Hello,
While at a show this summer I picked up several
Denarii. One of these was a
Denarius of
Septimius Severus (
RIC 171A).
I've subsequently been review some resources on counterfeiting and comparing my coins with what I'm seeing and that particular
Denarius is starting to concern me. At first glance it just looks different from anything else in my
collection. It's hard to describe why it looks "wrong" in-hand. The closest analog I can think of is that it looks like it was covered with a thin layer of silver paint. Here are some of my specific observations:
- In the
field immediately after
AVG (11 - 12 o'clock) on the
obverse there appears to be a long thin blob of extra metal
- I can't find
any flow lines on the
obverse and only a few hints of them on the
reverse - The
weight,
diameter, and
die axis (3.29g, 19mm, 1) seem to be in line with what I found in the
OCRE database for this coin
- I cannot see any seam lines along the edge of the coin
I spent some time looking through Dr. Ilya
Prokopov's
Fake Ancient Coin Reports but I couldn't find a match for my coin so I started going through databases of authentic coins to see if I could learn more. It was on
WildWinds that I found my coin and by that I don't mean a die match but my
exact coin (2nd Image).
Despite seeing this coin in
WildWinds I
still have some reservation. I would be interested to know what the rest of you think.
Thanks in advance,
JSlade