October 18, 2008: Fake Coins

From About.com, comes this story about Chinese factories specializing in fake coins of various nations.
They make fake, uh, cough "replica" cough, bills and ancient artifacts, too, but coins are the big item.

There is a great video by BBC called "the dinosaur that fooled the world" about a very good fake which came out of, are you sitting down?, China, of all places!

There is a brisk market in fossils and a lot of "marrying" of unrelated artifacts. Great video I downloaded from google of youtube.

The same is true of American "antique" furniture. As Michael Dunbar points out, if all the early American antiques available today were authentic, our forebears would have been working 24/7/365 making furniture.

I have a friend who started out doing legit restoration at a large shop. Initially they'd bring in a Queen Ann Highboy that was missing a drawer and they'd say to him: "Make the drawer." By the time he left ten yers later they'd hand him a drawer and say "Make the highboy."

I've seen so much of his stuff at Sotheby's and Christie's it isn't funny. Once, I accompanied him to Christies to deliver a piece and I stood around while the "experts" authenticated it. He merely said "Here is a piece that I found at auction, what's it worth?" They pored over it discussing this and that occasionally condescending to us "hicks" as if the subtleties of oak versus ash were lost on us. They were highly suspicious of a piece of oak claiming that that wood wasn't used in Philadelphia in March of 1775, so must have been added later. All the while my buddy was writhing in agony. We finally left and when we were several blocks away he exploded with "Those fucking idiots! It took all my will power not to say THE OAK IS THE ONLY AUTHENTIC PART ON THE PIECE." He bought some mangy crap at auction, did a "Stephen King a la Christine" restoration on it, adding just about everything except the undercarriage. The piece brought $21,000.

I think the same veracity can be expected of the label "organic" Unless you personally know the farmer who brought you your food...

the only kind of fake coins I like are chocolate.

Ditto what Cloud said. One of the reasons I love Halloween... chocolate in BULK!

My next door neighbor used to "make" antique wood furniture all the time. He would create rocking chairs, wooden sculptures, and other furniture and then age the wood. He said he also would get experts to "verify" his "found" antiques and sell it for large amounts of money.

http://www.repair-home.com/how_to_distress_wood.html

footfootfoot (coign, too), you might want to tell your friend that knowingly presenting a fake item as authentic is fraud. It's one thing to keep a non-expert opinion or suspicion to yourself, but if you have sure knowledge then keeping silent to intentionally mislead a customer (or the 'experts') is against the law - especially if it results in personal gain. A reproduction of that quality may be worth $21000 - but it also might look like participating in a scam to a court of law.

I have a friend who makes reproduction items, and is very careful to sign them in such a way to make it clear to an expert that the items are fakes. This kept her out of jail on at least one occasion, when her reproduction was offered at auction as an original. She was not the one who brought it to the auction house -- he was arrested -- but she was initially investigated as possibly being in collusion with him. She ended up being a witness for the prosecution instead.

It's easy to tell the fakes, the packaging reads: Please to not put coin from plastic.

Oh, hai!