Advice please on spotting a genuine from a wrongun.
Thanks.

Really not easy. The guy selling on eBay ( pointless to namedrop as he changes ) seems to have a start price of £9.99. He has been known to buy genuine blank NCB checks and then carefully stamp and age. Watch to see the shape of the check matches the area the pit was in.
He also produces embossed checks, some of which are quite convincing. Watch out for "misshapen" blanks, used to disguise imperfections in lining up the font and any circle of dots (often used on pre 47 checks).
Watch for variations in layout between known originals and fakes. Not always easy, as real variations did exist.
Then there are checks from collieries that never had them, too many to list....
In the end it's largely down to a gut feeling, don't pay a lot for a check unless 100 percent sure it's the real thing.
Hope this helps......

---

Okay, just had a quick look on eBay (other sites are available :lol:) and didn't take long. Don't know how to link but here's the item number 253948041850 Have to feel sorry for the guy, he's selling as FAKE, he makes it quite clear he has been taken. Lord knows what he paid, his start price is £40.
It does however bear out everything I said above, misshapen, wonky font and ring of dots not concentric.
Impressive as it looks, it would only catch out a beginner.

---

I formed a collection of Welsh colliery checks some years ago. I had some later NCB ones but I concentrated on the Pre-57 ones. Some of them were polo checks. But I spoke to an expert who told me that a number being sold on ebay are fakes. The people that do it bury them in their gardens to age them and get the patina. They also knock em about a bit to make them look like they've hard a hard life. Some of those polo's make over, £450 so that's a lot of money for a fake. Anyway I've given up buying them now because I don't have confidence in them being genuine.

Oops I meant pre, 47!

Yep, eBay man does polos as well, much the same treatment.
Another trick was that genuine checks would often have solder applied in order to cover an obsolete number. This method seems widely used on Welsh checks and laddo has noticed and replicated to add even more authenticity.

I only collect Yorkshire checks so if you see something you really want, drop me a pm and I'll give it the once over.

---

Few more thoughts on checks. eBay chaps first attempts were a plain brass blank with copper numbers soldered to them. Very catchy looking but complete figments, problem being this is maybe 15 plus years ago, they're still out there and people will be looking to unload.
Re-strikes, about 30 plus years ago, a collector got hold of some original dies and commissioned a company to produce a fair number of checks.
Pits include Pope & Pearsons West Riding Coll (Yorkshire diamond) Hemsworth Coll (round) + one other that I've forgotten. He also had the company make a completely fictitious check Churwell Coll Leeds.
The way to detect the Hemsworth is that the numbering on originals is nicely machine engraved, the re-strikes are punched.
"Pairs " of checks (yeah, right) one is original, the other is blank unissued that the seller has stamped to match.
Lastly "named" checks. Checks occasionally did carry a name but of the several currently on eBay, all are done with the same set of letter punches, so someone has some genuine blanks and a "Guide to the Coalfields ".
That's all I can think of that might be of use...

---

I was working on Anglesey around five years ago and as you do got interested in the Parys Mine copper tokens. As a cornishman I had to have one!. The mine was worked by a cornish manager and there were some cornish miners there too teaching the locals how to mine the deposit. So you've guessed it I went hunting for the druid tokens. Which were used to pay the men and were a valid token of currency. They come in two different weights are are beautifully annotated with the druids head one side. But as you've probably guessed some of them are fakes. Because they were created to cheat the system because they contained less than one ounce or half ounce of pure copper. They are still faked today.! I did get two from a serious collector so the provenance is proven but the fakes are still out there. So be aware if you ever go after them. :tongue 🙂

The Druid tokens get very complicated.
They were issued at a time when small value coins were not common, so the were widely adopted, (and copied)

They were struck at several different mints, some officially and some not. Then some are full size and others underweight.
There are over 200 variations of design recorded.

There is even a book listing all known variants
The provincial token-coinage of the 18th century 1915
Richard Dalton S. H. Hamer :smartass: