Resources > Fake Coins and Notorious Fake Sellers

Leery. For sale now.

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slokind:
Now I really need help.  I downloaded the image, and now I can't find it anywhere, whether .com, .fr, or .de.  I only remember that the seller's name was unfamiliar to me.  Fortunately I saved it in several folders.  Pat L.

slokind:
OK, wherever the dealer and his coin are now, let's go to Pick, AMNG I, pp. 431-432, where we find that there were only three Pontianus obverse dies for Nicopolis ad Istrum known to him.  They had three obverse legends: AV K OPPEL S  |  EVH MAKRINOS bust in scale armor, [AV K M OP]PEL SEVH  |  MAKRINOS bust in scale armor (as on the coin in question), and AV K OPPEL SE  |  VH MAKRINOS a Head.  Note that only the last is a Head, and it has SE  |  VH.  The bust that has SEVH |  is in a quite different style, too.
So, if this coin is 'good', it is also new, and I have lots and lots of the Head die, which got used to death, even after Pontianus.
The Pontianus Head, also, is used with many interesting reverses, but never with a Dikaiosyne, not even when it continued to be used with Agrippa reverses.
That's without even looking, really, at the coin.  On these grounds alone, I think the coin is damned, and I suspect that the seller may have seen my posting of it and whisked it away.  I did search a lot, with all sorts of spellings.
So I'll just post the coin that (privately!) I call the Dainty Asklepios.  Tomorrow I'll try to describe how I'm afraid this new coin was created.
I was hoping that you all would jump in and try to help.  It's pulling teeth, teaching, to get students to test ideas aloud, especially when it's not a question of 'getting the correct answer' but of real lab work!  But all of you know more than my students did.
Pat L.

Jochen:
I have looked at many head only types. And all have a different lower bust line! This line is always waved and has some indentations. But never in that way like the suspicious coin. I don't know wether this is worthy to note!

Best regards

Pscipio:
Pat, I found the link and sent it to you through PM.

Lars

slokind:
Bravo, Lars!  How did you do it?  When I used your link, I found that, inter alia, the posting includes NO USEFUL KEYWORDS!  Now, I don't want those folks sending viruses to Forvm or harassing Joe, so I'll just say that there are a couple of other bad signs: But they are not about the coin itself.  What I want to do is make sure that this kind of work will not fool anyone.
(1) Bravo, Jochen.  I call that neck-edge (privately) the 'potato chip'.  It is even better than laurel ties for eliminating die identities.
(2) I'm afraid, though I disagree as to degree of work, that Curtis is right.  This did start with a real coin, and that a Pontianus Head.  Except for the bow and one tie on the laurel, it is now a badly befouled slug.  Also, the perpetrator had, on his 'blank' , which had been an encrusted, corroded, and probably diseased coin, or on a real one such as have been posted here and elsewhere, a perfect and complete legend.  Beyond the legend, nothing can be recovered of the reverse (which is a shame, because a couple of the Pontianus reverses are known in single specimens).  The head is of roughly true proportions, but all the details are false.
(3) First, this Head, even when worn, but always plainly when even aVF as on the Asklepios I posted, always has a slight beard.  The perpetrator has shaved him and rounded his chin.  Also, Macrinus's close-cropped hair has been rendered by the perpetrator as what Mr. Imus called 'nappy'.  Uniformly, all over.  Compare the real one.  Also, the laurel leaves are done as child art, utterly flat and with lines with no botanical meaning.  And look at Dikaiosyne's scratched scales!
(4) On these often quite heavy flans, the perpetrator had plenty of metal.  Around the edges (not the white line which is poor post-processing) there are strong hints of how rough, aftter the first crust revealed it, the coin was, and the dark areas, e.g, on the face of Macrinus, may be pits left by scooped-out bronze disease.  The fields are visibly lowered and have a character that is that of raw metal, not any remains of struck surface, unless on that laurel bow.  Deeply and uniformly scraped.
(5) Macrinian tool-proof letter forms.  These go back farther but reach their apogee now: the extremely spiky squared letter forms.  They are a mannerism but develope from the use of punches and chisels in forming serifs.  The result, especially when the dies are relatively new, is very striking on the Asklepios with a Head die posted above, the one coin that has all the letters in the reverse circumferential legend with the same exact breaks.  THIS IS ONE THING YOU CAN'T REPLICATE IN COLD WORK.  Not only do all the letters look ragged, there is no hint of their true character.
(6) Finally, Macrinus is said to have been vain, but he wasn't a matinee-idol ninny.  I am sure he thought himself handsome, but not pretty.  As usual (what's with these guys?) the perpetrator has made him into a ninny.  That long, down-pointed nose and sharp-pointed chin of the Pontianus head (the same style, BTW, recurs on some Pontianus heads at Marcianopolis) surely are not quite Macrinus's own, but they are essential to the Pontianus Head die.  So is the pronounced supraorbital ridge.  The perpetrator has 'normalized' all three.  It is NOT a question of what Macrinus looked like but of what this die looked like.
Well, that's enough.  I'll go find the images of the two other Pontianus dies, the two Bust-in-scale-armor dies.  Good to assemble them in one place, without the distraction of myths or cults or statuary types.
Pat L.
I have a less rough but more worn 'hearty Asklepios', but this one has more of the legend.

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