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Author Topic: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree  (Read 4377 times)

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rick2

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mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« on: June 16, 2012, 02:21:25 pm »
2.6 grams
16mm

a fouree for a legionary denarius struck by mark anthony

it probably is Legio VI

is it an interesting coin or are other specimen known ?
what do u reckon guys ?

TRPOT

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #1 on: June 16, 2012, 02:38:23 pm »
I have 3 of them myself... and of course I find all of them to be interesting.

2 of mine have iron cores instead of copper. Does yours stick to a magnet?

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #2 on: June 16, 2012, 02:49:02 pm »
i just tried it and it does not
so i guess its copper

the silver layer is very very thin

TRPOT

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #3 on: June 16, 2012, 02:52:29 pm »
Since these coins were so plentiful I'm sure many different people faked them using every method known. That's part of what makes them so interesting.

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #4 on: June 16, 2012, 02:54:51 pm »
I have 3 of them myself... and of course I find all of them to be interesting.

2 of mine have iron cores instead of copper. Does yours stick to a magnet?

Antony Legionaries are the only iron-cored plated coin types known to me. There was a famous 19th century example, now in Oxford, described in an old coin primer as having "flown to the magnet". Crawford rejected it as a 19th century (i.e. modern) manufacture, just because no other examples have ever been known (and, metallurgically, it's difficult to understand how it would be made). TRPOT's two other examples more or less prove the Oxford example as genuine.

As just about all these plated coins are ancient forgeries, it makes little sense to talk about rarity. Any given type of plated coin is just the accidental product of whatever coins the forger happened to pick up when making his dies. The rarity/commonness of plated coin types more or less mirrors the rarity/commonness of the types they copy. The choice of types was as random as a random offstrike or double strike, of no especial significant in rarity or numismatic terms, but still interesting as social and economic documents, and as a record of the coin type which they copy.

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #5 on: June 16, 2012, 03:33:43 pm »
thanks

TRPOT

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #6 on: June 17, 2012, 06:31:19 am »
TRPOT's two other examples more or less prove the Oxford example as genuine.


They may make a case, but they'd go a lot farther in proving anything if they came from a documented hoard or an archaeological dig. I wonder if any have turned up in such a situation in all of these intervening years, or if anybody noticed if they did. I doubt people check plated coins with magnets on a routine basis.

Offline dougsmit

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2012, 01:23:02 am »
The rarity/commonness of plated coin types more or less mirrors the rarity/commonness of the types they copy.

Any given type of plated coin is just the accidental product of whatever coins the forger happened to pick up when making his dies.

This is a subject that interests me.  My first thought is that there are more fourrees in the Imperatorial period than times before and after and more of some rulers (certainly including Antony).  There are several possible explanations of this and I see no way anything can be proved.  In a time of competing Romans I could see faking each other's coins just to bring disrepute on them but we can never prove who made a coin.  Another possible explanation for my observation is that some dealers in the past just threw out plated Republicans of the common variations but saved the Brutus and other 'better' items.  This does not explain the large number of plated legionary denarii.  I have nine Impertorial fourrees but have bought none in the last 20 years mostly because lately they seem to be bringing higher prices than I consider appropriate.  I agree they are interesting but there are obviously more people interested now than in 1990.


I disagree on the randomness of dies selected in this period.  There are many plated coins Republican and Imperial where an obverse is used with an inappropriate reverse but I can't recall seeing Imperatorial mismatches.  Can someone show some mules of this nature?  I'd love to see a Caesar/Brutus but wonder just what mismatches exist to prove the 'accidental product' statement.   ;D  

Some of my ugliest favorites:



Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #8 on: June 18, 2012, 04:25:20 am »
I disagree on the randomness of dies selected in this period.  There are many plated coins Republican and Imperial where an obverse is used with an inappropriate reverse but I can't recall seeing Imperatorial mismatches.  Can someone show some mules of this nature?  I'd love to see a Caesar/Brutus but wonder just what mismatches exist to prove the 'accidental product' statement.   ;D  

On the point of differences between periods, what I have noted is that plated coins only appear in large volume in the 1st century BC. That could indeed be exactly a point of selection - the interesting types are sold, the uninteresting types are discarded by dealers / diggers.

It may well be (I've no evidence) that forgers took more care about matching types in later periods, it might have been that Imperatorial types were more closely inspected in the market and any real obvious mismatches would be noticed. A bit like matching a George Washington head with the Queen - someone would notice - whereas if you mule a 1985 obverse and a 1984 reverse for a pound coin, no-one except a geek like me notices (these sort of mules of pound coin forgeries are pretty common. On balance I think Imperatorial mismatches are pretty common. How about an Augustus / Antony?



A Scipio / Cassius? (read the legend closely)



An Antony  / Coelia?


Faustus Sulla / Lentulus Consul? This mixes two different Imperatorial periods!


and one mixing an Imperatorial personality with a Second Punic war type?


and finally an Imperatorial mismatch that no-one but an expert would notice - a mule of Scarpus 546/6 type with 546/7, thus making nonsense of Octavian's titles in the combined legend.


All the above come from my own collection (except the Scipio / Cassius) so I'd vouch for Imperatorial mismatches being a common feature. ... or that my collection suffers from collection bias! Which it does of course.

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #9 on: June 18, 2012, 04:52:40 am »
a theory which i favour

is that the denarius was a fiduciary coinage in the same way as the sestertius , and that the aureus was the main unit of value

if you assume denarii are fiduciary than these fouree could be official issues struck during times when there was no silver around (and the mark anthony legionary denarius is a prime example) by official mints.
but still widely accepted as legal tender

the quality of the dies used in some of these fouree is too high to be used by a forger, and the process too complex to be applied by a mum and pop forger.
it was much easier and profitable for a counterfeiters to cast coins into clay or sand moulds

this theory would explain why legionary denarii circulated well into the 180AD with marcus aurelius , and it would help to explain the great inflationary period of 250-270AD.

if you think about it it would not be too dissimilar from the latin monetary union that existed in europe from 1860 til 1915 where gold was the main unit while silver and copper coins were issued at a higher tariff than their metal content.

(leave the euro of today out because it s a fiat currency , and the dollar in 1880-1920 because it was a silver based currency)


Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #10 on: June 18, 2012, 05:09:45 am »
a theory which i favour

is that the denarius was a fiduciary coinage in the same way as the sestertius , and that the aureus was the main unit of value

if you assume denarii are fiduciary than these fouree could be official issues struck during times when there was no silver around (and the mark anthony legionary denarius is a prime example) by official mints.
but still widely accepted as legal tender

the quality of the dies used in some of these fouree is too high to be used by a forger, and the process too complex to be applied by a mum and pop forger.
it was much easier and profitable for a counterfeiters to cast coins into clay or sand moulds

this theory would explain why legionary denarii circulated well into the 180AD with marcus aurelius , and it would help to explain the great inflationary period of 250-270AD.

if you think about it it would not be too dissimilar from the latin monetary union that existed in europe from 1860 til 1915 where gold was the main unit while silver and copper coins were issued at a higher tariff than their metal content.

(leave the euro of today out because it s a fiat currency , and the dollar in 1880-1920 because it was a silver based currency)



I could accept in theory an LMU-type setup where the denarius was subsidiary to gold, except that there was effectively no gold coinage issued by Antony (his legionary golds are known in only a few exceptionally rare examples).

For the production quality: be aware that a high proportion of plated coins during the Republic were struck from dies impressed from real coins. So the style is usually perfect. See all the hybrid examples I show above (except the Antony/Coelia). All are of perfectly good style but no-one would argue that Dioscuri denarii were being struck at the time of Augustus, or that the Pompeians under the consulship of Lentulus was issuing official coins with Sullan types, or that Augustus would have issued a type of Antony. The style of all these coins are perfect because they were made from dies made from real coins, not because they were official mint products. The same applies to the coins of Antony. Of course there may have been some exceptions of plated coins being made undercover in a mint, or using stolen dies. But those exceptions are still of a fraudulent and not official nature.

For the general discussion on this point, including some examples that more or less prove that forgers dies were made using impressed real coins (then hand finished), and were not official mint products, see my web-page:
http://andrewmccabe.ancients.info/Plated.html

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #11 on: June 18, 2012, 05:19:58 am »
i have seen the die at the end of the page

but how exactly was this die produced mechanically ?
you would need a stronger metal than the one you strike

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #12 on: June 18, 2012, 05:42:54 am »
i have seen the die at the end of the page

but how exactly was this die produced mechanically ?
you would need a stronger metal than the one you strike

I don't know, although the evidence (also see the Piso Frugi type) seems to prove it did happen - as well as commonsense observation of hundreds of hybrids that must have been made from coins in circulation. All my illustrated hybrids (except the Scarpus) must have been produced outside the mint and, except for the Antony/Coelia, are of obviously perfect style. Perhaps the metal was heated to soften it and the coin hammered in, then afterwards hardened. Remember the dies didn't need to produce 50,000 examples - a few 100 would be very profitable.

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #13 on: June 18, 2012, 05:59:02 am »
there are a few points however

if you produce a die from an official coin , you ll get a die without errors.
so the many dies with errors must have been produced ad hoc.

secondly these dies who produced these fouree were very very well made, i doubt you would have been able to produce one in an economically viable way.
i mean that to be profitable the forger has to contain his costs , there s no point in producing a fake 20$ bill if you spend so much time and effort that the end product costs you 22$.
so you are better off casting with a clay mould rather than going to the trouble of producing a die.

producing a fake coin is not a simple process , for example some of the recent chinese replica can be spotted miles away , same story for a few of the fake romans in the fake reports.

then you have the matter of producing a thin silver foil , which is not technologically simple

in your page you mention the wax copy , then a clay mould and then a die , but i doubt that using a process like this you get such sharp details.
i have seen a few coins made from casting and the details simply do not come out , so i doubt that casting a die using a clay mould would result in anything useful.

my main objections however is simply on economic grounds, if you are a forger you go for something cheaper and less labourious.

bear in mind that during the middle ages to modern time forgers never reached a level of sophistication shown by these fouree unless they were produced in organized mints.

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #14 on: June 18, 2012, 06:39:06 am »
i also thought that when there were unofficial mints that struck coins like in the 270 their product was of far inferior quality than an official mint , and was easily spotted

here is a claudius consecratius for reference

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #15 on: June 18, 2012, 07:12:39 am »
I guess this is a question of belief in the evidence. I've studied this in depth and written about it extensively, and follow many experienced numismatists in this, chiefly the research of Michael Crawford. I'm convinced that the vast majority of plated coins of good style were produced from dies made - by means unknown - from coins in circulation, and that they are forgeries, and that almost none were produced from official dies, or if they were produced from official dies, that this was done fraudulently.

The evidence, which I quote on my web-page, suggests that these were die-struck, and that the dies were made using genuine coins but were then hand-finished. If you read my page carefully, you will see that the existence of many small differences in otherwise die-matched coins is evidence of the hand-finishing of dies. You would not get these differences from casting, nor would you get a struck-look from a simple cast.

If the coin evidence suggests that these forgeries were produced, by striking, using coins in circulation as templates (one way or another, as I said, I don't know for sure what the technique was), then it would seem that from economic grounds that must have been, in fact, the easiest thing to do, as I agree forgers always choose the easiest route.

If your belief on these issues differs from mine (which is in fact the consensus view among most serious numismatists), I will be unable to change your views. I only suggest you look at the evidence base very carefully, and think on it some more.

Your example of the Claudius Gothicus is of course in barbaric style. But most of the examples I find of plated coins (in the Republican period) are of perfectly official style....

rick2

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #16 on: June 18, 2012, 07:48:51 am »
i m still a novice when it comes to roman coins , i ve only been collecting for 2 1/2 years , so I have plenty of things to learn

i m just trying to make sense of a few interesting problems , I have a background in economics , so i m trying to make sense of these issue more from an economic point of view

i guess we ll have a lively debate on this issue for years to come

in the meantime we have plenty of time to collect specimen like the one posted here 

Offline Andrew McCabe

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #17 on: June 18, 2012, 08:19:52 am »
i guess we ll have a lively debate on this issue for years to come

Perhaps there will be debate less than you think, because this is an issue that has been debated for centuries. It's been "done". After Crawford's articles and evidence in the late 1960s the debate died out among almost all academic numismatists, as he seemed to present convincing arguments. After I reproduced his essays online (with his permission) a couple of years ago, with additional material e.g. pictures and links to the examples he cites and other articles, the debate in online forums also reduced. Most people (not all) are generally convinced. Some of those who are unconvinced have perhaps not studied the data thoroughly.  A remaining proportion do understand the evidence but still remain unconvinced (though have not, in my view, provided any convincing alternatives that explain the coin evidence).

Sometimes it's wise just to accept the consensus view and move on to more important arguments. There are other more pressing numismatic problems that resurrecting the idea that plated coins are official. Some may have been made from official dies (fraudulently used), and a tiny proportion made under siege conditions may have been made semi-officially, but that's another story.

TRPOT

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Re: mark anthony legionary denarius , fouree
« Reply #18 on: June 18, 2012, 08:25:06 am »


secondly these dies who produced these fouree were very very well made, i doubt you would have been able to produce one in an economically viable way.


I doubt the concept of starving artists is a recent phenomenon. There must have been many people with the skills to pull it off and families to feed. Or, for that matter, skilled slaves who could have done the work.

 

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