The apparent use of official dies for plated denarii (fourrées)

[curtislclay]

Plated Roman denarii are often in poor style, clearly struck from forgers' dies, but sometimes they are in excellent style, and even appear to be die-linked to official coins in solid silver.

In his study of EID MAR denarii, for example, Herbert Cahn found three plated specimens that shared both their obverse and their reverse dies with solid-silver specimens: see Cahn, EIDibus MARtiis, Quaderni ticinesi XVIII, 1989, pp. 229-231, 9a, 20a, and 25b.

No fewer than sixteen plated denarii of Augustus that share one or both of their dies with solid-silver denarii or official aurei are listed by Giard, Paris Catalogue, Augustus, Paris 1976, pp. 19-21.  Almost all of these coins are also illustrated in the plates of the work. 

However, Michael Crawford in his standard catalogue of Roman Republican coins, pp. 560-2, pl. LXV, 1-2, pointed out evidence that forgers could apparently derive exact copies of official dies from coins: he shows a solid-silver and a plated Republican denarius which at first sight appear to be from the same die pair, but the faults on the dies are different so the dies must actually be different too.  The forger apparently derived very accurate fake dies by a casting process from an official denarius.  Therefore in Crawford's opinion no plated coins were struck at the mint either officially or illicitly; fourrées are all ancient counterfeits struck from imitative dies, sometimes in official style when the dies were cast from authentic coins.

Cahn, however, still considered the plated EID MAR denarii from official dies in his corpus to be mint products.  Giard too considered the Augustan fourrées that he noted to be from actual official dies, since they showed no shrinkage from the size of official coins from the same dies, and the casting process proposed by Crawford should have produced slight shrinkage of the engraved legends and devices.  He agreed with Crawford that all plated denarii are unofficial, however:  in his opinion the authentic dies used in their production had been stolen from the mint by the counterfeiters.

Mark Whaley, a collecting friend of mine, recently acquired a plated denarius of Nero with the bizarre reverse IVIDEA / EXERCIIM or similar, Clasped Hands, apparently derived from the CONCORDIA EXERCITVM type of Vitellius and the Civil Wars; see image below.  The hands too, in addition to the legend, were miscopied: one set of fingers points down and one set up, whereas on the model both sets of fingers of course pointed down.

Mark also observed that the obverse die of his plated specimen had also been used for two official denarii in CoinArchives, both with reverse VESTA, Temple of Vesta, a type of 64 AD; see second image below.

Mark's coin seems to favor Crawford's hypothesis that counterfeiters could derive fake dies from official coins.  If, on Giard's hypothesis, they had stolen that official die from the mint in 64, it seems unlikely that they would still have had it in their possession four years or more later, to use it with their botched Clasped Hands die copied from coins of 68-9.

[ecoli]

Phil Davis posted this a little earlier on a similar topic:

Hi,

I am curious to find out how to tell between a transfer and official die?
Your website did not explain(at least I didn't find it)
Thanks!

Hi-- Good question, to which there's no single or simple  answer. In theory, the images on a coin struck from a transfer die should be a tiny bit smaller than those of the official die. I don't know precise figures for the difference, but it will be quite small, and of course, you'd need a coin struck from the official dies to compare. So that isn't really helpful.

I touch on the issue on my website, but without a search capability, I know there's no good way to find it. Some day... Anyway, here's what I say there, discussing transfer dies and the hoard of Dacian dies found in Tilisca, in modern Romania: "Crawford, in 'Imitation of Roman Republican Denarii in Dacia,' has identified an example of this phenomenon, a die match between a coin in the Maccarese hoard (Cr-382/1, illustrated on pl. LXV of 'Roman Republican Coinage'), and one of the Tilisca dies. The Tilisca die would have produced a coin in shallower relief than the Maccarese specimen, from which Crawford concludes that the die was transferred  from a worn original." Occasionally, such as HT3+, the edge of the original coin is visible:
http://rrimitations.ancients.info/copies-hybridtransferdies.html
Other times, such as HT1 on the same page, new details have been engraved into the transfer die. Unambiguous examples like these give a clue as to what to expect. I look for a certain general softness that's different in ways I can't define from a "normal" soft strike. I dislike this kind of subjective explanation, but I have no better one. In the case of non-Roman, good-silver imitations, I'm helped by the fact that many of these are hybrids with improperly matched obverse and reverse types. What else could these be but products of transfer dies, once one accepts that the engraving is official rather than imitative?

In the case of fourrees, such as the Fulvia quinarius in question, things are less clear. With certain exceptions, notably the denarii of Q. Cornuficius (which I discuss in some depth on the most recent HJB list, #164,) I accept Crawford's dictum that "Plated coins = false coins," i.e., are never products of an official Roman mint.  I stipulate further that ancient counterfeiters were no more likely to precisely capture the official style than are their modern counterparts. From those two propositions, it follows that plated coins like this one, in impeccably official style, must be struck from transfer dies. I acknowledge that this argument, if not circular exactly, is at least a bit ovoid; it falls apart if one rejects Crawford's premise. That's a discussion for another day...

Phil Davis

[dougsmit]

http://rrimitations.ancients.info/copies-hybridtransferdies.html

  I stipulate further that ancient counterfeiters were no more likely to precisely capture the official style than are their modern counterparts. From those two propositions, it follows that plated coins like this one, in impeccably official style, must be struck from transfer dies.
Phil Davis

I missed a point here.  These transfer dies coins are not fourree (correct?) but just shown as proof that transfer dies were possible? 

Ancient counterfeiters brought up in the same culture as their cousins working in the mint or themselves previously employed there might just be a little more likely to capture the style than I would be.  If you doubt this, you have never seen my writing.

[mdelvalle]

Hi
I am not expert, then my opinion can be completely miss, but the logic tells me that the great majority of the hybrid ones (maybe all) they should come from official dies, because if the forger created his own dies it would be illogical that the same ones didn't coincide with the coin in circulation. That is to say the hybrid one should be created starting from one or two official die that the forger has been able to steal.  This would prove that the official dies could be stolen, making feasible the existence of falsifications created starting from official dies (fourree or solid). 
Next I include some falsifications that to my humble understand have been struck with official dies (The three first are hybrid fourrée denarius).
Sorry to express my poor opinion. 

Saludos
Mario

[Rupert]

Curtis, if the forgers really were able to create identical dies from genuine coins, why did they spoil their success and risk their lives by combining this obverse with such a competely bungled reverse? They could have taken an extremely fine circulating denarius and made a first-class reverse die from it, with nobody noticing the difference. It is well known from a mass of hybrid plated counterfeits that the forgers cared little about the right die combination, so this coin shows quite well IMHO that the forgers said: "Look, we have an old but still good Nero obverse die smuggled out of the mint, but no reverse die! Now what's the easiest reverse to copy? Let's make one with "clasped hands", no one will notice." If they had had a craftsman who could make one die like this obverse die, he could have made an equally good reverse die too. Smuggling a die out of the mint, or wherever dies were stored, may have been a little easier in the troubled times after Nero's death.

Rupert

[PeterD]

It's quite probable, likely even, that the persons making the counterfeit coins were not the same as those making the dies. I can imagine a professional engraver or maker of jewellery having a secret sideline of making dies and selling them under the counter to local villians. Unless dies were sold in pairs it is quite likely that obverses and reverses would have become mixed up especially as they wear out at a different rate and more obverses than reverses would have been needed (or is it the other way round?). Such a person might also well have contacts at the mint that would sell him the odd 'reject'.

[jmuona]

This is always a fascinating subject!
Curtis, the last "S" on the obverse of the Nero seems to be closer to the neck in the fourrée, and the neck truncation in front is much narrower in it as well - overall the neck is blotched. Are these not signs of partly unseccessfull copying? It is difficult to understand how the neck would look like this if the exact same die was used.
I am not convinced by Mario's coins. To me they all look like being cast copies of offical ones.
A very convincing plated Otho was just offered by LANZ (146:407). This is an interesting coin, as it is the third identical one known to me (one in Madrid, one in my collection).  The obverse could well be seen as a copy of a real die, although it is not a known one. The reverse is really good as well and fails only with the "Kranz und Palmzweig". The combination of a late obverse and very early reverse reveals the forgery immediately, but few would notice - in addition, the legends are a bit sloppy as well. This kind of a forgery will easily mislead people to believe it is based on real dies. Lanz so does, but I am convinced this is incorrect.
Jyrki

[mdelvalle]

Hi Jyrki,
I know that the coins are counterfeits and not a struck to official mint.
But just tell me what is the logic of the engraver that cast the dies of two different coins, when he could making the engraving of one coin in circulation?.
Gracias
Mario

[Volodya]

I missed a point here.  These transfer dies coins are not fourree (correct?) but just shown as proof that transfer dies were possible? 

Yes, that's correct Doug. These coins are good silver.

Phil Davis

[Volodya]

Hi
I am not expert, then my opinion can be completely miss, but the logic tells me that the great majority of the hybrid ones (maybe all) they should come from official dies, because if the forger created his own dies it would be illogical that the same ones didn't coincide with the coin in circulation. That is to say the hybrid one should be created starting from one or two official die that the forger has been able to steal.  This would prove that the official dies could be stolen, making feasible the existence of falsifications created starting from official dies (fourree or solid). 
Next I include some falsifications that to my humble understand have been struck with official dies (The three first are hybrid fourrée denarius).
Sorry to express my poor opinion. 
Saludos
Mario

This isn't a poor opinion at all; in fact, it's quite plausible. I can't disprove it, but I mostly don't agree with it either. In the case of the Dacians, we're dealing with a mint (or more likely, multiple "mints") of sorts. I believe they produced an "inventory" of dies, some newly engraved, some transfered from official coins. Initially, the imitations were struck from properly matched dies, but apparently little effort was made to maintain the correct pairing as time went on.  For example, here are coins struck from one transfer die and one "new" one:
http://rrimitations.ancients.info/hybrids.html

As it happens, I'm aware of one example where the export of official dies from Rome into Dacia is at least possible, the copies of C. Naevius Balbus here:
http://rrimitations.ancients.info/rauchpics.html
Here's what I wrote about these coins, in the inaugural issue of the Romanian publication Nemvs:

"I attempted to locate an official example of the reverse die with control number LXXXVIII to compare these coins to. Interestingly, I was unable to find one. There are none in the Biblioteque Nationale or the British Museum, nor in various auction catalogues and photo files I consulted. This suggests a fascinating possibility, that a pair of official Republican dies somehow found their way to Dacia, before they could be used in Rome. This is admittedly speculative, but the alternative, that a coin struck from an extremely rare reverse die happened to be used as a prototype in Dacia, is unpersuasive."

Phil Davis

[Robert_Brenchley]

Can we be sure that it ever was used as an official control number? On the face of it, it's also possible that the forger invented it.

[Volodya]

Can we be sure that it ever was used as an official control number? On the face of it, it's also possible that the forger invented it.

Anything's possible I guess, but the numbers go much higher, to CCXXX at least. No doubt the mint could have inadvertently skipped a number in such a large issue, but how would the imitator (not really "forger" in this case, as these are good-silver coins) know that? If I have to settle for coincidence, I think it's more likely that the die engraver happened to choose an original coin with a rare number. I don't much like coincidence as an explanation though.

Phil

[curtislclay]

Coincidence seems probable to me in this case.

Aren't there a fair number of other die numbers too that are either very rare, say one or two known, or totally unattested so far?

[Volodya]

Coincidence seems probable to me in this case.
Aren't there a fair number of other die numbers too that are either very rare, say one or two known, or totally unattested so far?

Certainly there are a fair number of other "missing" control numbers. But a number that's rare or missing today was presumably at least rare then, whether because the die was damaged early on or for some other reason. The quantity of coins struck from such dies must have been a tiny percentage of the whole, and not large in absolute numbers either. In the universe of coincidences, this doesn't strike me as a likely one. Of course, coincidences do happen; people do win the lottery every month.

[mdelvalle]

The nonexistence of some control marks, it could also be explained in the following way:
1) the dies were surely manufactured by many offices and engravers.
2) when he decided the emission to each office and/or engraver they were assigned x quantity of dies to carry out.
3) if when the reverse type was changed, it is possible that not all the offices have carried out the entirety of the dies that they had been designated.
This would explain the lack of some control marks that never have been record.
I wait  has been able to explain my idea.
Mario

[PeterD]

I give you a fourth reason:
It could be that complete batches of the mint's output were sent to pay mercenaries or bribe foreign rulers, with the result that these were treated as bullion and melted down.

A question, though. Was each control number unique?; that is to say, limited to one set of dies. If so then the rarity of some control numbers is unsurprising. If we took a common issue that didn't have control numbers, we would be unaware of dies that had very little representation.

[jmuona]

Mario,
perhaps the forgers had many obverses and reverses and they just combined them which ever way it happened to go, either because they did not care or did not really know. Most plated Domitians I have seen have incorrect couplings, but a Minerva reverse. Perhaps they knew that Domitian and Minervas go together, but that was good enough, the numbers ment nothing. In more complex couplings of obverse and reverse types they might have been totally at loss. Also, their dies were probably of poor quality and needed to be changed frequently. There may have been regional differences as well, with clear-cut crooks working with high volumes at one place and smaller operators actually trying to do meaningful copies in another place. We will never know.
s.
jyrki

[mdelvalle]

Hi Jyrki.
I don't believe that it is alone the forger's negligence.
The falsification of money has always been a serious matter, in which you would play your life if they discovered you. 
I believe that the forgers should have shops very well organized. You remembers that they should cut dies, fuse metals, struck the coin in metal base, cover them with silver and  distribute them. I believe that it should have had very influential people and with a lot of money behind these shops.
To know which obverse it corresponded with some reverse, alone they would have to introduce their hand to their pocket (If has had it  ).
Alone I can justify the negligence when combining dies, if the coin will be used in the frontiers where the different emissions didn't know well, but if the coin will circulate in a city I believe that the forger would be very careful.
On the other hand you are right, I don't believe that the forger has left writings explaining his works.

Saludos
Mario

[Jay GT4]

Interesting conversation.  I'll post my Mark Antony quinarius here in this thread also.  Sold by CNG as a solid "official" quinarius.  After spending several years in someones collection it appears it was "cleaned" and it revealed it's true self.

 My humble theory is that if Antony was willing to debase the silver coinage why wouldn't he go all the way and make "official" plated coins?  He had legions to pay.  Civil war and instability always debase currency, so why not this time?  By the time anyone found out it wasn't solid it would have been passed on....

The first one is my Fouree the next are images from coinarchives.  It is plain to see that it would be very convincing when covered in silver.   Look also at the way that DVNI is arranged....possible die matches on some?

[ecoli]

personally I like the style of your plated one over the official one

[gavignano]

One thought that always comes up when I read or think about ancient forgers is the risk involved. From historical references the penalty is usually described as death, a rather unpleasant outcome. So who would have taken these chances?
Certainly a group of common criminals had easier, and maybe even safer ways, to make some money.
Mario's comment that it must have been very influential people who would be behind the operation is quite intriguing.
IMO, such an operation could have gone all the way to the top - sounds like the premise for a good novel!

[mdelvalle]

Keeping in mind the great quantity of falsifications that  have arrived to our days, should think that in the antiquity thousands should have been forged. I don't believe that these operations have been carried out by common deliquent  in the patio of their houses. And regarding the novel it would not be bad idea, truth? 

Saludos
Mario

[PeterD]

One thought that always comes up when I read or think about ancient forgers is the risk involved. From historical references the penalty is usually described as death, a rather unpleasant outcome. So who would have taken these chances?
Certainly a group of common criminals had easier, and maybe even safer ways, to make some money.
Mario's comment that it must have been very influential people who would be behind the operation is quite intriguing.
IMO, such an operation could have gone all the way to the top - sounds like the premise for a good novel!

The Lex Cornelia brought in by Sulla did inflict severe penalties for counterfeiters. However, these laws were changed piecemeal over time. Later proclamations seem to indicate that the penalties for forging silver coins were at least less than for forging gold. It has been estimated that in the first century that some 30% of the denarii in circulation were false (Rodewalt, Money in the Age of Tiberius). Clearly either the law was ignored or it wasn't enforced very well, if at all. In any case the treasury was not neccessarily disadvantaged. Any counterfeit coins were probably re-circulated with the good coins by the money-changers. Any counterfeit coins that did reach the treasury would also have been re-circulated.