Most long-term coin collectors eventually build up a "black cabinet" of fake or altered coins they have purchased along the way, either inadvertently, or deliberately as teaching aids. Here for your entertainment and education, I share a few specimens from my own museum of falsehood, and hope you may gain something from them. Coin #1 was the impetus for my making this post. It turned up in a reputable auction earlier this year as part of a group lot, alongside 3 Bactrian coins and one scarce Parthian coin (all the other coins are genuine as far as I can tell). This is actually a previously-known forgery that mules an obverse of Sellwood 33.1 (c.93-70 BCE) with a reverse of Sellwood 28.1 (Mithradates II, 121-91 BCE). An identical piece (double-die-linked to mine, in fact, notice especially the die crack on the shoulder of the obverse and identical areas of weakness on the bottom line of legend on the reverse) was in David Sellwood's personal collection, and sold at auction for $1,300 before it was realized that the "mule" was fake. (See https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2311901 , thanks to @Severus Alexander for the link and @Alwin for discussion of this type.) Coin #2 was purchased on eBay around 2000 or 2001. It has the same reverse type (Sellwood 28.1) as Coin #1, but this time muled to an obverse of Sellwood 31.6 (Mithradates III, 87-80 BCE). As with the first coin, there is no evidence of casting on the coin itself, and my only clue that something was wrong was the extremely unlikely muling of these two dies, from rulers who did not quite overlap in time. Coin #3, although the flan itself doesn't show any casting seam, clearly had some casting involved during its production process, shown by the mushy obverse, flat area in the middle of the reverse, and the area at the bottom left of the reverse where the legend cuts off before the edge of the flan (the original coin was off its flan at this spot). This carries the muling to an absurd extreme, as the obverse is Sellwood type 28 (Mithradates II, as above) while the reverse is Sellwood 63.6, Artabanos IV (10-38 CE), a full century later! This was purchased on eBay in 2001, and I'm ashamed to admit I didn't recognize it as fake at the time. Hopefully I have become more observant (and less naively trusting) since then. Coin #4 is the only one in this group that was noted as a likely fake by its seller; it comes from a Frank S. Robinson auction of 2001. The type is a Pakoros II diobol (cf. Shore 402), c. 78-120 CE. And no, I didn't mess up the photography process, both sides have the obverse design. I'm not quite certain if it's the same die for both sides, but it may be. I don't know why forgers would make such an obviously suspicious-looking piece, I'm not a psychiatrist. If there's a lesson here, I guess it is to learn your coins in depth, and remember that even good sellers can miss some fakes. The first two coins especially are superficially convincing, and it's only because of the improbable muling that they betray their falseness. Please post your own "black cabinet" coins.
Here are a ton of semis fakes from Brundisium, each with a different patina but with exactly the same obverse and reverse. I bought one of these coins almost a decade ago and found that it had a painted on black patina way back then but they keep coming up at auctions on occasion. The last one showed up in January 2023 but I sent them a note and it was withdrawn. Note the exact same flan deformity above Phalanthos' head on the reverse.
Here's an obvious fake from the rather rare Magna Grecian city of Hyria/Orra in Calabria. I was able to later remove the verdigris (these are the seller's original pictures but I suck at photography so will post these anyway). From the style this coin already looks very dodgy (mushy portrait etc), but I was curious and bought it anyway. When it arrived, it was clearly a fake, as the diameter was 2X that of a genuine coin. Still, it is enough of a curiosity that I kept it. I have never seen another like it, and am keen to learn more about its background and how it came about. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll get many answers, and it will remain an interesting enigma in my collection.
