I do not like most of the coins posted here, they have as mentioned before by Altamura a very smooth/soapy surface but this alone would not be enough for condemnation because real dies can wear down with usage a little
bit too resulting in detail loss and softer details and soft strikes can exist, too. And very worn dies generally have flow lines, which will erode with time in the dies, especially near the letters from metal flow, they are not present here.
What is bothering me here is that many coins have very serious problems like transfer errors and detail loss (very
soapy details) and holes, look for example for the lips there is a hole and the letters O, Y , Sigma etc have holes or are incomplete. There is something like a ghost line at OY last two letters of Lysiou, it seems like the lowest
part of the Y was cut off and the and a little
bit of the lowest
part of O could be cut off too. There seems to be a die break through first A/Alpha of basileos which goes through
head and ends in front of lips. Above nose is a die flaw, too.
I could not find this die break or die flaws or holes or letter defects on authentic coins form the same dies!!!!!!
Filled dies with dirt is imho pure fantasy so far all coins with such holes were transfer die
fakes (the dies were casted resulting in the holes from air/gas bubbles and tranfer errors and detail loss).
The fake from
Zeno with same problems has PAINT on it as I have seen it beofre on
fakes from Afganistan or Lebanon (Beirut) ^^
Edit: I forgot the letter H has a defect too, there the two bars are not connected with each other because the
bar in middle connecting them is missing.
Edit:
Orthography errors from fast
writing corrected.