Certificates of Authenticity

[Lapa]

First of all, Hello to everybody. Although I have been in contact with quite a few people active here (hi Dave, Alexei, Art, Ed and others), I heard about this forum only 2 days ago. Great to see such a useful and well designed service finally available.

So, to come to my topic, I am sure that I'm opening a can of worms here. In short, how reliable are these certificates? I have no doubt that Paul McDaniel is beyond well qualified, but I cannot help wondering sometimes about simple things like human nature (in other terms, having a bad day), or the possibility of forging the certificates. After all, if something such as an intricate order can be faked almost to perfection, what prevents a crafty soul to fake a CoA? With my (limited) knowledge of desktop publishing, I cannot see any major obstacle in manufacturing fairly easily a fake certificate.

Just in case you wonder what twisted mind brought me to think about such a possibility, and the value/guarantee/reliability of the certificates, a few months ago I purchased an order of Nakimov 2nd class with CoA from Paul. One tiny detail attracted my attention: at 6, one of the links in the chain has a sort of "small platform" extending downward. It is plainly visible on the order, and also shows well on the Certificate. And from all the Orders of Nakhimov 2nd class I have seen (well, not that many anyway), I have never seen such a detail on any of them. Such a small platform is part of the die used to strike the order, which means that my order would have to have been struck from a different die than all the other orders I have seen to date. Is this a reasonable assumption? Then again, we are dealing with soviet orders here, so... (why didn't I decide to collect Japanese orders instead!!!)

Marc