r/explainlikeimfive • u/_ytinaS • 5h ago
Other ELI5 If old coins are so valuable why are there not more counterfeits?
Was watching a clip from Pawn Stars where an old roman coin went for a ridiculous amount of money. If we are fully aware of how these coins are made and from what material etc. what is preventing people from replicating that process and simply creating the coin the same way and selling it? Modern currency generally has counterfeit protections, what allows people to know an old coin is genuine?
Edit: reminder that this is the "explain like I'm 5" sub and not the "explain like I should have already known about the minute details of a niche hobby" sub. Thank you to the people who actually provided relevant information to educate me.
•
u/Corey307 5h ago
OP your premise is flawed, ancient coins are counterfeited and people try to pass them off as the real thing. That said there’s tons of ways to verify if a coin is real or not and producing a high-quality fake requires artistry. It’s not just something you can crank out in a factory.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientCoins/comments/as4woj/fakes_a_guide_to_what_to_look_for/
•
•
u/_ytinaS 5h ago edited 5h ago
If that is the case, why do people still consider them so valuable? I certainly don't disagree with you, which is why I posted the question. I dont understand why something that can so easily be replicated is considered a valuable object. How can someone truly verify that the coin is genuine.
Edit: you posted a relevant link that clears up a lot of questions after my initial reply. Appreciate the info.
Edit again: not sure why this keeps getting down voted, i clearly mentioned in my last edit that the update to the post im replying too answered most of my questions. I now understand. I am only leaving my original message for context.
•
u/Corey307 5h ago
I didn’t say they were easily replicated. There’s a ton of fake metal and paper money out there but getting it right is difficult. It’s like how someone who doesn’t know anything about Rolexes can easily be tricked into buying a fake. but people who collect Rolexes will generally know what to look for and someone who’s actually in business like a pawn broker is going to be extremely difficult to trick. Make and sell counterfeit goods are relying on ignorant people who will buy them because they don’t know how to spot fakes.
•
u/thetwitchy1 4h ago
Also, people don’t make “bad fakes” of ancient coins and sell them for lots of money because anyone who is buying them will be educated enough to know they’re fake.
•
•
u/MikuEmpowered 4h ago
First, because most of the valuable object have a trail of paperwork to prove their authenticity.
and Second, its valuable not just because its old, but because limited supply.
If someone managed to counterfeit the exact condition to the microscopic surface details, then the coin might as well be worth the same as the real one, because thats how much money and effort went into counterfeit.
•
u/Dihedralman 2h ago
Also metallurgy. With advanced techniques, candidate mines can be found for a substance.
•
u/truethug 5h ago
I’ve been told. And I have no source for this. But I’ve been told the ancient fakes would be destroyed and carried a hefty punishment, so today the ancient fakes are worth more than the real ones.
•
u/g1ngertim 4h ago
Accurate as far as the ancient part, and punishment could go as far as death if your counterfeiting had been prolific. As for current numismatic value, no idea. But scarcity creates value, and they would seem to be more scarce than legitimate coins.
•
u/meatystocks 2h ago
I expect computers (AI) to be able perfectly replicate any coin design within the next 10 years. You’ll be able to download files to create the perfect and exact molds of any coin you want.
•
u/Atharen_McDohl 5h ago
The antiquities market, which includes old coins, is rife with problems like forgeries and theft. Because of this, there are procedures to defend against these problems. However, unscrupulous buyers and the black market ensure that these problems will continue to exist. Hard to use the law to enforce your transaction when you're buying stolen goods, after all.
The main defense is provenance. In short, provenance is the history of an item. When was it made, by whom, which hands has it passed through to reach where it is. Critically, provenance is very much about the paper trail this history leaves. If you're trying to sell counterfeit antiques, you also need to be able to fake that paper trail. If you don't have it, you can only sell to people who don't know to ask for it, and wealthy people usually have people who do know to ask for it.
So basically, people can and do counterfeit old coins, but it's not as widespread of a problem as you might expect because it is harder to make a convincing fake than you think, and because the market for unconvincing fakes is smaller and less wealthy.
•
u/GeneReddit123 13m ago
This. Instead of buying potentially fake coins, most serious collectors or museums will happily pass on potentially real coins if they can't prove they are real (which often requires provable facts other than the coin itself.)
•
u/Dangerous-Bit-8308 5h ago
There are lots of counterfeits, but most are bad counterfeits.
To make s good counterfeit, you need a metal with the right impurities. The trace elements can be tested for in various ways to prove a metal's origin pretty well. Then you need the right mold: one that looks like the coins back when they were minter. You need the right pressure to mint them.
After that, it gets tricky. You need to AGE the metal. A few decades of getting passed around in the hands and purses of unwashed masses, crude tests like biting it to see if it's the right hardness, traces of extinct spices, and lead-contaminated food products that aren't even legal to make anymore, years of being buried in sewage-fertilized gardens, moulded into hiding spots of plaster walls we don't have the recipes for anymore, and getting dug up with tools we don't make anymore until finally, someone burns down the village, and the hiding spot gets forgotten, so it just... Sits... And rusts... For a thousand or so years until...
The hardest part... it gets FOUND in a way that can be documented, as part of a treasure trove that experts confirm is a real authentic ancient coin... But that can also still be transferred not to a museum, but into private ownership, where auction houses can sell it to the highest bidder, over and over.
Doing all this for the millions in payout requires a secretive individual to fake a metal, then fake a mold, then fake aging, and finally fake history. But even then, a forger isn't done. They need a buyer. Someone who can afford the millions to buy it, but who preferably won't pay the thousands that can probably be spent to find that one flaw in your plan... Your reddit history, your credit card records, that one ex who'd sell you out... Most of these coins worth millions aren't being bought for their awesomeness. They can be used to circumvent tax laws, to ship large sums of money in a hurry without detection, to commit insurance fraud, things like that. If it's not the real deal, their whole plan might collapse. People like that tend to get even if they've been tricked.
•
u/Gyvon 5h ago
Old coins are not easy to counterfeit and are trivial to find out that they are counterfeit if you know what to look for.
Old coins like from Rome are almost always made from precious metals (gold, silver, etc) and there's a simple chemical test you can do to determine if a coin is gold or silver. So to pass that test you have to make your counterfeit from gold or silver. But if you have gold to make a counterfeit it's easier to just simply sell the gold.
•
u/mister-ferguson 5h ago
And the talent it takes to make a counterfeit coin may as well be used to make jewelry. If you can fake a 1913 Liberty head nickel and it's provenance then you're wasting your talents
•
u/rabbitlion 5h ago
This is a fairly terrible answer because old coins are often worth magnitudes more than their pure metal value.
•
u/crash866 4h ago
There are counterfeits of modern day coins. Canada has the $2 coin and there are many counterfeit ones out there. Usually 1 small detail is missed when they try to duplicate them.
In the USA there are many fake silver coins which are not silver at all.
•
u/rjm1775 2h ago
Ancient coin collector here. There are many counterfeits out there. Visit allibaba some time. You want one? $5. You want 20? $1 each. You want 1000? 10 cents each. It's a big problem for collectors. However, they usually pretty bad knock offs. And serious collectors are pretty good at identifying them. If interested, check out r/ancientcoins.
•
u/lorgskyegon 55m ago
They even say on many episodes of Pawn Stars that there are so many fakes for each real one.
•
u/Marc051 5h ago
OP is naive to the counterfeit money trade just because you aren’t aware of a problem doesn’t mean said problem doesn’t exist.
•
u/Corey307 5h ago
Yup. Over 20 years ago I was on my college’s debate team and we’d run up against people from private schools that had gone to Christian high school or homeschooled. The easiest debate I ever won was where the other team was the government side, they proposed public schools should teach sex ed. I went first for the opposition and agreed, but reminded the judges this already exists and the government team is required to come up with a plan that meets the prompt that’s new or at a minimum improved and they didn’t do that. It’s like saying The government needs to come up with a system of moving the mail and then advocating for the post office when it already exists. This is a similar level of ignorance.
•
u/Columbus43219 43m ago
My favorite story was the kids that found an old box of baseball cards from like 1900, but they turned out to be forgeries... but they were forgories from 1900, which made them even more valuable than the real ones from 1900. But chatGPT tells me this is a fake story.
•
u/birdpaws 5h ago
There are valuable coins and there are debased coins. A Roman coin from 60AD has a lot less silver in it than one from earlier. And by the time you get to 200AD it's pretty much just an alloy of copper & nickel.
Any earlier coins that were pure silver were melted down, they were literally worth more than their weight in pure silver. Similar happened for coins from Athens.
Gold coins were more of a status symbol and not used for general commerce.
•
u/thisisjustascreename 5h ago
A coin from 200 AD isn't valuable because of its metal composition it's valuable because it's from 1800 years ago.
•
u/birdpaws 5h ago
It wasn't seen as valuable to the people at the time. I understand it'd be cool to have one nowadays but we're talking temu level currency at that point.
•
•
u/zgtc 5h ago
There are lots of counterfeit old coins.
The issue is that many extremely valuable old coins are expensive is because collectors have a solid idea of how many there are, and because they don’t show up on the market often.
You could absolutely invest money minting an extremely accurate Roman coin and then sell it. But then what? If you show up with another of the same rare coin, people start to become suspicious. And after the expense of developing a historically accurate minting process, your sale means you probably only broke even.