I’m at the BM this AM thinking about what get faked and why I’ve held soapy casts of real coins and too perfect flans struck with equally too perfect Becker dies, but neither of these types of fakes are really want to know more about. I want to know why individuals put lots of time and energy into creating other types of fakes that now seem so obviously fake, but must have appealed to a certain type of collector at certain point in time.
This specimen is just the sort of thing I find fascinating. It is well carved, and an incredibly sharp strike that is off flan. Much of the design bears a very close resemblance to actual coins but too much differs in the extreme.
ML is a meaningless ‘misreading'(?) of IMP.
The prow of a Roman war ship is carved like a little row boat with water lines all about it.
The forehead of the portrait is far too small and the eyes too large looking upwards in a Constantinian fashion.
The flan itself feels like it might be a restrike on a serrated denarius.
Yet even down to the letter forms and head shape on the obverse there are many distinct similarities. Note the shape of the B and the small o and the elongated head and shape of the ear.
What type of story can explain the copy of this coin? A hubbed die made from a worn specimen then recut? Possible. Or a die created from a poor drawing? I’ve long considered the possiblity that drawings of coins may have inspired fakes created for collectors greedy to possess what they see in books.
Anyway… I will continue through the trays…
There is a certain thrill about holding a gold fake made for a mad king! As a curator peeking over my shoulder just said Cleopatra “looks like she’s been pulled through the 18th century beauty filter”. The closest parallel to a “real” type is RRC 543/1. Interestingly enough the same royal collection also held another ‘fake’ aureus which might have been cast from this same type. The mold was recut to sharpen the letters before the casting. I am keen to try to die match this but that would slow me down.
Early Fish and Chips Lunch Break!
Here’s one I have a hard time being certain it is fake independently of the BM’s placement of the object in the box full of imitations. I went through the Schaefer Archive pages and I could not spot the die among either the gold or the silver (RRC 521/2). The main difference in execution is the lituus. On the genuine specimens it has far more of a bend in it and typically a slight widening out at the bottom. It is also light. The specimens in CRRO range from 8.01g to 8.11g.
This one I have no trouble condemning this as a fake on style. Both the head and the standing figure bear no resemblance to republican coin designs. Based on the legends and types it seems to imitate RRC 531/1. But it is so stylistically different (the original is very badly engraved) that it is almost as if someone imagined what the type might look like from a written description. I’d love to find the catalogue of the sale if possible.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 