How We Authenticate Coins — An Overview

Authenticity

"How do you know the coins are real?"

This is what people ask me about Artifact, more than anything else. More than everything else.

 As it turns out, it's something that I care a lot about -- I still authenticate and process all the coins in all our products myself. No one else even touches them, even when it means I'm scrubbing coins until my fingers bleed. If you own our product, you can be sure I selected your coin personally.

Unfortunately, this also means I have a lot to say about this subject. Rather than present you with an epic amount of text, I'll summarize here and link to further articles with more detail.

Very generally, we can divide the process into two categories -- positive indicators that suggest a coin is real, and negative indicators that expose fakes. For a coin to enter our product, it must possess all positive indicators, and zero negative indicators.

Positive Indicators

  • The coins must generally "look old".
  • The coins must possess an appropriate patina. More details here.
  • The clay particles on the coins must indicate age. More details here.
  • A group of coins should vary in size, shape, and weight.
  • The coins must have tooling marks typical of bronze casting. More details here.
  • The coins must have the correct name of a Vietnamese emperor on them.
  • The characters on the coin must be Chữ Nôm, not Chinese. More details here.

Negative Indicators

  • The coins must not "look new".
  • The coins must not be shiny metal, nor have cheap chemical / painted patinas applied.
  • The coins must not be clean of clay particles, or have clay showing signs it has only been in contact with the coin for a short time.
  • A group of coins must not all be the exact same size, shape, and weight.
  • The coins must not have tooling marks typical of die-stamping.
  • The coins should not have the name of a Chinese emperor on them instead of a Vietnamese one.
  • The coins must not contain Chinese characters. Chữ Nôm has subtle differences.
In practice, determining whether a Vietnamese coin is real is a very simple process. I have never encountered a good fake. All of the fake coins I've seen on the market were new coins manufactured for feng shui. These are all obviously new, and have the names of Chinese emperors on them -- in fact they are the precise coins manufactured in bulk for 3, 6, and 9 emperor charms! This is what they are actually mass produced for. The manufacturer, at least, is innocent in the matter of fake coins on the Vietnamese market.

 The retailers though? That's a story for another day. A rather entertaining one, at that.

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