Constantius argenteus (Virtus Militum, serdica mint, officina delta), all fake ?

[Potator II]

Hi all

We're currently having a discussion on the french forum about several argentei of Constantius I that have turned around for a few years now, and about which a few members there are questionning their authenticity.

The description is the same for all and every examples, apparently the die axis are all the same, they are all in perfect condition :

Constantius I, 305-306. Argenteus (Silver, 20mm, 3.43 g 12), Serdica, 305-306. CONSTANTIVS AVG Laureate head of Constantius I to right. Rev. VIRTVS MILITVM / SM SDΔ Camp gate with three turrets. Cohen 304a. Gautier 25. RIC 11a.

Following are some pictures of various specimen that have showed up in auctions in the past (recent and not so recent). Of course it might be an undeclared hoard of coins struck with the same pair of dies and buried together, that would have been scattered and then the coins sold by various sellers and houses. We would be glad to hear (read) others opinions about them













There are many others (about thirty in the past ten years)
Thanks for your input
JC

[J. B.]

7^th

[driekus]

I am really interested to see what the experts say here as they would easily fool me.
I have seen this coin (or one version) on an auction site that I would consider very reputable.
I would assume looking at the coins that they would have to be struck.

[curtislclay]

I think these coins all come from a large hoard of argentei, the bulk of which was acquired by Freeman & Sear some five or maybe eight years ago.

Rob Freeman would certainly know more about it, doubtless also Roger Bland at the British Museum and your fellow countryman Georges Gautier.

[bpmurphy]

All perfectly genuine, as Curtis says from a hoard 5-8 years ago.

All the coins were recorded and photographed, though I don't know where the records are now, I think perhaps with Cathy Lorber though I'm not 100% certain.

Barry Murphy

[Joe Sermarini]

I'm always glad to hear coins that look genuine, are genuine. 

[Potator II]

So am I, in that debate, I was on the "genuine" side 

Thanks for your answers gentlemen
JC

[Chut]

Thank you very much for your interesting answers. I was also thinking about some unpublished hoard, on the French forum topic.

Do you have any idea of the scale of this hoard ? Dozens of coins, or even more ?

Maybe we can hope that the prices would become lower, facing this inflow...

[bpmurphy]

The hoard was over 1000 coins I believe, not sure of an exact count. And the hoard is completely dispersed at this point so prices won't be coming down from any inflow of new specimens.

I'll send Cathy Lorber an email and see if she has a count on how many coins were in the hoard.

Barry Murphy

[Chut]

Thank you very much Barry, it's very interesting.     

[bpmurphy]

Spoke to Cathy Lorber and she doesn't have the information on the hoard. She did tell me that the hoard was completely cataloged and the information was sent to Georges Gauthier in 2009 who planned to either publish the hoard or include the information in a study he was doing on argeniti. She thought it was going to be published in the Revue Numismatique but I just checked and it hasn't been published there.

I'm sure there were more than 1000 coins in the hoard, I remember looking through several double row boxes of Argentii from the hoard at a NY International, probably around 2006 or 2007.

Barry Murphy