I thought it was interesting, and from the photo, I certainly would not know that the
owl is a
fake.
Robert wrote...
I have recently been given a small group of coins to photograth and
catalogue for another coin dealer in Calgary, who is going to be having an
auctions some time next
spring.
One of the coins was this Athenian
tetradrachm :
23.2 x 24.2 mm
15.95 grams.
I did not photograph the edges, but there is wear on the edges consitent
with the coin once having been in a jewellery mount.
I am certain it is not an offical Athenian genuine coin, as 15.95 grams is
an impossible
weight for a genuine coin in this series. There is a small
possiblity it is an ancient un-offical coin, but I doubt that. I believe
this is a
modern forgery.
I have reason to believe this coin may have been in a local calgary
collection for at least 20 years, and possibly longer.
I would like to know if anyone as seen others from this set of dies (it is
definately die struck), and if anyone knows when it would have been struck.
There was a set of relatively
good forgeries of a variety of ancient Greek
coins, die struck at
Athens in the 1960's and are known as the
Athensforgeries. I don't have any information on that group, but in the back of
my mind I am wondering if is one of them.
There is a very unusual stylistic problem in that the dots on the body of
the
owl are arranged almost randomly, while on the offical issues they are
normally arranged in distinct organized lines. Hopefully this will
helpsomeone recognize the group of
forgeries it
comes from.
Robert Kokotailo