I also have one "beautiful" example of tooling...
Could those be two nearly identical cast fakes?
Yes, i was puzzled with this coin too. This part of scratch looks really strange. But a wear looks good, and exist and another examples from this obv. die at close condition, which seems undoubtly struck.
So, i think it's mostly crazy tooling, not forgery. IMHO.
That is great research, xintaris75!
I immediately thought forgery as Joe said. You convinced me otherwise for a second, with the other coin. But how did the first pair end up being so identical (minus the bizarre scratch/crack) in their placement and position on the
flan, and in the
flan shape? It seems like someone was making
forgeries with that die (or set of dies), and once it cracked, they shopped the die to give the
flan a different shape. Is that possible? I just can't shake the first pair of images. The flans appear 100% identical with identical die positioning, only differing in that
crack. Couldn't the die have later been reshaped to create the
flan shape on the third coin you show?
I'm just thinking "out loud," but it seems odd to me...