I normally avoid buying fakes, which involves lots of study and reserach and building up of knowledge. Despite this I have bought a fake but bought this one in the full knowledge that it is a fake. The feel of the coin is just wrong, it has the soft soapy look of a cast and there is the evidence of the remnants of the casting sprue on the edge. I bought it as a study example of a fake I hadn't seen an example of before. It is made of silver but copies an aureus:- Septimius Severus Aureus Obv:- L SEPT SEV PERT AVG IMP VII, Laureate head right Rev:- DIVI M P II F P M TR P III COS II P P, Mars advancing to right, holding spear and trophy. Minted in Rome A.D. 195 Reference:- RIC 65. Cohen 123. Calico 2447. A quick search online shows a couple of examples of the Aureus (attached below), which have the same obverse die as each other but come from two different reverse dies. My fake comes the same die pair as the Calico 2447 coin. So someone has obtained an aureus from this die pair and has created a fake in silver from it. The fake has been toned and then quite harshly cleaned to try and mask the cast nature of the fake. I haven't seen this fake before and it isn't in any of the fake databases I am aware of until I added it to the Forvm fake reports. Regards, Martin
I think it's clear that the silver "coin" is a practice piece for a fake aureus. Buyers of S.S. aurei should beware. (Not something I need to worry about, lol.)
According to a prolific contributor to the discussion threads at FORVM, you can learn nothing from fakes. Although it looks like you've learned quite a bit from yours.
I buy fakes when they are cheap and either historical or hysterical: Pertinax - old? Zenobia fantasy tooled on Flavian as
