Guest rnsdb Posted September 26, 2012 Report Share Posted September 26, 2012 Brekke lists it as "may have circulated" rarity 4. Nobody else seems to. It's possible/likely it's altered, although Brekke wanted to buy it. I'm fairly certain I saw one at auction as I remember the price...6,000. I'll get to it next week, as I'm busy finished up the medals database for upload to rnsdb.hopefully Friday I found a forgery on ebay of a 1709 Poltava medal, and some nice images of an original. I want to include the filters for originals with known forgeries and forgeries themselves, display them together on a datasheet, and then select the original and the forgeries to display on a single zoom box with images and descriptions side by side. I've got it all working except for the zoom box. I also found a bunch of hyperlinks for Poltava, both for the battle itself and medals from the battle. I'm including 4 of the hyperlinks in the memo field for the medal. Iverson lists 7 or 8 medals for Poltava. The original one I'm including is Gouin/Haupt. Theese 4 images plus 4 more for the 1912 Napoleon ruble+forgery brings the total to 30 jpgs in the zip download for the 3 test databases Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted October 4, 2012 Report Share Posted October 4, 2012 I cannot contain myself!!!! Please make a photo of the coin. Please, please, please. Medals database can wait -- this would be a great discovery! I am positive that I had never seen 1842 spb sold at auction anywhere, and I try to follow copper coins. So does Steve, and a few others here. No one here I spoke to ever saw this coin... As a point on forgeries -- most forgeries today cannot be discovered by a simple comparison of images. They are true copies of the original. Even laminations are faked. A lot of those were sold at reputable auctions and are in serious collections now. For example, the 2 kop AM fakes that were discovered only because there were twins on the market. The word has it that there are copies of gold and silver coins made from coins in GIM, that were accepted and bought as originals by professionals. Comparison will only let you discover the old, crude fakes... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rnsdb Posted October 5, 2012 Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 False alarm It's 2K 1841 CNБ, not 1842. Weight is 21.4 gms. There's no pic in Mikailovitch or Brekke to compare it to but I did find one in SM's JRNS article which I just got around to reading. Comparing the pic it looks right & has the die break. CNБ looks right. Looks axf. Even so, it's in the coin database coded * forgery until proven otherwise, and Brekke's listing coded W for an original with one or more known forgeries. If it turns out genuine, I'll set the codes back. I bought it 25 years ago before forgeries were dominant, Brekke looked at it although not carefully and wanted to buy it, and it came from a reputable dealer, so it's probably okay. Like I said, I've been on a hiatus from Russian numismatics for 20 years, and now that I'm back in with the database project, I'll get back on all this. The weights of the 1830 5K: CNБ no mm 21.4 gms it has the shorter ribbon and the tail of the novodel. It came from Elman as an original. EM ФX 20.04 EM ФX 20.24 These seem low but I am using a Ohaus balance which should be pretty accurate.. There's an 1849 pattern set with Czapski counter mark and a bunch of other rarities I'm going to have to go through now that I have Steve's article to map to. The only rarity indication in the coin database now is Brekke's, so I can filter out all the rarity 3/4/5 copper coins by czar and work with a manageable number on the display screen for the mapping. The medals database is finished and should be uploaded Sat or Sunday, so I should have time to work on it, although I just got in the mail my AMD A10-5800 APU with SSD and Coolermaster case to build a new system. My old AMD 3700 is showing it's age so I'm hoping there's no time consuming showstoppers in putting it together. Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted October 5, 2012 Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 1841 is still very nice and rare. Very nice coppers you have there. I would like to see that 1849 set. I am only missing 1 kop myself, but Gutten Czapski mark adds charm... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rnsdb Posted October 5, 2012 Report Share Posted October 5, 2012 As regards your observation on forgeries, it's very valid. I posed a question at an RNS meeting in NYC 20 years ago that given the upward slope of the forgery improvement line, in what year would it prove impossible to tell the difference. It sounds like we're near that point now Still, I believe there's still a lot of value to the database capability I described. 1. Just being able to filter the medals/coins to those coded W-(originals with known forgeries), would be a big help to collectors. At least when at a show or going through your collection, you would know that forgeries have been reported for that particular coin and knowing this would increase your alert level over what it would have been otherwise 2. Having the images and descriptions side by side will still help with some percent of the forgeries. Not all can be perfect copies, otherwise authentication services would be out of business. 3. The authentication services have to be using images and descriptions in their analysis because they can't have originals of most coins on hand to do their work. It would be nice to get a detailed explanation from them of how they do it and what material they use in their work. Would have made a good JRNS article were it still being published. Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted October 6, 2012 Report Share Posted October 6, 2012 problem is, all grading services make mistakes. They do not keep up with the technological progress, so to speak. For instance, a decent platinum fake can only be told apart from original by metal composition testing. Also, there is a new line of copper fakes (including the patterns and novodels) that they cannot distinguish. same goes for overstruck coins. I am not even talking about yefimoks -- those even the best experts cannot tell apart from fakes. We are at the point where the only way to tell a fake from original, is to find identical twins of the fakes. There is a number of examples of this garbage sold at reputable auctions. Images are good to be able to find last generation fakes. But, those are still around. As for the alert level, I think an educated collector today should view any coin as fake until proven real (IMHO) That will save a lot of money and grief. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rnsdb Posted October 6, 2012 Report Share Posted October 6, 2012 When you say assume everything is a fake, what is a collector supposed to do? Markov, Gorny and all the auction houses across the world must be terrified because it means paralysis. Without any way for the collector to form a judgement, he's going to do nothing. Just as viruses haven't stopped people from using computers despite the risks or identity theft stopped the use of credit cards, collectors will do the best they can. Arm youself with the best virus checkers you can or with the best database of forgeries you can, and push on. Ron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted October 6, 2012 Report Share Posted October 6, 2012 It is like buying a designer bag on the secondary market -- fakes are just too damn profitable. I have a fake of 1793 em overstrike, and 10 kop siberian, where the only way to tell is the edge. Cannot tell they are fakes from just looking at the coin on the photo. I have seen overstrikes, where the only way to tell is to find a twin of the coin. I am not buying overstrikes anymore, unless there is either crazy provenance, or it is cheap enough not to care. With all due respect to auction houses (and sometimes none is due), most auction houses do not have strong experts on Russian material they sell. I have seen obvious fakes sold by pretty much all major auction houses. What about those that are not obvious? I did not say that it is impossible to form a judgment. It is just hard to do from the photos and by relying on auction houses or grading services. There is a very small number of people in the US selling russian coins that I would trust to be able to tell a fake from original for me -- Jim Elman, Mark Teller, and no one else comes to mind. Out of 3 major grading services, NGC makes the least mistakes, but not infallible by far. A few recent gradings of obvious fakes of yefimoks by NGC showed me that they bite off more than they can chew. PCGS and ANACS fail. In russia, there is MiM and Alexander, that I have never seen selling an obvious fake. I know a couple of guys in russia, who are very narrow experts and know enough about these new superfakes. However, even they are often unable to figure out whether a coin is fake just from photos. It appears that fugazi manufacturers are getting smart, and are assisted by knowledgeable collectors and utilize numismatic material from serious collections and museums. It is no longer chinese fakes, these are manufactured on very well tooled russian and ukrainian factories, utilizing state of the art copying equipment, some of which could be more advanced than equipment used on the official mint today. The above created an environment where most coins from unknown die pairs are labeled fakes at the outset. Then we wait for a coin to be seen by a few known specialists in that particular narrow area, and wait for a verdict. For example, there is now a new discovery of 1799 em polushka from an absolutely different die pair. It was thought to be a fake until it was seen by an expert in Ekaterinburg and an expert in Moscow. On the other hand, there is a 1762 kopeck that never graduated to original status... Thus, labeling the coin a fake at the outset works as a virus scan. When a very rare coin comes to the market, and there is no provenance, the same virus scan is triggered. And so on. Sorry for a long passage, but this is what is going on today. I respect your effort and willingness to help numismatic community. Photographs are good to compare for known die pairs. But, the analysis should only begin there. After all, how do you know if you are not comparing your coin to an image of a fake sold by an auction house? If we only stick to publications of GM collection, including Fenzi book, we are stuck with very limited database in terms of die variations. You can add to that auction sales pre 1970's, with reasonable safety. 1970 - 1980 is somewhat uncertain. 1980 - 1990 is dangerous. 1990 to present -- wild west... (IMHO, of course) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexbq2 Posted October 7, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 I'm a bit surprised. As I recall, russian coins in the early nineties were dirt cheap, prices started to pick up post 98. If you look at the 2001 Bitkin catalog it still wouldn't have made any commercial sense to make good fakes of 99% of coins listed there. I'm certain that there were good fakes made of some mega rare coins prior to present decade, but I would think that most of the auction sales pre 2001 are a fairly safe reference point. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BKB Posted October 7, 2012 Report Share Posted October 7, 2012 Making $100 here was nothing. $100 in Ukraine in 1990's was a lot of $. I remember seing fakes of 1727 5 kop as far back as 1988. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grivna1726 Posted October 8, 2012 Report Share Posted October 8, 2012 IMHO there is an overdate: Maybe It might be an overdate, but the final "8" looks repunched to me (8/8). However, die varieties are not something I know much about, so I might easily be wrong. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexbq2 Posted October 8, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 8, 2012 I agree, it could be re-punched. There are some traces behind the 8 but it is not clear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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