Numismatic Forgery, by Charles M. Larson

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Numismatic Forgery by Charles M. Larson Front Cover

Numismatic Forgery by Charles M. Larson Back Cover

Numismatic Forgery
by Charles M. Larson, published by Zyrus Press
"An illustrated, annotated guide to the practical principles, methods, and techniques employed in the private manufacture of rare coins".

Full review coming soon. (But don't hold your breath).
In general, this is a useful book, which most dealers, along with serious collectors and investors, should read.
It does have a few annoying features however.
Firstly, it is written in American rather than English, so contains words like "gotten".
Some of the descriptions are almost impossible to follow, and one or two appear to be complete gobbledygook.

Forgery or Counterfeit
aThe author appears to assume that all his readers understand that a forgery means an imitation of a numismatic coin, and that counterfeit means an imitation intended to pass at face value into circulation. These definitions are by no means universally accepted and understood.

Page 168
Contains the following statement:

"When a dealer purchases a forgery thinking it's an authentic coin, he'll sooner or later end up selling it as an authentic coin."

Objection
When we first read this we took an instant and great exception to it.
Any professional dealer with a pride in his reputation should and would double check coins before he offers them for sale.
There can hardly be an experienced dealer alive who has not at some time bought a fake. This is only to be expected, and can happen to anybody. At a coin fair (convention), or in with a large collection, or on a busy day, it is easy to appraise incoming coins too quickly, and miss a fake.
Most dealers re-appraise their purchases later, at greater leisure. At this point they should correctly identify almost all fakes which got past them the first time.
Under these circumstances, only dishonest dealers would sell such a coin as authentic.
On a second reading of the paragraph, we think the author may have thought he had implied that the dealer never got to realise the coin was fake, but he fails to make this point clear.
Certainly, if a dealer has been completely taken in by a particular fake, then it is likely that he will resell it as genuine. There are many expert collectors who know more about their specialist field than most dealers, who are usually more general in their dealings. It would not be uncommon or surprising for collectors or other dealers to query the item's authenticity, and to advise the dealer to re-check it.
I suspect that dealers reselling known fakes as genuine is probably much more common in the USA than in the UK, although sadly I cannot vouch for all of our UK competitors.

Planchets and Blanks
The author uses the American word planchet instead of blank, he does however give his definition of planchet in the glossary section of his book.

Charles Larson does stress that although his book is presented as a "how to" guide to forgery, it was written and published to alert collectors, investors and dealers to how it is or could be done, and not for use by criminals.
We can't resist the comment that to do so would be "Larsony"?

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