Need opinions about authenticity of this coin

More pics

Hi,

looks strange to me, but even if its genuine looks like cleaned.

I have a few "Napoleon Defeat" coins in my possession. None of them have rounded lettering. The letters are flat. No errors on the rim (the initials of mintmaster are wrong ЭБ not ЗБ). The lettering on the rim is even. Not dancing like shown here… There are other inconsistencies as well. But I think it is enough…

Yes, coin looks strange to me.
BTW on Herigate this type in great MS=63 (Slabbed) condition sold out for $4900, Looks like coin prices jumps again.
Its already usual to us.
Nice coin, low mintage, high grade.... so price high.

Even more remarkable was the previous lot which brought an amazing $1,380.00, which seems like a high price for a coin that looks dipped out and has such rough rims.

100 % FAKE

I agree with you about second coin, it sucks to pay even $1380 for that coin.

And ofr ms63 I think even top price $4.9k worth it, since already any regular high grade coins selling out for thousands of dollars.
And this 1912 coin still rare in high grade. And people doesn't care to pay such hi amount for it.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

Are you saying that one (or both) of the Heritage coins are fake? If so, why?

Or are you talking about the coin shown in the first post in this thread?

Heritage lots are fine. Expensive so they are. The first coin in this post is fake.

OK, thank you.

in the first post

gx: link edited. will be explained.

And986, I must explain a general rule when one is posting an ebay link. Unless you can really prove what a counterfeit is, not just by mere description, the seller unforunately can possibly sue and shut this forum down easily. Perhaps it will be best if you can post your examples and compare where the issues are. So far, I am not very comfortable of people just blasting comments without any concrete proofs.

As well as, the seller mentions that he isn't too sure and is not giving a 100% gurantee that it's a genuine either.

No problem. Search is working. People should use it to protect themselves from that type of seller representation. Is my previous post better now? Nothing specific enough to be a problem for the forum? By the way I explained myself specifically. The item is 100% fake and it really must have been obvious to the seller. It was explained to him on the other forums as well.

Bravo! bambush...

Thanks And986 and for your infomation. I might just know very little of the trouble that might have occured on other forums. Unfortunately though, it's actually not only the seller's fault - the buyers too should be aware of what they are buying. I think what IlyaE did is just right - seeking infomation whether the coin is a counterfeit or not. No harm in asking opinions.

Unfortunately though, the story of suing really do exist and there are real cases that happened. Cointalk.org sadly is one of them

Fine. As long as people know who they are dealing with and hopefully make decisions accordingly... In this case - it really seems to be an attempt to mislead because the advert hinted others thought it was genuine . . .. Seeking information is one thing, selling the item you know beforehand might be fake and then making general comments that many people think it is real - is another thing altogether. I wouldn't say a word if this thing was selling as a copy or even if the person had omitted the apparently misleading statements. Please feel the difference.

BTW, I'm not the seller of this coin, the seller wanted me to buy this coin and I told him it's a fake after reading comments on this forum, he is using the same pictures as he emailed to me, which is not surprising.

Please don't make quick assumptions.

Sorry, I did assume you are the seller because you posted the exact same pictures as are posted at the forum. *IF* you REALLY are NOT the seller, my sincere apologies for assuming that. My other assumption is quite simple. Whoever runs that auction is making comments that should not be made because they could be seen as being misleading or even fraudulent. As I said before, - seeking information is one thing, selling the item you know beforehand could be fake and stating that others think it is real - is quite another. Deceptive descriptions or hints of genuineness for clearly questionable items cannot be accepted.

By the way, this is exactly the case when the second assumption has to be made quickly - otherwise people will lose money.

Of course, it is your responsibility, IlyaE to disassociate yourself from sellers who don't mind writing unclear descriptions that could mislead. Thank you for doing that.

gxseries: I softened up my approach and I think it still conveys the info while keeping the site safe.

Looks (and feels) like you are back, Mr Cheburgen !

Welcome back :-)

Sincerely,

Did Cointalk.org get sued? I searched it up on Google and read 5 pages about it but there was no outcome as to what happend or if the case was dropped?

No, Oldman. I'm not him. Whoever he/she is...

I can assure you I'm not the seller of this coin, I did buy some coins from this seller, which were authentic and he was offering me this one before he posted it on Ebay.
Thank you for telling me it's a fake, I did have my suspicions, but was not sure and might of bought it.

IIyaE I am glad that you did have some successful purchases earlier but FYI please note that same person (who will remain unnamed to protect the site) currently has several other coins on eBay that have equally questionable authenticity.

I am mentioning this about other coins of that seller because I am able to list the discrepancies for the other coins (as this site has desired before a member states that an item is questionable).

If you are thinking of buying anything else from that seller please think about it VERY carefully and, of course, always seek out other input.

Very interesting thread. Here is what I know, quite different from previous posters:

1. There are extremely well made fakes of 1912 Commemorative Rubles in existence that are NOT possible to spot looking at any kind of pictures. They are the same dangerous as fakes of Platinum coins. Not possible to authenticate even when you have it in your hands and use 10-x magnification, not just "funny difference" that one can find on a not that good picture.

2. Letters EB or 3B on the edge. Here is another Ruble with letters that look more like 3B. E-bay item 330173267821. http://www.myphotospace.com/upload/1301/05..._edge_large.jpg
http://www.myphotospace.com/upload/1301/05...front_large.jpg

So, according to previous opinions this is a fake too. Any thoughts?

No matter what, prompt authentication a must for this kind. No picture is sufficient to authenticate.

WCO

Kind of strange logic here... Apples and oranges. Sometimes even a bad picture is enough to spot obvious fake. Sometimes the expert can hold it in his hands and can't tell the difference. (Gangut example)

BTW it's your own example WCO in your thread about Russian ГМ certification... I do not get your point here...

The lettering is correct on the picture you've provided, clearly ЭБ. The small details looks good to me too... Do you think it is fake? As far as I can see nobody else have posted the link to this particular coin before you.

So how do you manage to apply "previous opinions" to this picture anyway? Would be interesting to know your opinion about this coin...


If I can get a similar coin at flea market in Vancouver for a dollar would you like me to certify it too? Just to make sure?

Ok, I'm very curious over this topic. Is there any proper reference about this? Also how do we know that it's not a variety but a counterfeit? I'm aware of the counterfeit 10 ruble coin and the counterfeit is quite stunning but why bother counterfeiting a commemorative ruble? Does that mean that there are more counterfeits of a common Nicholai II ruble too?

Bad picture is enough only when you see a crude and immediately recognizable fake on that picture. Then you can say the coin on that picture is a fake. But (for this kind of coins) there is no picture that will allow you to say "the coin is authentic". So the point was: no matter who said what looking at any kind of pictures, if someone is about to buy this kind, it would be wise to buy only authenticated piece, otherwise there is a good chance to buy a fake.

WCO

P.S. Apples and Oranges.... What was the point to provide opinion on that coin if there is no real alternative. It's eather "fake" or "possibly fake", chose your own. No one can ever say this kind of coin is authentic just looking at pictures.

We don't.

Never seen well made counterfeits of regular Nicholas II rubles though.

WCO

The first picture in this thread was good enough to make a conclusion.

What do you mean by "No one can ever say this kind of coin is authentic just looking at pictures." ? I couldn't find anybody in this thread saying that.... May be anybody argued with that statement before? I didn't...

My point was to protect somebody from making a mistake. That is all. Still don't get your point here...

Was the first picture good enough to say "this is a crude fake" or it "may be a fake"? How about the other coin e-bay item 330173267821, is that coin definite fake too?



That's my point, noone said to the contrary because it is not possible. No need to look at the pictures, no need to do research, compare to other coins, etc. The right answer is always this: "it may be a fake".


The same as you And986, I tried to warn people who are about to buy this particular kind. No matter how convincing it looks - go for certified or... "it may be a fake".

WCO

if it is impossible to identify fake by looking at it then NGC definetely will not spot whether the coin is a fake or not

"Was the first picture good enough to say "this is a crude fake" or it "may be a fake"?"

YES! There is no place for "may be" and you Ilya know that very well. You sell this kind of coins (real ones) and I know you as a respectful dealer. As I said before I have a few "Сей славный" to compare and it is VERY obvious. You can count them (the differences) too.

Then you are asking me the same question again about ebay lot. Please see my answer in my previous post.

"No matter how convincing it looks" - again, as I said before, it simply doesn't look convincing. (Talking about first post).
I have this feeling that you are continuing the old conversation with somebody... I mentioned to Oldman before, I'm NOT Cheburgen, ok?

If you still visited Staraya Moneta you'll understand. Anyway, I have a question for you. You said: "Not possible to authenticate even when you have it in your hands and use 10-x magnification" . What do you do than? Are you aware of any methods NGS would use, anything?

20-x magnification should solve it? Just curious...

Almost any commemorative imperial Russian coin in decent condition (except 300 years Romanovs ) costs thousands of dollars. A common Nicolay rouble costs may be a couple of hundred dollars in almost perfect conditioin. Anyway the difference is 20 to 30 times in average....

Oh, so on second coin letters ЭБ does not look as 3Б for you (I missed your answer before). I do not know if the second coin is a fake or genuine, just most opinions in this thread were so non-flexible (someone must be a real expert to say "100% fake").

About how NGC authenticates them. I do not know. They have microscopes (at least 40-x magnification) and other equipment. Platinum, Ruble 1912 and small size mining ingots (24 dolia and 1 zolotnik) fakes exist in super high quality and are very dangerous. I know that to authenticate platinum in difficult cases necessary to do spectral analysis of alloy, authentic pieces have little gold in platinum alloy unlike fakes.


WCO

WCO, appearently the authentic platinum coins actually have more iron and other traces like iridrium whereas modern high quality counterfeits are too pure. Now here are some real scientific papers to read:

http://trajan.numizmat.net/science.html

Everyone, please kindly share any real studies that have investigated such studies. I personally find it difficult to trust from mere comments these days and the only way to understand such counterfeits is by proper scientific studies... although it seems to get more expensive especially if it gets to spectral analysis... although I think it's a matter of time that major TPGs are forced to use them for really pricy coins.

---


Now something off track about such ultra high quality counterfeits - most of these counterfeits appeared before the times of the mad prices which only recently occured in the last 5 years. I find it difficult to believe that these counterfeiters have anticipated such prices then. The only reason why we are seeing more counterfeits is because of the mad prices but so far most of the recent counterfeits that I see are of poor grade.

For example the gold 10 ruble is a well known example for years. Sometimes I wonder if it was the era of Bolsheviks or Stalin who had access to such dies and exported such coins overseas to finance their economy. Most of the high quality counterfeit issues I remember are actually minor edging problems and I guess they didn't bother checking the edges or didn't have the right edging. Honestly, I don't know how realistic it is to do such high quality counterfeits - the only examples that I know is this: http://www.pcgs.com/articles/article_view....rsedir=pcgs.com Possible as that is when the price of silver was too low and it was profitable to make such dollar coins. I am not too sure what the situation was in Russia during that time but I highly doubt counterfeits would target commemorative coins first.

Now I only wished some researchers can do a proper dating test to test my theory

I used to read several studies on authentication of platinum coins. They have different and sometimes misleading info in them. One of the latest studies:
http://www.platinummetalsreview.com/dynami...ew/50-3-120-129

Study showed that identification "... requires consideration of the whole of the impurities present in the coin not just the iron. This means that just using the analytical results from an energy dispersive spectrometer(EDS) attached to a electron-microscope is insufficient. The poor limits of detection on this instrument do not allow the measurement at low concentrations of a number of important elements".

Now spectrometer is not good enough, but it was used to authenticate platinum coins just till now.

Also different studies had different results on impurities, some of them showed that counterfeit coins had less iron and more gold in the alloy, some of them that counterfeits were made of almost pure platinum, etc. All that is very misleading.

The problem with ALL these studies is that there is no statistical approach in any of them. So the results vary widely. For really trustable study hundreds of platinum coins needed and noone can get that many.

About 10 Rubles with wrong mintmaster initials. Those are made EXTREMELY well as if they are made at the mint. Russian guides (like Adrianov) say these are "possibly counterfeits", but not for sure. There is another theory that those are Novodels minted in 1920-s and made with available at the mint at that time edging (with wrong letters of mintmaster for the year).

The cost of authentic 1912 Borodino Rubles in 1980-s was about $100, huge money at that time considering monthly salary of an Engineer about $30/month (120 Rubles / 4 Rubles per dollar on black market). And in the early 1990-s salary dropped to $10-15/month since dollar rose sharply. So at that time making counterfeits was may be the same profitable as in our days or may be even more profitable.

With all this on mind, just low quality picture does not seem to be appropriate to use for authentication of such complex and not easily distinguishable (even with prompt equipment) coins.

WCO

So we do not post links to eBay now. Next thing we will do we keep silence about fake coins on just pictures? (or we'll be sued by picture owner). That is not what the intention of this forum is: to educate......

"With all this on mind, just low quality picture does not seem to be appropriate to use for authentication of such complex and not easily distinguishable (even with prompt equipment) coins."

The first picture in the post - is a cheap crap! What are you talking about? When you can buy them for $1 at fleamarket each you DO NOT NEED certification... What is so "complex" about chinese fakes?

"(someone must be a real expert to say "100% fake")" - in this case anybody can be an expert. Just compare it with the good quality picture from the catalog if you don't have the certified coin handy... Why are you denying an obvious facts? For the sake of argument? You irony is out of place here and you know that!

May be admin should open a new thread dedicated to discussion of counterfeiting technologies and leave that poor "100% fake" fake RIP.


"Oh, so on second coin letters ЭБ does not look as 3Б for you (I missed your answer before). I do not know if the second coin is a fake or genuine, just most opinions in this thread were so non-flexible (someone must be a real expert to say "100% fake").

BTW nobody in this thread said the picture you (WCO) are provided is fake. Nobody!

Timofei, I understand how stupid it is when I did mention not to paste ebay links. Please kindly don't take things the wrong way - it is perfectly ok to comment your opinions on the coin. In fact, I personally do encourage it myself if it is taken in the right direction, i.e. rigriously back up in what you comment on. There is a big difference in saying that "I don't like the appearance of it" versus "This coin is definately a counterfeit"

The only issue rises when it comes down to ruining a seller's reputation - and this is the grey issue that most forums would try to avoid. Originally this forum would have removed all links related to counterfeits because many forum members here are quick to shoot extremely negative comments about the seller publically when he might have just sold one counterfeit out of the hundreds that he sold. Perhaps an exception is when the seller is selling counterfeits regularly but then we need subsential backups as proof. I do have full respects of anyone who take time to check their catalogues and do a good comparsion and analysis. Take it this way, auction houses do make mistakes time to time - would this mean they are totally bad?

I personally removed out negative aspects of the seller involved and left the thread as intact as possible. If you think I am abusing my power, or being too one side with any of the forum members here, please do not hesitate to send me a PM or let akdrv know about this.

Sadly though, if you think I was talking nonsense about lawsuit, this is the real threat that did occur in cointalk this year:
http://www.cointalk.org/showthread.php?t=25471
Couple of years ago, a coin slabber ACG did sue forum members of PCGS as they said that ACG was overgrading...
http://www.asa-accugrade.com/lawsuit/Third...edComplaint.php

There isn't a need for a third case. I do believe that we can comment about counterfeit coins in a civilized manner. I do apologize in advance if you see me as rude, obnoxious, etc... but one of the last things that I want to see is this forum going down.

Sometimes we just need a couple of these:

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that wording might might make all the difference in the world.

I think there is a world of difference in saying

"That coin is 100% fake"

and saying,

"IN MY OPINION, that coin is 100% fake".

Of course, anyone can file a frivolous and vexatious lawsuit for any reason, no matter how specious. But there is a big difference between filing a suit and winning it. Who knows, the intended victim might also counter-sue requesting that, at a minimum, the court order that his/her legal costs be paid by the person who filed the frivolous suit.

I will support that 110%, Grivna. That is what is called freedom of speech.

Whatever it takes, it should be zero-tolerance policy for fakes and people have the right to speak about and to know about fakes. When there is a fake like in topic-starter's message - it is not even necessary to discuss much as any good picture of an authentic 1912 rouble will speak for itself.