Yes I do as a matter of fact, why trust someone else? If you can't
authenticate it, you shouldn't collect it. That is how I feel. Little
experience here, back in 1993 when I was in Hamburg, Germany I purchased a
Hamburg 20 Marks coin dated 1911. Look in your catalog of World coins, and
you will notice there is no such thing. Who do I blame for it, myself or
the dealer whom sold the counterfeit to me. I blame myself for not knowing
better. Now when I look at it I see the soft details of a cast coin. I
should have known better before parting with the 150 marks for it. Live and
learn. Now I do not buy stuff I have not researched well and cannot
determine if they are authentic or not. Also I looked for tooled coins, not
much of a problem with USA coins, but a real problem when you get into
medieval and early milled coins.

I agree, i once spotted a whole load of fake half sovereigns. They
looked geniune from first glance, weight felt right too. But when i
picked up the first it had a darkish circular marks (like it had been
cleaned in a way), so i put it straight back, the other 7 also had the
exact same darkish marks all in the exact same places. (And i mean
exact, even cleaning in a circular motion which is what it looked
like, couldn't have done that to all 8 in the exact same place!)

They also looked slightly weak in strike, so they got left behind.

My motto if you can't tell the difference between a fake and a real
coin then you either need to learn from the mistake, or you're in the
wrong hobby.

Ah another person into early milled coinage!!! (I quite like medieval
too!)

Sylvester.