, but I see a picture of Andrew's avatar instead of the fake Trajan mentioned in the post.  Is it just me?

Are you viewing from a smartphone?  It has happened to me before but only when viewing from my iPhone.

[Caesarincarnate]

Caesar,

This one was posted on fleabay about one hour ago.

I originally caught it back in very early February 2013. Scroll back up to the top of this thread to the post dated 02/03/13.

It is either the exact same coin with different lighting or ANOTHER coin from the same mold. Either way, it is the same fake.

As for fleabay restricting his account, they are pretty liberal when it comes to complaints against sellers, requiring indisputable evidence before they ban a cash cow like this guy.

Regards,
mz

Yeah that figures. Maybe if enough people call them and report him they will finally do something. Or if the people that bought the fake coins submitted proof to eBay then perhaps they would do something also. I am in the process of getting a $650 refund for a fake Lysimachus tetradrachm that I bought. They said as soon as I send the fax showing that the coin has been deemed a counterfeit by NGC they will refund my money.

[crawforde]

I am on an iPad, maybe that is causing it.

Was causing it I mean.  All is normal now.