1. The coins were (re)patinated (regretful but usual and sometimes inevitable practice).
This was done in a very awkward way inconsistent with high qualification of presumable forger.
The production and patination are not necessarily done by the same person. If we are to believe either or both of the seller's claims of
provenance, then the only conclusion appears to be that he was the one who added the
patina (either to a diverse old
collection of coins, or to
his hoard coins, once cleaned).
The
applied patina, crude as it may be, was presumably added for a purpose, and I would guess the purpose was either to cover something up (e.g. extrememly harsh cleaning) and/or to give a uniform look to the mix and to make buyers believe that all coins are of the same
provenance and authenticity.
2. People who have coins never not claimed that they are fakes. Contrarily, they
indicate that after, removing the ``greeny stuff", quite a normal authentic coin appears.
All expert opinions are based on images. Is it true or not?
No.
Members of the CFDL (not all of who are cuckoos, even if the founder is) bought a group of these coins and mailed them from member to member for in-hand examination. At least one respected and knowledgeable collector,
Warren Esty, examined these coins and concluded that they were deceptive
forgeries. You can find
his post on the CFDL archives. I believe that Barry was also basing
his condemnation on having seen this group of coins, but I may be wrong.
Beast also has one of the coins in hand (and I've noticed him
buying a few more), and appears to question it's authenticity:
[
BROKEN LINK REMOVED BY ADMIN]
3. Everybody agree that the presumable forger knows well Arles and Lugdunum mints.
If the coins are fakes, they are produced in France, the country where the labor is extremely
expensive (to be precise: the cost of the labor in France s 26 euros per hour). Nobody provided an explanation what can be a motivation of such a skillful to produce individually (and not as a mass production) forgery of the 3rd century copper. Apparently, it is economically unreasonable.
You don't need to be
French to forge
French coins, and you are making assumptions about the economics and methods of production which are unfounded. Maybe common elements of a master dies were copied and then finished/modified into multiple similar copies? Who knows how the dies were created if
fake?
We should admit that the seller is not obliged to provide an information about
the provenance of his coin (everybody knows dealers which prefer not to reveal his sources).
True, but neither does he have to lie about it. Neither this being an "old and important
collection" of coins (and then all covered in a uniform horrible
fake patina),
nor it being a
hoard seems to ring true.
I hope that a moderator of this section, whatever is his position, should intervene
and try to summarize the achievements existing point of view.
I agree it would be nice to see a linear progression of the debate.
It should also be noted that metallurgical analysis (which can be done non-destructively via techniques such as X-Ray fluorescence, which are available for coin testing), would likely contribute a lot to the dating of the flans used to produce these coins - are they an ancient
alloy or not, do they differ/cluster in composition as one would expect given the nominal mints, or do the flans, regardless of
mint, appear to be of common origin?
Ben