Thanks for the responses and feedback which has shed a
bit of light on some of the questions raised and the trends that will determine where the
numismatics hobby ends up.
It seems that most agree with the rank order of the exposure to fakery by source/vendor, if not the assessment of the specific risks expressed as a percentage. I'll come back to this later, but for the moment I simply note that no-one has taken up the invitation to present a more quantified assessment based on a broader base of experience in numismatic business dealings. This suggests that the stats presented are either "on the
money" or even conservative. If otherwise, I'm sure we'd have received quantified evidence to the contrary from the dealer community to demonstrate the case.
On the matter of the response of numismatic industry stakholders to the problem of fakery and associated
fraud, there seems little enthusiasm for the view that the dealer community could do more to
help itself and its clientele by open discussion of the risks and educating the collector community, in a quantified manner, that the risks of purchasing
fakes are dramatically mitigated by dealing with reputable dealers. In doing so, effectively encouraging people to avoid the
EBay, they would deprive fakers of an easy and prolific route into the numismatic market. The central tenet is that the market dynamic can be change if behaviors are changed via education based on the facts. However, the fear that even acknowledging the extent of the issue will drive away collectors seems to be the overriding concern with this approach and hence the silence on the factual base from which collectors can make an informed decision on the risks attached to various alternative sources.
Rather than seeking a behavioral response to the problem, the fall back is to the
hope of development of massive numismatic database technology dependent on the advance of image processing and recognition
software. Theoretically possible, but in all likelihood some way down the track. In the the interim, the fallback is for the dealer community to encourage enthusiastic amateurs, via sites like the
Forum discussion Board, to tackle the issue on coin by coin, transaction by transaction basis. This provides useful reference material, but is not the panacea some seem to think. The fakers are minting faster than the amateurs can identify, as evidenced by some of the recent posts on this Board regarding
Serdiko. Not only that, the
quality of the high end
fakes is advancing so rapidly that I suspect that visual/photographic analysis will soon be insufficient for authentification.
At the lower end of the market the explosion of low end
fakes is mind boggling with the primary conduit to market being
EBay. aj notes the attitude of the dealer community to this
arena; seemingly a blind eye. Yet
Wayne Sayles clearly spelled out the problem in
his 2001 book Classical Deception...."Today there is an even more distasteful scenario. The mass production of modern copies of
ancient coins in eastern Europe.has inspired some unscrupulous sellers to market these pieces as authentic, or at the least "uncertain" as to authenticity.....As in every age before us, collectors today suffer the retributions of greed. The forger preys not only on the the ignorant and naive, but on the fact that some collectors will through caution to the wind if they stand to catch a
bargain or or obtain elusive
rarity." Sounds like a plea for education and behavioral change rather than a technical solution to me.
As for why in the
face of the risks many of us willingly populate the
EBay stores the answer was provided in a couple of responses that skill and knowledge enables us to beat the odds, even if 50% are
fakes. Well I won't seek to get between the barrel and the
head of those playing Russian Roulette with three chambers loaded! I simply observe that casinos are loaded with people of similar view; yet I've never seen a casino go broke!
Good luck guys and gals with this approach! In any event, it does nothing to address the issue of the explosion in fakery and I was not casting aspersions on those who pursue
EBay coin deals, rather simply asking what it makes it so compelling for some?
Back to the proposed technical solution (the massive numismatic database), the dimensions of the achieving such are highlighted by the fact that estimates of surviving
ancient coins are in the range 25-250 million. Quite a cataloging task, which will keep all the munchkins in the world busy forever in the absence of a massive technical breakthrough. Nevertheless, a very well credentialed and resourced organization under the auspices of the European Commission is working to this end and I wish them well in the endeavor. Those that are interested should review the official website of Coins-
Combat Illegal Numismatic Sales
http://www.coins-project.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=29&Itemid=47 (My thanks to the marvelous blog of Ed Snible "A Gift for Polydektes" for drawing my attention to this effort). Interestingly no dealers or numismatic bodies figure amongst the participants and sponsors of this effort. Rather technology providers, institutions of learning and legal agencies, which to me speaks eloquently of of the relative priorities of the numismatic community.
So where does this leave the direction of
numismatics as a hobby; hopelessly compromised pending a technology breakthrough? The emphasis on the increasing importance of
provenance has been highlighted in some of the responses and is inevitable. Personally, it now underpins a lot of the purchase decisions I make on
additions to my
collection, even though this approach has pitfalls, which I have experienced as noted below.
The most contentious and apparently misunderstood
part of my initial post relates to the statement "To put these percentages in perspective, and to provide a reality check, I note that [REMOVED BY ADMIN] currently lists about 83,000 coins on its website, meaning that somewhere between 83 to 830 might prove to be
fake in the final analysis. ...." Some have misunderstood, or chosen to misrepresent, this as being the basis for my assessment that .... "Personal experience in assembling a
collection of 250 ancients (mostly Greek) over twenty years leads me to suggest the following quantification of the
fake percentages of coins offered by source:1) Reputable dealer: 0.1% to 1.0% (i.e. one coin in one thousand to one in one hundred prove unauthentic)". It may be a sad reflection on my less than Shakespearean prose, or alternatively the loss of reading and comprehension skills in the age of electronic media and sound bite attention spans that has led to this (let's not debate the alternatives please) but whatever the reason I provide a more fulsome explanation.
My personal experience on which the percentage
fakes in reputable dealers inventories come from inspecting thousands of coins in European dealers' trays, largely in pre-internet days. In my largely Greek
collection of over 250 coins assembled over twenty years I have two probable
fakes. The
fakes were sourced unknowingly in the last twelve months via the internet form two very reputable [REMOVED BY ADMIN] coins dealers, ex-old
collections. They were only identified by me as
fakes after some considerable time via reference to a rather comprehensive
library that established one of the coins to be absolutely identical to a museum specimen and the other to have been impossibly sourced from a 1974 hoard. Probable high end
fakes, that have appeared in the market place only once to my knowledge and thus no photo match to known
fake dies. This experience is the basis of my assessment of the risk to lie between 0.1%-1%. I sought to numerically quantify this risk via reference to something with which most readers of the
fakes Board would be familiar; [REMOVED BY ADMIN]...thus the statement ..."meaning that somewhere between 83 to 830 might prove to be
fake in the final analysis." This is a conclusion of the suggested range of possible
fakes in reputable dealers inventory, not the source of the statistics! Now I don't consider these sort of numbers to be unduly concerning in a total inventory of 83,000. In fact it is testament to the diligence of reputable vendors in screening out
fakes. I can also point to 36
fake specimens identified as sourced from [REMOVED BY ADMIN] dealers across the
Forum Fake Board,
Forgery Network and CFDL. Add to this my two coins and we have 38 recent examples sourced from [REMOVED BY ADMIN]. And these are the "known unauthentics" to which there must be added the as yet "unknown unauthentics". I suggest that the numbers are consistent with the personal experience that reputable dealers inventories can be expected to contain some
fake material, notwithstanding the best efforts and intentions of all involved and that this material may range 0.1%-1.0% of the inventory. Add to this the documented (on this Board) experience of the UNS
auction with 0.25%
fakes in 6,000 lots. Again consistent with personal experience and assessed risk of
fakes in the inventory of reputable dealers! You don't have to believe it, but if you don't then please give us a better statistical base, built on the numismatic dealings of the dealers who have to address and mitigate the
fake risk on a daily basis.
Time to wind up this very lengthy post.
Thanks for your time and patience,
good luck with "dodging the bullets" and lets
hope the European Commission makes some inroads with its technological program to address numismatic
fraud, because the dealer network appears to be too fearful (or greedy) to seriously tackle the issue using the data and network it has in place.
Fake Coins and Notorious Fake Sellers
