Hmm. I was beginning to suspect that might be a possibility. If that does turn out to be the case, I am going to have to learn to listen to my initial gut reaction. In retrospect I had some qualms as soon as I received the coin, but they were faint and drowned out by my enthusiasm at a new acquisition.
I am grateful for your thoughts Arminius. I would invite all others here to give their thoughts too. Either pro or con would aid my learning.
In the event that the consensus is that it is indeed not genuine, my next question is what should I do about it? Though a little time has passed, I suppose there is the possibility that the dealer might accept the return. It was bought on ebay btw. Upon whose authority could I claim it was a fake?
Since you describe yourself as a novice, it's better in the future, instead of using your gut feeling, to follow the advice of all experienced collectors on this board, and completely avoid
eBay until you have enough expertise to recognise for certain the
good from the bad. I would not expect any novice collector to use gut feel.
As is consistently recommended on
Forum, buy in your initial years only from long-established and trustworthy retail dealers such as
Forum. After about a decade and after owning and handling large numbers of genuine coins, perhaps
eBay becomes a little less unsafe. Of course, if you've been
buying on
eBay so far, other examples you've bought may be
fake in which case you may never get the feeling for genuine coins. This looks a crude
fake, but there are more skilful, worse
fakes on
eBay. But seems no matter how often the advice is repeated, novices
still choose to buy on
eBay which is absolutely stuffed full of
fakes. What more can be said. Perhaps use this as the warning signal to change
buying habits. I
hope so.
Fake Coins and Notorious Fake Sellers
