I recently purchased a coin while in Selcuk (Ephesus), Turkey. I was wondering if it was genuine or not. I was told that it was made of silver, but I'm skeptical, but I'll do a density test on it as soon as I get my hands on a weighing scale and a graduated cylinder. I did some simple web searching and I was unable to find any similar coin designs. Thanks for the help!
It isn't legal to take ancient coins out of Turkey, but the laws there say nothing about fakes. These are created locally and sold off to unsuspecting tourists on a daily basis. Unfortunately this piece seems to be one of those poorly made cast fakes. The real coins were die struck, sometimes though on hot cast blanks. The real ones would not have casting flaws, ie the bubbles - or the rim since they were not struck in collars.
