One of their problem is the
die axis, but on them is almost everything wrong!
Artificial crystallisation is not a problem but the
fakes of these dies I have seen were not
crystallizedCompletely wrong
die axis,
style,
planchet shape, that 2 oberse and 2
reverse die exist which are not die linked to authentic specimens, that they were not known before 1930er years, that they are published
fakes in bulletin on
counterfeits, the artificial dirt+
toning all this makes them without a doubt authentic !!!!
I do of course think that the bulletin of
counterfeits enties of them must be deleted because they are authentic, several of these have been sold by
auction houses so they must be authetnic.
https://harvardmagazine.com/2004/09/wrong.htmlThe first coin is genuine, the other two
fake. (
Obverse and
reverse are shown for each.) All three are from the important
collection of ancient
Greek coins at the Sackler Museum formed by the late Arthur S.
Dewing '02, Ph.D. '05, a professor of finance at the
Harvard Business School.
Dewing bought the
fakes from shops in
Athens in 1937 and 1954.
The
catalog of the
Dewing Collection published in 1985 did not include the second forged coin because the editors, Silvia Hurter and the late Leo
Mildenberg, and Alan S.
Walker, the author of the section on this
part of the Greek world, thought it undoubtedly false. The
catalog did include as genuine the first forged coin, but curator of numismatic
collections Carmen
Arnold-Biucchi would call it
fake simply because it is so similar to the undoubted
fake in its
style and in its "
fabric," its general appearance as a piece of metal. Research by Hurter, published in the Bulletin on
Counterfeits in 1987, associates it with a group of
fake two-drachma coins of Karystos probably made in the 1930s. "These
counterfeits are struck [as the genuine is, and as opposed to
cast]...and they often have an artificially
crystallized surface. Apparently two
obverse and two
reverse dies were used."
Ancient
mint workers fixed a die
engraved with the design for the
obverse (here a
cow suckling a
calf) in an anvil, put a warmed silver blank on top of it, placed on top of that a die for the
reverse design, and whacked the top die with a hammer. At most mints the worker held the
reverse die in
his hand and made no attempt to orient the
reverse design with the
obverse in any particular way. At some mints, however, the ancients fixed the
reverse die in position so that its image was tidily at 12 o'clock in relation to the
obverse, or at 6 o'clock (
as is the case with U.S. coins today).
Mildenberg demonstrated in Nomismatika Chronika in 1989 that the
mint of ancient Karystos used fixed dies, with the
reverse at 12 o'clock. Of our faker, he wrote: "This cunning craftsman, whenever and wherever he worked, struck from
loose dies."
His roosters are positioned randomlyperhaps at 2 o'clock, perhaps at 8 o'clocka mistake, and this by itself gives them away.
Fake Coins and Notorious Fake Sellers
