Ebay seller placing several hundred modern fakes onto market

[maridvnvm]

Just be warned that there is an ebay seller in Germany who is placing several hundred modern fakes onto the market in one go. There are already several bids starting to appear.

Seller:- numis.coins on eBay

I created a montage of a range of die linkages that I found amongst these fakes back in 2017 when they first started hitting the market

(warning - large image)

[mcwyler]

Zero feedback, what could go wrong? I note that, in the English translation, the "authenticity guaranteed" bit seems to have been omitted... Probably just an oversight. 

[Sol_Invictus]

I wonder what the point of faking these coins was?  How much profit could they possibly make off of fake bronzes of Aurelian, Probus, Severina, Diocletian, Carus or Constantius II?  

[SimonW]

17 minutes ago, Sol_Invictus said:

I wonder what the point of faking these coins was?  How much profit could they possibly make off of fake bronzes of Aurelian, Probus, Severina, Diocletian, Carus or Constantius II?  

Probably more than you think. The production cost is probably only a few cents a piece, and each one will sell for 10, 20 or 30 USD/EUR. Multiply that by a few hundred coins.

[maridvnvm]

I have seen them sold individually as uncleaned / partially cleaned coins for $20 each. Theye were being offered into the market in 2017 in batches of 1,000.

Edited March 6 by maridvnvm

[seth77]

At least a very awkward obverse-reverse pairing: that Constantine II obverse with the Concordia reverse reminds me of that Diocletian post-reform follis paired with a Jovian AE1 reverse, which is possibly also a product of this 'workshop'.

[Harry G]

I saw those coins - luckily they don't seem to be selling for much. I wish eBay would ban those sellers, but they just seem to turn a blind eye to it.

 

I actually own a couple of those types of fake - both are die matches to the coins you've posted.

 

Probus - ADVENTVS AVG. Bought from a small lot sold by a reputable London dealer several years ago thinking it was genuine.

 

Constantine II - CONCORDIA AVGG. I knew it was fake before I bought it, but the die pairing is so ridiculous I had to buy it.

Edited March 6 by Harry G

[Sol_Invictus]

1 hour ago, SimonW said:

Probably more than you think. The production cost is probably only a few cents a piece, and each one will sell for 10, 20 or 30 USD/EUR. Multiply that by a few hundred coins.

I guess the material cost is quite low, and although these seem to be hand-struck rather than cast (or am I wrong about that?), someone who is skilled could probably churn them out pretty quickly. Still, it seems to me that whoever had the talent to produce these could probably find a better use of their time to maximize their profit per hour worked.

[maridvnvm]

100 lots sold so far making about 400 coins at about £3 per coin. More than 200 more lots listed.

They will turn up on the market through other hands.

Sad.

[Ocatarinetabellatchitchix]

3 hours ago, Sol_Invictus said:

I wonder what the point of faking these coins was?

Many studies have been published about what are the motivations of forgers, what’s in their mind exactly. Money is not the reason # 1. Here is a quote from one of these analyses:

« The psychological need for recognition, the need to present oneself if even in their mind a belief that they are able to fool the museums, and the unsuspecting public is important to the forger. He gains a great deal of satisfaction from having outsmarted everyone and often made money in doing so. »

Edited March 6 by Ocatarinetabellatchitchix

[John Conduitt]

2 hours ago, Sol_Invictus said:

I guess the material cost is quite low, and although these seem to be hand-struck rather than cast (or am I wrong about that?), someone who is skilled could probably churn them out pretty quickly.

I think they might be pressed.

[rasiel]

8 hours ago, John Conduitt said:

I think they might be pressed.

Yep!

This sucks. I remember coming across my first mass-produced fake LRB's around 2007. As single pieces they don't catch attention but stand out very easily when several are side by side. And that's just it. I noticed because I was buying 10,000 uncleaned coin lots at the time and the eye is remarkable for picking out patterns. After seeing just a few that looked wrong in an otherwise massive pile of legit coins it "clicked",  unbelievable though it seemed at the time. The one thing they had in common back then was the soapy feel that is the tactile signature of pressed coins. They also all had the same shitty, electric-green patina serving double duty as the "dirt" that was supposedly covering them. We were paying like $0.80 or maybe less each so obviously it was on their end a low-effort project relying on volume to turn a profit. For that hand striking was out of the question, to say nothing of cutting dies. Pressing was the only method that could be scaled.

While en masse anyone could tell them apart I feel they're much more dangerous as individual pieces. Once the unsuspecting collectors gave them a workover, as individuals each applying their own restorative techniques, they would have lost a lot of the telltale signs that made them stick out at a glance. They're far more difficult to ID once they're offered for resale, not least of which is due to the generally low amount of attention one gives ordinary Probuses and Constantines as opposed to more valuable coins. For this reason it's great to have charts like OP has made to highlight the problem dies. Soon, I hope, AI will come to our aid to ease this burden.

Rasiel

[Tejas]

Thanks a lot for this warning. Forgers have really gone down market, which is very dangerous because this is also the segment where most of the people who are new to the numismatics are.