The economics of fakes

[basemetal]

Please forgive my ignorance as I'm a newbie.  Can someone explain the economics of fakery. 
Granted, a gold ancient roman coin is worth faking, especially if you can do it in variance and volume.  Same to a certain extent for silver, and for other extremely rare coins (Flavian Amphitheatre coins come to mind).
But to produce a product, even fake, is a sort of busness.  You have overhead. That includes, production, advertisment, distribution, even legal protection.   Is it really profitable to produce a fake ..mmm...Honorius considering the amount of effort involved? Or a really fine Valens fake? Considering what you can buy a real, and in very fine condition Valens for, where is the profit? If it's volume, then every third Valens would be fake or suspicious since there are so many real Valens for sale. And from what I've read of this forum fakes are easy to spot. There must be money in it and I may just be too new to the thing to see how.

[slokind]

I think the answers to your questions may be quite variable.  The dreadful and inept fake LRBC with which some bulk lots were salted may have been made practically in someone's barnyard, in the exurbs of a city, or in a small town or village by persons who were otherwise underemployed.  Then there have been fakes that can only be described as an addictive hobby (say, the inverse to our own) for persons of better than middle income and more than average knowledge of coinage.  And lots in between.  Some of these are utterly unprofitable, as addictive hobbies usually are, and others may be marginally profitable.  The higher-tech efforts, though, may be quite profitable; I wonder how many new collectors in places where collecting ancient Mediterranean coins previously was not much done are unwary customers for the things Prokopov has documented.  And some that are called Fakes are really just tourist souvenirs for sale where dealing in real coins is forbidden and the law is enforced.  It isn't, I think, just one question.  Pat L.

[Numerianus]

Basemetal has the reason: making forgery of low-cost ancient coins
is not a lucrative business (It was my point in the discussion about monneron's coins).
I am not so sure though about his example with Valens (to my estimate, this is already in
the price range where forgers may have an interest).
Faking of uncleaned should be considered apart: it is cheeting rather than forgering.
However, we observe quite a lot of of 'good' fakes on the market and even in the lower price
end. The problems is that many of them are made officially: for jewellery, as fillers
for collectors, museum copies, etc. Some fakes of this kind are even honestly marked as
copies (but the mark can be removed). With a mass production such an activity is rentable.
Many of such fakes, claimed to be genuine, arrived, finally, to the ebay auctions. Luckily,
it seems that selling them in a regular way it is not a profitable business: sellers are
spotted and they cannot sell fakes for high prices. I have no comments whether the faking of
ancient coins is a popular addictive hobby.   

[David Atherton]

I have often wondered this myself. I never really could figure out what the profit margin would be for producing low end fakes. Even faking ancient coins in general and making a profit I think would be more often be a crap shoot than anything else. Unless these coins are produced for next to nothing, I can see no way to gain from it.

If your gonna fake coins...why note fake modern coins? The market for them is so much larger than the tiny niche ancients inhabits.

[Rupert]

Excuse me, which Valens are we talking about? The Aur. Valens whom Licinius made Augustus before a battle just to execute him afterwards would surely be an object for forgers, since his coins are extremely rare and you could rather easily tool a Licinius into a Valens. The usual Valens, Augustus 364 to 378 AD, small bronzes are not worth faking since they're too little sought after and their value is to low.

Rupert

[Numerianus]

Apparently,  the arguments  were about Valens solidi. I just checked  the prices given by WW: many of examples
are in the price range $200 -$300  though they were sold by reputed dealers with 100% guarantee of authenticity.

Some coppies were ordered by museums. I asked myself about the origin of my Titiana which was discussed here. It is  a well-done copy of a single known specimen which in in BNF.  The technology used seems to be the cast (though I do not understand why the edge was smoothed which made rather obvious that it is not authentic; it may be done not to deceive). My hypothesis is that the copy was produced as a souvenir (this is not for sure since one could expect a lot of other existing copies ....).  For decades the coin was sitting quietly in an old collection (e.g. as a filler) until it was not dispersed. 

[Howard Cole]

If your gonna fake coins...why note fake modern coins? The market for them is so much larger than the tiny niche ancients inhabits.

Faking modern coins can cause a lot more problems than faking ancient coins.  Faking ancient coins is just considered fraud, but faking modern coins, if still legal tender, is forgery, which has much more sever consequences.

[David Atherton]

Faking modern coins can cause a lot more problems than faking ancient coins. Faking ancient coins is just considered fraud, but faking modern coins, if still legal tender, is forgery, which has much more sever consequences.

Touche.

[esnible]

Average monthly salary, in Bulgaria, is about 200 euros. [ http://www.investbulgaria.com/Salaries2004.htm ].  Bulgaria has 12% unemployment rate. [ http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bu.html ].

A forger needs only to earn 10 euros a day to feed a family.  Forgery is also a great sideline for apprentice jewelers and dentists.

[Federico Albertini]

This all are GOOD points.
I agree with the fact that we measure the economics of fakes in terms of western wedges, time and skills.
This can't be applied to most of the western Countries where unemployed people (time), can gain a high salary (money) suing the skills they traditionally show on handicraft.

I know a lot of ppl that goes to Bulgaria to look for professional, cheap dentists...

[Lawrence Woolslayer]

The objective of forgers would seem to be economic, but yet we can not know this as certainty.

If economic, the method appears to be that of producing a fake in hopes it shall gain acceptance as a real coin, and hopefully going unnoticed as a fake for years if not generations. If the fake happens to gain acceptance, then the hiring of employees and so forth becomes possible as in any other business venture. Should the fake be spotted, the remainder of the original productions, now of very low value, are sold to any willing buyer [and these may well end up in uncleaned lots, bulk purchases by dealers, etc]. This approach is hit or miss in nature. Higher value coins such as gold receive much scrutiny, and therefore fakes are found throughout the price spectrum. One of the most recent successful fake coin series were those of the Black Sea region, which went unnoticed and sold as genuine for years.

There are other possibilities as motivations for making fakes besides economics. Much like a person wishing to hack the computer system of a large company or government, just for the ability to boast about the success, there are people around that would doubtless enjoy fooling collectors and dealers with fake coins.

[basemetal]

Sincere thanks to you all.
I think I may see the inverse argument presented above.  I will use the example of people interested in UFOs.
 Many are very very interested in the validity(or not) of the phenomenon.  Sooner or later a certain percentage, usually those that really WANT UFOs to be real and just those who have a desire to "test" their abilities will turn to the making of fake photos of UFOs.
That's why all such photos are considered fake till proven real. 
In a certain way, I guess that should be in the mind of every ancient coin collector.
The problem with the low wage vs. our high wages doesn't cover the age-old adage that like the farmer or even the poppy grower, is that the supplier doesn't necessarily make the profit, it's the middleman or the final seller.
But given this the solitary nature of ancient coin sales still bothers/baffles me.  Even a $100.00 coin by the nature of it's price is rare, so how many can you sell before it becomes "common" knowledge that the __________fill in the blank may be or probably is a fake. All in all if I were going to go into that business as has been pointed out before, I'd sell fake authentic roman rings or arrowheads maybe.  Oh, see a new topic in this forum by me about dies. 

[GMoneti]

Average monthly salary, in Bulgaria, is about 200 euros. [ http://www.investbulgaria.com/Salaries2004.htm ].  Bulgaria has 12% unemployment rate. [ http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/bu.html ].

A forger needs only to earn 10 euros a day to feed a family.  Forgery is also a great sideline for apprentice jewelers and dentists.

200 euros is hardly enough to support a family in Bulgaria, since the prices are nearing EU levels, while salaries are not.  Most forgeries are not done by the unemployed population, but rather by people with applicable skills, looking for extra income.

[ajb]

All in all if I were going to go into that business as has been pointed out before, I'd sell fake authentic roman rings or arrowheads maybe.

Indeed, there is an ebay seller in germany who has been turning out fake roman rings for several years, they keep changing their ID but the goods all have a similar look to them.  They get good prices too, considering they are fake!

Actually, most "roman" rings for sale don't appear to be roman at all, but I wonder if much of this is due to ignorance and wishful thinking rather than deliberate fraud.

Anthony

[Federico Albertini]

Ignorance has always been the best excuse for every unveiled fraud ...

At least here, in Italy.