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Silver Constantiniana Dafne Is this specimen also a forgery?

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Lech Stępniewski:
Few years ago Lars Ramskold has written in his "The silver emissions of Constantine I from Constantinopolis, and the celebration of the millennium of Byzantion in 333/334 CE" (Jahrbuch für Numismatik und Geldgeschichte 2016, vol. 68, pp. 145-198.) as follows:


--- Quote ---The dafne forgeries. RIC nos. 36, 37. Bruun included both gold and silver examples of the Constantiniana dafne type. However, I have studied some of these under high magnification and the gold and silver examples from officina B are struck from the same obverse and reverse dies (Fig. 5). Several features betray the forgeries, such as the incompletely engraved pearl ring on both the obverse and reverse and the abnormally long left arm of Victoria. In addition, the flans with very even margins are too regularly shaped for Roman coins and donatives, and the silver appears completely fresh. In all of the varied coinage of Constantine, there is not a single example of an emission with the same general type struck in both gold, silver and bronze, much less struck by the same dies. I regard all of the gold and silver dafne specimens as modern forgeries (p. 164).

--- End quote ---

Below are:
1. Fig. 5 from Ramskold's paper with reverses of silver Oxford specimen and gold Paris specimen (probably Oxford piece is reproduced in "Roman Silver Coins" vol. V (King and Sear) on p. 108)
2. Specimen from Dumbarton Oaks
3. Specimen from Trau auction (lot 3887)

And in fact, all these coins are from the same pair of dies.

Lech Stępniewski:
But there is also another specimen described as silver Constantiniana Dafne (siliqua) in Münzkabinett der Universität Göttingen (no. AS-04251, 3.077 g, 19.7 mm).

Undoubtedly from DIFFERENT dies although from the same officina - B. But different dies does not prove its authenticity

So is this specimen authentic or is it another modern forgery? Or maybe this specimen is not silver at all? Or authentic bronze coin with modern silvering?

romeman:
Thanks Lech for bringing this to a wider audience. The Göttingen example is, from what I can see, probably a normal bronze coin, perhaps with later silvering. I checked it against my database (with 52 officina B examples of RIC 35), but found no die matches. Perhaps not surprising considering the enormous production of dafne coins.

By the way, I will give a presentation at the Warszaw conference on Constantinian forgeries.

Ron C2:
The  Göttingen example's style is good, pearling also good. No idea if it's silvered bronze or silver, bit in my view it's an authentic coin and I would be surprised if proven wrong.

Fwiw, if it is silver plated in modern times, the forger is an artist. It definitely has a convincing old surface with obvious tooling marks that would have broken through a thin modern plating process.

Lech Stępniewski:

--- Quote from: romeman on January 07, 2022, 08:23:41 am ---The Göttingen example is, from what I can see, probably a normal bronze coin, perhaps with later silvering.

--- End quote ---

Thanks, Lars, for confirming my guess. I wonder why they in Göttingen, with coin in hand, decided to describe it as silver. Even the picture is suspicious.

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