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Author Topic: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina  (Read 138691 times)

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Offline Varangian

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #100 on: April 22, 2005, 12:48:37 pm »
I think that I will me in the minority in thinking this however.

I'm with ya!

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #101 on: April 22, 2005, 01:20:58 pm »
Martin,

FWIW, I would also agree that your coin appears to be genuine (and that any artificial patina applied was likely to cover up the harsh cleaning), and my belief is that in general monneron's offerings are a mix (which may have changed) of genuine and fake coins. However, given this belief, seeing individual coins that appear genuine doesn't affect my perception of the whole... for that to happen I'd want to hear a expert in-hand exoneration of some of the ones that DON'T look genuine.

I also think that in this case you need to look at the big picture of the mix of coins being sold. Proving any individual coin as genuine or fake doesn't really tell the whole tale. Any seller could accidently let the occasional fake thru, but the apparent homogenity of many of monnerons's coins seems to suggest that a larger scale view of the coins is needed.

My own attitude towards these coins is that:

1) I believe that at least some (and maybe many) of them are fake, esp. the earlier ones in bad pseudo-barbaric style.

2) An in-hand detailed examination (as well as sufficient expertise, which I don't claim to have) would be necessary to authenticate others which at least appear OK from the eBay photo. This is of course true of any coin, not just monnerons, but most coins arn't under suspicion.

3) To avoid buying fakes, I am avoiding monneron's coins altogether (as Barry Murphy advised), just as I do romanseller's, although at times that has meant passing up desireable coins that do appear to be genuine.

Ben

Offline Numerianus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #102 on: April 22, 2005, 02:08:31 pm »
This is my reply tp BenB.

First.  I would like to see a claim  in this discussion from someone having a repution: "Guys,  I personally examined in hands some coins of this terrible Monneron and find , between them a number of  uncontestable morden forgeries. my conclusion is based on the following consideration: ..."   To be honest, Monneron buys coins and  resell them (occasionally, they could be modern forgeries) ....  Moreover,  some of his ``barbaric style"  coins could be ancient forgeries....
At the moment, coins examined at hand by the members of the board seems to be authentic.


Second.  Of course, the forgeries could be done  elsewhere, e.g., in Bulgaria. However, do yu believe  that one vcan do deceptive forgeries without
appropriate patterns?  The latter one can find in France rather than in Balcans...   I completely agree with th epoint of view that
one cannot  one can produce a deceptive forgery  from a bad quality pic from a catalogue....

Third.   The  price of gold coins is dozens and even HUNDRED  times higher than of these MISERABLE copper and, nevertheless, forgers reused their dies.   

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #103 on: April 22, 2005, 04:07:20 pm »
Third.   The  price of gold coins is dozens and even HUNDRED  times higher than of these MISERABLE copper and, nevertheless, forgers reused their dies.   

Well, depending on how many of these are fakes, the number of apparent dies involved does seem to be fairly large, but if it's a profitable business they why not? If it's profitable to make and pass the output of one fake die, then why not of more (to the limit of the market being able to absorb that volume of fake output)? Once you are set up to produce flans and strike coins from dies, then the only cost of producing another type is the few hours of labor to cut a new die.

In a 40 hr week, a single die engraver could probably produce maybe 10-20 dies. Hire him for a month and you've got 40-80 dies... Now, consider that no-one's going to train to become a proficient ancient die forger unless he sees rather more than a one month career in it for himself... assuming that fake die cutters exist at all, then one has to believe that they could likely be churning out an awfully large number of dies!

Assuming that someone has found it profitable to produce fake low end bronzes, and has a large catalog of die types, then the question of why we're not seeing die matches in the coins sold by what'd have to be only one of many outlets, doesn't seem so odd.

It could also be noted that if these coins were instead a genuine hoard, then one might also expect a number of dies matches, yet still they are not there.

Ben

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #104 on: April 22, 2005, 05:04:24 pm »
  And would you consider these to be obverse die matches with different reverses?  The red background was submitted to this thread about a year ago by DIVVSAVGVSTVS and the other sits in my black cabinet.

Arles

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #105 on: April 22, 2005, 05:19:26 pm »
This is a post that was made to the CFDL back around the time this thread was getting going, so not discussing his recent offerings but the earlier ones which got this thread started.
Keith
 
 
Hello all,

I was one of the people who bought some coins from Monneron.
Following the discussion on this list, I took 12 coins (8 official, 4
imitative) to the British Museum to see what they had to say. The 8
coins (including Magnentius and Decentius) that are of official dies
were all judged to be genuine. About three of the four imitative
pieces the BM coin curator said that he would have to defer
judgement. There were no obvious signs to indicate a forgery, in fact
their fabrique looked absolutely genuine in the opion of the BM, but
the particular dies were unknown/unrecorded and one would need to
know more about the source. One coin of the imitative group was die-
linked with a piece illustrated in the literature and this coin must
be regarded as genuine.

If the group I bought from Monneron is representative of his
material, I think the claim made earlier on this list that all his
coins are fake must be rejected. It would seem that his official
coins are all or mostly authentic while some of the imitative pieces
remain questionable.





  

Offline Numerianus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #106 on: April 22, 2005, 05:40:46 pm »
Ben, did you notice that arguing in your last post you proved that  that such a scenario
is impossible.  Economically, the same result  (admitting the existence of the Engraver)
can be obtained by cutting a pair of dies for an aureus or  a dozen
of dies with of Galba, Vitellius and even Tribute Penny which is always in demand.   

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #107 on: April 22, 2005, 06:12:46 pm »
Ben, did you notice that arguing in your last post you proved that  that such a scenario
is impossible.  Economically, the same result  (admitting the existence of the Engraver)
can be obtained by cutting a pair of dies for an aureus or  a dozen
of dies with of Galba, Vitellius and even Tribute Penny which is always in demand.   

Well by that logic Hyundai's logically can't exist, because it'd be illogical for the manufacturer to not be building Ferrari's! ;-)

Offline Rupert

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #108 on: April 22, 2005, 06:19:15 pm »
  And would you consider these to be obverse die matches with different reverses?  The red background was submitted to this thread about a year ago by DIVVSAVGVSTVS and the other sits in my black cabinet.
The obverses are quite similar, probably by the same hand, but not from the same die. Look at the end of the shorter tie which is near the C on the one and nearer to the O on the other coin, the quite different first letter S on the left, and the dot behind the head.

Rupert
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Massanutten

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #109 on: April 22, 2005, 07:34:22 pm »
  Actually the shorter tie extends to the C.  I can see it under glass, it just doesn't show up well on the scan.  I think the difference in the S is more due to my coin remaining in most of its green cover which distorts it somewhat.  I'm not aware of an issue from this mint that used a dot behind the bust and assume it is a bit of gunk.
Bob

Offline Joe Sermarini

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #110 on: April 22, 2005, 07:52:06 pm »
I believe these are a die match.  If not, the latest technology of forgery makes it very easy for the forger to take an fake and make copies with very slight modifications.  I saw someone on this board once demonstrated a die match by making one coin fade into another.  I would like to see that with these two coins.

The economic arguments are not valid.  Laborers in France may make over 20 Euros an hour but there are plenty of them that are unemployed.  Forgery is something that someone could do in their spare time for extra income even if you have a full-time job.  I think if you look at the total potential income it is substantial (he now has over 1500 feedbacks).  Also, forgery is something that people do for other reasons.  Maybe they enjoy the artistic aspects.  Maybe it gives them pleasure to make suckers out of collectors. 

Sure seems like a lot of coins in the collection or hoard or whatever it is (or isn't).  They just keep coming.  The old pics are now being deleted by monneron (is that a change?). 
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Massanutten

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #111 on: April 22, 2005, 09:30:08 pm »
  Ok, I think I am in the best position to try it.  I retook the scan of my obverse at the correct orientation and resized it to as close to the other coin as I could. I then stitched the coins one on top of the other. Both pics are attached.

Offline whitetd49

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #112 on: April 22, 2005, 09:38:51 pm »
Similar, but not die matches!  Details of the hair and ear are clearly different.
If you watch long enough, even a treefrog is interesting.  Umberto Eco
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roscoedaisy

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #113 on: April 22, 2005, 09:56:49 pm »
Not die matches, especially apparent in the ear and nose!  I did an animated gif myself and it is quite obvious when you use more transition frames which cannot be shown here due to file size limits.


roscoedaisy

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #114 on: April 22, 2005, 10:00:17 pm »
Looking at it though, it almost seems impossible for an ancient die-maker to make the die THAT similar with just minor variations in facial features.  Almost makes you wonder if someone DOES have a 'standard' die to use and make mods on to make more variations.  I know these guys were masters and made tons of dies over the years, but these two must have been made in the same day by the same hand to be that similar if genuine!

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #115 on: April 22, 2005, 10:08:34 pm »
Fisrt time I've seen Constantine wiggling his ears - very cool, Stickman!  ;D

Ben

Offline Jerome Holderman

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #116 on: April 22, 2005, 10:16:05 pm »
The match on the legends is near perfect!

This may be an out there suggestion, but what if there is a series of partial dies involved? A few dies with various legends a few mintmarks, a few portraits, and the same for the reverse. Then you mix and match dies, and move them a bit here and there,  to create variety? I have seen quite a few where the portraits seemed to match but the legends were different, mintmarks were different etc. Maybe far fetched, but from what I see on these???

roscoedaisy

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #117 on: April 22, 2005, 10:39:52 pm »
And out come the prospective fake creators!  I know jb wouldnt, but I would say to tread very carefully in this area as to not encourage more fakes to be produced.  I am sure many of us who have a flair for engineering could certainly come up with ways to fake coins to one degree or another, but I am of the opinion that we shouldnt really talk about it much lest the less scrupulous people get more information.

Offline Jerome Holderman

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #118 on: April 22, 2005, 11:00:26 pm »
And out come the prospective fake creators!  I know jb wouldnt, but I would say to tread very carefully in this area as to not encourage more fakes to be produced.  I am sure many of us who have a flair for engineering could certainly come up with ways to fake coins to one degree or another, but I am of the opinion that we shouldnt really talk about it much lest the less scrupulous people get more information.

I agree to a point,  but..... figuring out how it could be done, is also helpful in avoiding it. If we knew the exact techniques used to produce the fakes, spotting them would be much easier. I know figuring out the exact techniques is not possible without seeing it done , but coming up with possible scenarios I think could be benificial in the identification  of many fakes?

roscoedaisy

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #119 on: April 22, 2005, 11:13:06 pm »
Consider how soft bronze is, you can easily make your own flans.  But it's probably easier to overstrike existing ancient flans.  It would keep the spectroscopy folks away anyway.  So we all have ready made flans in our slug jars.  Now you need a way to heat it.  Bronze is soft enough that you don't need a blast furnace to do it.  Ok, so now we need some kind of die to strike it with.  Molds are OK for this probably.  Take a mold of an existing coin using bronze or lead possibly with no legends and flat fields.  Use this to strike the heated slug, essentially just copying the portrait and reverse design.  Then use a letter punch on the legends and possibly a bead punch to do the dots around the outer rim of the flan.  Adding much more convincing patinas than dellars or jax is fairly easy and I have replicated that part in my shop with relative ease.

I know many will argue that making a mold of an existing portrait and reverse is not so simple, but I argue that with a little experimentation you can make this very convincing as 'struck' when you eliminate the fields and legends from the die and do them afterward.

Not really appropriate for this topic anyway, but you asked. :)

Offline wolfgang336

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #120 on: April 23, 2005, 12:06:32 am »
OK, I will however post this coin, which has the EXACT same reverse legend as the coin Martin posted above. I'm thinking we should be classifying these not according to type, but according to each coin's attributes. ie. This Crispus has rev. legend die 1, with bust die 4, and altar die 2 etc. etc.

Evan

Offline Numerianus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #121 on: April 23, 2005, 03:33:25 am »
"Hyundai's logically can't exist, because it'd be illogical for the manufacturer to not be building Ferrari's! "
This is the point! It quite logical from  the economical point of view:  what production is more profitable.
the reason is the same that  "normal" forgers work hard on Athenand and Ellinistc  4drachms,  Pescennius Niger,
Claudius Albinus, etc. I know dealers which stopped trades with  gold because of so many dengerous forgeries.

The ancient engravers had a dynamical stereotype, like a signuture, so the  did not care whether the
outcomes will be examined for an authenticity. For  a modern forger this is the main question. Each time he
must produce a number of dies to be rejected  to select a suitable one for the  practical purpose.  Other people in this
discussion also have doubts that there is a number for a single  use or a  several  strucks with partial 
modification.  However, die links will be a witness of a hoard finding. 

I remember, that several months ago Joe was  extremely irritated  by a discussion about  the modern
technology that allows to produce high quality fakes, e.g., using CAD.  I must say that his arguments were
quite persuadive. Now he defends the opposite  point of view.  If  a new collector will read this thread
he  may get that there are plenty of forgeries even at the low end. 
Personally, I prefer to be on a former Joe's position, saying, NO. 


In several  posts senior members
of the board  presented their experience with  not negligeable sample of Monneron's coins confirming the authenticity.
This is bad: no consensus with an expert who confirmed his skill at the authenticity test.   
I would say that  it would be better to remove the whole thread and start the discussion afresh with new evidences. 

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #122 on: April 23, 2005, 05:47:30 am »
"Hyundai's logically can't exist, because it'd be illogical for the manufacturer to not be building Ferrari's! "
This is the point! It quite logical from  the economical point of view:  what production is more profitable.

I'd say it's just a different market.

Ferrari may make much more per car, but Hyundai sell more cars, and I'm sure Hyundai make a lot more money from their car business than Ferrari do - because of the volume.

Smart forgers may choose to target the "illogical" bronze market for this reason - in fact they can make more money because the volume is higher, and it may also be easier to pass them because they get less attention. You don't even need to get the style right.. Note Keith's experience in bringing imitative pieces to the BM - they considered (rightly or wrongly) them likely authentic despite having barbaric style and (in all but one case) no die link to a coin they believed authentic.

Can you imagine if you could make "barbaric" Van Gogh copies in a never seen before childish style of minimal or no artistic merit, and yet have a market readily willing to buy them at genuine Van Gogh prices, and experts willingly validate them (despite unknown and worrysome provenance which the seller is supected of having lied about) purely based on the fact that you did a good job on getting the fabric right (excuse the pun)?!

Ben

Offline Heliodromus

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #123 on: April 23, 2005, 05:58:06 am »
Quote from: Arles on April 22, 2005, 05:19:26 pm
I was one of the people who bought some coins from Monneron.
Following the discussion on this list, I took 12 coins (8 official, 4
imitative) to the British Museum to see what they had to say. The 8
coins (including Magnentius and Decentius) that are of official dies
were all judged to be genuine. About three of the four imitative
pieces the BM coin curator said that he would have to defer
judgement. There were no obvious signs to indicate a forgery, in fact
their fabrique looked absolutely genuine in the opion of the BM, but
the particular dies were unknown/unrecorded and one would need to
know more about the source. One coin of the imitative group was die-
linked with a piece illustrated in the literature and this coin must
be regarded as genuine.

Keith, that's very interesting - one of the few hard data points we have in the whole thread!

Would you mind to post pictures of the imitative pieces that you took to the BM?

I'm curious about how the BM was able to find die links to the official style pieces... was it just luck that you brought types for which extensive published die studies existed, or do studies exist for most common bronze types, or did they just happen to match examples in the BM's own collection?

For the imitative style piece they considered genuine based on a die link to a published example, I assume this was grounds for considering it genuine based on known authentic (hoard) provenance of the published example?

Ben

Offline Hydatius

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Re: French eBay seller monneron - Peculiar Patina
« Reply #124 on: April 23, 2005, 12:10:56 pm »
Evan's multiple coins above look fake to me.   I also believe that the differences in the portrait but not in the legend in the earlier "fade" Constantine proves almost conclusively that we are dealing with modern forgeries made from slightly altered dies (hubbing?).  No ancient engraver could have duplicated the legend and the portrait so exactly (only the A in CONSTAN shifts).  The head appears to nod forward and the ear shifts, but the space for the ear of one is still present on the diadem of the other.  I am now convinced that we are dealing with modern "Hyundai" forgeries.

I think the problem is that Monneron probably has mixed good coins with bad, and for us to simply categorize his sales as "Monneron coins" is simply going to confuse everyone and get us arguing with one another.  It's like asking is a Galla apple red or green?  Some wil say red, others green, because both colours are there.   We need two specific galleries. one for universally condemned Monneron coins and one for legitimate or controversial types.  Trying to label various obverse and reverse types is a good idea as well.  We need to have specific coins to refer to, not a general category.
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