BY R.W. JULIAN
The hobby of numismatics is at a crossroads. The increasing number of counterfeits in the marketplace calls for strong responses, the first of which is the system of third-party grading services. The major coin grading services first thoroughly and meticulously authenticate and confirm a coin’s genuineness before grading it. Collectors need to check the authenticity of suspect coins so that questions will not arise at some future date when the pieces are being sold, either by the owner or in an estate.
Counterfeiting has often been called the “second oldest profession with good reason. Coins were created in the Asia Minor nation of Lydia (located in present-day Turkey) about 600 B.C., and it was not long before criminal elements in that part of the world produced counterfeit coins.