an interesting Constans FTR

This is not my coin but thought it would be a good learning experience to some. It's a modern Serbian fake made from dies which has popped up a lot from various sellers in Germany lately. I've contacted the seller and will report what he says, if anything.





Some more I have found from 2 other sellers in Germany



More from the same dies.
http://www.wildwinds.com/coins/ric/fakes2009.htm

 

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..wow...there is nothing sacred...

 

All they need is a green patina and a possibly false slab, if ever..

 

They come with patchy brown.



and almost black

 

It appears that all of them emulate officina delta from the series with the local "counter" mark. Is that correct?

 

Do you mean the symbol at the end?

 

Sad to say, that one would have fooled me. Thanks for pointing it out.

 

Turns out I used to own one from the same series with a different "local" symbol after the "SIS":

I assume this is legit, though, since the fakes all have the Y-like symbol rather than this upside-down U. But I'd be hard-pressed to spot a fake unless I was specifically looking for it. This is scary.

 

The 'local symbol' at the end translates/duplicates the officina letter given in Greek before the SIS. They appear on several issues from the mint including one where the Siscian letter is large in the field as on the Phoenix below.
One large in field

Two (like the gsimonel coin)

Three


RIC lists coins with officina 4 and 5 letters but I do not have them.

 

Thanks for the info. Disturbing

 

How was this detected as a fake?

They look very convincing.

John

 

These fakes were quite often seeded into uncleaned lots. The fact that lots of coins suddenly came into the market from the same die pairs was a giveaway.

 

This is my legit version of what the fake should look like.

 

Sad to see so many fakes out there - I am pretty sure I don't have any but one never knows. I'm looking carefully at the LRB section of my collection.

 

Since coins in uncleaned lots usually sell for around $2.00 each or so, depending on the size of the lot, that makes it even more confounding. Why would anyone go to the trouble of making fake coins and then selling them so cheaply?

Whatever. Their business model strikes me as so flawed that they will probably go bankrupt, and the problem will take care of itself. ;>)

 

Isn't that is an officina A. I thought it was shown above that the fakes were delta???

 

I suspect that the cost to produce these in Bulgaria was quite nominal. These were being distributed in "premium uncleaned" lots and occasionally salted into low grade lots of uncleaned. The "premium uncleaned" were being offered in batches of 6,000 at Eur 3 per coin. They were being mixed with the equivalent fakes (I assume from the next generation batch from these) of Carus, Probus etc. like those below.






These then started emerging on the market post "cleaning" and sold for about Eur 20 each.

 

Doug,
You are right. I mis-read it as an A.

 

Doug has described what I was referring to, however, the Greek "letter" is not a letter but a numeral. Letters of the Greek alphabet regularly served as numerals when the occasion required a printed number. The odd symbols appearing on these coins are consistent in their pairing with the Greek numerals, and so are presumed to be corresponding numerals in some as yet undetermined alphabet local to Siscia, the only mint which used these particular symbols. That they are alphabetic, however, is merely an hypothesis, and the precise character of the symbols is not certain. Nonetheless, given the correlation to the Greek numerals used, I think we are safe to call these symbols "counters" whether they are part of an alphabetic system, or a strictly numeric one. (On the distinction compare the use of "counters" in the western mints and the occasional use of Roman numerals).

Here is a Constans for officina delta, an original of which the fake is a copy:

and another in which the "local" figure takes on a slightly different shape (closer to the normal)

 

The seller removed the listing.