The 2003 epidemic of fake uncleaned coins

I just had a blast from the past when I saw this on eBay--





This type and other similarly crude coins began turning up in uncleaned coin lots in 2003. At first, some people thought that maybe these were "barbs" until it was noticed that they are all die matched.

So a note of caution, as some collectors don't think that common LRB's are faked.

Dane has a page with more info including other types--

http://www.catbikes.ch/coinstuff/coins-fakes.htm

 

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I bought maybe 100-200 uncleaneds in 2004. I don't think I had luck with a single one, although they seemed to be genuine uncleaneds. I used the 'best practices' I could find at the time, olive oil, etc. Just a slimy mess.

 

Usually, the lettering on imitations is more garbled and difficult/impossible to read than on the official issues...not the opposite!

 

Yeah, these would have been a major upgrade to mine. At least they would have had comic value.

That's quite interesting how fakes have progressed.

 

I believe that these were trying to be pretending to be "real" uncleaned coins rather than barbarous imitations. They were seeded into large batches of uncleaned coins.

A few years later (2009 ish) a new batch of fakes were seeded into uncleaned lots or even as "hoards" in batches of 1,000 at a time. These were derived from real coins but they were easy to spot in this large batches due to the very limited number of dies involved and also the impossible pairings that were created.
I created this image at the time illustrating the point on this second batch. They still turn up for sale regularly today.

 

Yes, the person that made the fakes intended for them to be considered genuine Roman mint products; but as people began "cleaning" (they were just covered with a little dirt), they noticed the terrible style; so the idea that they were "barbs" was floated until people noticed all the die matches.