Current eBay dealer in Fake Coins: shenwen030988

Reference: Fake Chinese Coin seller eBay ID shenwen030988

This eBay seller of FAKE coins (eBay, listen up! What about your STRICT policy against selling FAKE merchandise?) has been on eBay since July 3, 2008, so, in other words, duping the public for nearly eight years! Congratulations, 朋友 Péngyǒu, for being able to fly under eBay's radar for so long, and especially for evading negative feed back. I wonder how you do it, since eBay has carefully watched me, and deleted an item I had for sale (an ancient coin) because they determined it was a plundered ancient artifact! Duh! As if anyone on eBay's staff is even qualified to detect such a thing. The coin they deleted was simply a copper coin from Nisibis, which happens to be in the Middle East. Oddly, they ignored other coins from the same area. Maybe someone was having a bad hair day.

Back to my Chinese friend (that's what 朋友 péngyǒu means) shenwen030988 (I wonder if 3/9/1988 is his birthday?) — I thought that no one would be so foolish as to make fakes of inexpensive Northern Song dynasty coins, but evidently I was wrong.

First thing I saw when I opened eBay to the listings for Coins: World which on my computer is set to sort from cheapest to most expensive was a fake 北宋 Northern Song 大觀 Da Guan cash, listed by shenwen030988. The description says it is 27mm in diameter, so it is, in fact, a fake of a cash multiple, probably intended as a Value-2 cash. Naughty, naughty! Look carefully at the reverse side of this coin especially: It is a good example of painted on, fake patina. You can tell by the flaking.

Next thing I saw was what I thought was a poorly faked, quite common 北宋 Northern Song 至道 Zhidao Value-1 cash in 行書 Xíng shū Cursive style writing—but there were two of them in the picture. Oh! I get it! It is a rare double obverse coin, what in Chinese is called 雙面 Shuāng miàn. That's why they faked it. It really isn't a common coin, not when it has two obverses! Very clever!

(I hope no one becomes discouraged by the ugliness and stupidity of these two fakes to talk them out of collecting 北宋 Northern Song dynasty coins. When they're the real ones, and when you're not buying junk coins that should be sent to recycling, but nice, good grade examples which are plentiful on the internet from dealers like Ricky Watt or from off-eBay dealers like Frank Robinson, it is a great way to build an impressive collection of medieval coins inexpensively.)

Back to shenwen030988, the next item I saw, which was a fake of a rare cash (or maybe a fantasy, I don't have time to check my catalogs) was a 南宋 Southern Song dynasty 乾道 Qiandao cash with the reverse mintmark 松 Sōng. The description says it is 28mm, so a Value-2, which is commoner than Value-1 coins for this reign title, but the anomaly is the mintmark. Copper 乾道 Qiandao don't have reverse mintmarks. In fact, only iron 南宋 Southern Song coins have mintmarks (with a few exceptions, and of course this doesn't apply to the ones with year numerals on the back, which are made of copper, as well as iron). So, again, naughty, naughty! And to the potential buyer, beware! This piece isn't even worth having in my black museum.

The rest of this dealers selection of fakes is pretty pedestrian, that is, pretty predictable: the usual mix of large size rare cash, some of which are fantasies, others mules or with blank reverses when the original would have been charactered, like this 45mm example, described simply as 'bronze.' The side with characters is part of an award medal in the form of a large cash. Why did they not follow through with the other side's inscriptions? Who knows? Maybe just to be different.

At present, authentic 清 Qing dynasty large multiple cash are almost never found on eBay. The few that appear are usually from private collectors, or dealer/sellers in the United States. You can assume that unless one appears in the auctions of sellers like Ricky Watt or Tom Tangmu, sellers in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and maybe elsewhere (notably in Europe, like the U.K. and the Netherlands) it will probably be a fake. The fakes are just too smooth, or have unnatural patinas, or are of the wrong metal. Again, remember! Cash coins are never made of silver! If you want a silver cash to wear as a piece of jewelry, feel free to buy one from an eBay fakes dealer, but don't be surprised if it’s a copper fake with a silver wash on it. I wouldn't want to wear such garbage, would you?