Hello everyone! I have had this coin since 2006 or so, got it in Jerash Jordan at an ancient Roman outpost complete with an ampitheatre. A couple of kids approached and asked if I wanted to buy a roman coin. I bought it for 20 denars thinking it was fake but that they needed the money more than I did. Besides I would rather have this as a souvenir over anything from an airline gift shop. I was going through some things this evening and found this again after not seeing it for years.
Sincerely, I am afraid this is a modern reproduction. I have never seen such a perfectly circular flan for a Roman denarius. It is machine made... I liked the evocation of Jerash but we cannot call it an "outpost". It was a real city where the Seleucid king Antiochos IV in the 2nd c. BC settled Greek veterans from his army. The city was renamed "Antioch on the Chrysorhoas" (the citizens later pretended the city had been founded by Alexander the great himself) but everybody called it by its traditional name Gerasa. It developed as a Greek city of Syria like its older neighbour Philadelphia (Amman). Gerasa was later included by Trajan in the Roman province of Arabia. The emperor Hadrian visited it and the city built a triumphal arch (now restored) especially for this visit. From the 1st to the 8th centuries Gerasa developed into a rather large city (according to ancient standards) with all the infrastructures of Hellenistic and Roman civilization: two major monumental temples (Zeus and Artemis), two theatres, an hippodrome for the chariot races, a monumental macellum (meat market), a central main street lined with porticoes and shops (the ancestor of the oriental suk), two baths, a monumental city-wall in the 4th c. But no "amphitheatre". Gerasa had its own city-mint issuing bronze coins from the 1st to the 3rd c. In the 6th c. several churches with lavish mosaic-floors were built. In the 7th-8th c. the Muslim conquerors added a small mosque in the city-centre and reopened the city mint issuing Arabo-Byzantine bronze coins. After the fall of the Umayyad caliphs c. 750 the city began to decline but was still occupied by a smaller population until the 16th c. In the 17th c. the city was deserted and in the early 19th c. it was completely abandoned, just a romantic ruins field in a now waste land. In the 1860s the Russian Empire invaded the Caucasus area and expelled several Muslim populations. The Circassians took refuge in the Ottoman Empire and the Sultan gave them ancient cities in ruins east of the Jordan to settle there. Circassian refugees built their new homes in Amman and in Jerash, but only in the eastern half of the ruins. This is why the western half of ancient Jerash has been excavated and restored for visitors, while the eastern half is now occupied by a large modern city of more than 50,000 inhabitants of Circassian and Palestinian descent (Palestinian refugees came in 1948 and 1967). I visited Jerash too, and got there an ancient coin, not from children but from a tourist souvenir shop. I wanted to buy a brass beduin coffee-pot, but the guy refused to lower the price and proposed to give me a little ancient bronze coin as an extra if I paid the tag price. The coin looked authentic, I said yes! Antiochos IV Epiphanes, AE double-denomination, AE 20 mm, Tyre mint, 174-173 BC Obv.: diademed head of Antiochos IV right, with features resembling his father Antiochos III the Great. Rev.: BAΣΙΛΕΩΣ ANTIOXΟΥ, stern of galley left, date: LΘΛΡ (seleucid year 139 = 174-173 BC). Seleucid Coins (part 2) 1461.2 Gerasa was renamed "Antioch on the Chrysorhoas" when a Seleucid king named Antiochus turned it into a Greek city and settled Greek veterans there. Most historians think it is Antiochus IV, who wanted to hellenize Syria (the Jews even revolted against him for this reason). This coin, very probably found in Gerasa, is a direct testimony of this Greek refoundation of the city. According to archaeological literature, a few other similar Hellenistic bronze coins of Tyre, with the stern of galley, have been found in Jerash surveys or excavations, but all are later ones minted under Demetrios I and II, or Antiochos VII. This one is rare ... No example in acsearch, only one example (Paris BNF) on the Seleucid Coins Online corpus...
Ignoring the flan, (occasionally a very round flan and good centering can happen), what my eye noticed is the lettering is weird looking, portrait looks like a scared deer in headlights, and bust truncation weirdly executed. Compare with post#3 to see what I mean. Just pointing out details for those who want to start to learn what we see as wrong within half a second on such items.
I picked up on the lettering, but wasn't sure. The roundness of the flan escaped my attention (like you said, it can happen).
It CAN, but horribly rare, but chose to ignore since other red flags exist. This is an easy one. Next level are people like @Barry Murphy where first they know of the fake type, and I am sure have 5 other major points he knows why its a fake of the type and I wouldn't have off the top of my head since I do not intentionally collect these coins. I would possibly have more to say in some certain other series. Just thought I would verbalize some points versus just saying "its bad". People do not learn anything from that.
