Leningrad Cowboys and the fake Artefacts

Beware of Russian fakes

Two Russian dealers were spotted in Warsaw this week with a whole load of smuggled artefacts mostly little metal items of the sort collectors love, coins, seals, rings, militaria of the First and Second World War, Napoleonic uniform buttons etc. What caught my eye were a series of buckles and penannular brooches of Baltic type. One, a small buckle, was genuine, the rest were freshly-cast fakes. A few years ago the western markets were flooded with material like this from the mass robbing of cemeteries being sold as "Viking" finds to collectors who did not know the difference. Does the appearance of fakes like this mixed up with genuine metal detected finds mean that the accessible cemeteries are now largely emptied?