My specific concerns:
I think it has been
tooled from a much more worn
legionary. I now know who sells it, a firm which is known not to be reliable as regards improved and altered coins and I show below another coin (
Caesar elephant) currently on sale by that seller. It looks like
tooled silver, unnatural/ scraped/ altered, weird
style. Just try finding a
style match. Just to be clear, this
thread is about the above pictured
LEG IIX (rather than about the elpehant pictured below), but when seen together one has the impression of a pair of
tooled and altered coins (deliberately in one case, accidentally in the other).
Looking again at the
LEG IIX, much of it is quite natural, including the
style of the
eagle and the typical recessions
ghosting the lettering; the aplustre-end of the galley looks odd, as do the standards, and the contrast between the
obverse corrosion and the smooth fields on the
reverse. The
reverse is concave, ie scooped out or dug out, with an unnatural surface. If you look to the left of the left-hand
standard you see a series of horizontal parallel scrape marks, mechanically made by a tool. It is not a die match to another well-known (genuine) specimen of
LEG IIX which I also show below. The lack of a diematch is not, itself, of concern, as the issue might have been struck from 2 or 3 dies (quite usual even with the rarest issues), but the die is in the
style of a different engraving hand, which seems implausible. By the by it is also of light weigh, 3.35 grams, consistent with it being
reduced from a worn coin, and so is the
caesar elephant: 3.30 grams.
All considered together, conclusion:
fake,
tooled from a corroded or worn ordinary legion. I have not the slightest doubt that the above pictured
LEG IIX is
fake, and the below pictured
elephant is badly
tooled.
Fake Coins and Notorious Fake Sellers
