By Bernard Wells. There are four groups of coin forgery - good, bad, modern and ancient. Beware of the good modern, but the ancient, both good and bad, are fascinating and often worth collecting in their own right. The rarer and more valuable a coin appears to be, the more likely it is to be a fake. Therefore, the more money the collector parts with, the greater the risk of buying a dud.
Real forgers are never extroverts, keen on self-promotion who put their monograms on their goods.
Here are a few pointers to help avoid costly mistakes, starting with the more obvious areas for mistake and moving into the more difficult to detect. Electrotype copy of a tetradrachm of Naxos, Sicily, by the Aetna master, c460 BC, showing Dionysos. The reverse shows a copy of drunken Silenos. It helps to understand the mentality of the forgers. Their object was to deceive, so the best examples of forgeries may be works of art in their own right and may require several tests to detect.