Ancient forgery of L. Autronius RRC 146/1

[Joss]

I have this imitation of a denarius of Lucius Autronius, who minted coins between 189-180 BC. His production was very limited as Crawford gives less than 10 obverse dies for this issue.

It is therefore strange that someone chose to make a forgery of this rare coin. You can see that a banker had a doubt and made a test cut on the monogram.

I find the style to be quite good, and I thought it was a real one at first, but the border of dots on the reverse and the monogram show that it is not official. Perhaps the forger lived in Italy (I mean that he was not a "barbarian").

I was therefore wondering if someone knew a study of ancient forgeries of old Republican denarii, or knew other examples of imitations of rare issues like this one.

[Norbert]

Hmmm..
I do not feel experienced enough to give a judgement. Still I do not like the form of the letters.

[Joss]

What do you mean the form of the letters?

[Jordan Montgomery]

The best site on these types is Phil Davis's website: http://rrimitations.ancients.info

I am unfortunately only a novice with these imitations and cannot help much myself but hopefully that will help. For what it's worth, I've never seen another imitation of this particular type except the one you've listed. The later first century denarii were far more commonly imitated.

[Norbert]

I am trying to attach a small image below - hope this works.

You can see the "ATR" in ligature from the monogram.
All the letters are made from lines that end in 'dots' -holes that have been 'drilled' into the coin die.
This is how letters where engraved at that time. Much different from the letters that you will find on later imerial bronze for example.

On your coin the 'R' from Roma as well as from the monogram looks much different.  Much more 'modern' to my eye.

[Joss]

I see what you mean,but this is a counterfeit; the engraver struggled to carved the letters whereas he did a good job with the head.

[Norbert]

Can you give a weight for the coin?

If it is a forgery - that is if it was made by a forger for extra profit - then it will have a core from base metal. And with good likelihood it would be much lighter than the official issue.
I would expect it to look very much like an official issue as long as the outer coating of silver is intact. I would also expect the outer coating to be broken with the amount of wear the coin is showing. And certainly I would not expect the letter engraving as seen here. It would have raised immediate suspicion when put into circulation. With the general look of your coin I would not expect this to be a (plated) ancient forgery. 

A different case would be an imitation. A coin made from good silver that was made by someone outside the roman territory. This would not be a forgery but a good coin worth its weight in silver. It does not have to look exactly like any roman denarius, but it copies the general design.
'Celtic imitations' are fairly common for republican denarii. But for all I know not for this design. And still - while the general design just imitates but not completely copies a denarius - the technology to engrave a letter should be the same. This is why I doubt the imitation as well.
Just two links for information on imitations of republican denarii below:

http://www.academia.edu/1516327/Imitations_of_Republican_denarii_from_Moesia_and_Thrace

http://rrimitations.ancients.info/index.html

Having said all this -  there are people on this forum that can answer to this with much more authority. For some reason they did not jump onto this topic so far. Possibly it might help to post this coin (and with a weight) in the 'fake discussion' group as well.

[Joss]

Weight is good: 3.79g. The coin doesn't seem in pure silver though; the matte grey texture reminds me that of Severean denarii. I think it is in billon. The test cut shows it is not plated.

Thanks for the links. The problem is that these barbarous imitations started to be made in the middle of the 2nd century -- at least 30 years after RRC 146/1. This is what is puzzling me.