Ptolemaic tetradrachm

I got this Arsinoe that I'm not sure is authentic. Any idea? It's 30 mm 32.4 gr 5 mm thick.

 

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You posted it on the reddit sub-forum for Ancients and we all said it was fake.

 

Oh my! And SO fake!

 

That is one of the worst fakes I have ever seen!

 

How many of these have you seen in your hand?

 

I'm looking for serious collectors opinions. Not high schoolers bs.

 

Alfonso this site has many, extremely knowledgeable collectors and professionals. Unfortunately the coin is a clear fake.

 

Great, well your talking to one. From the looks of it I've been a collector for longer than you've been alive!

I have handled WELL over 100,000 coins. I currently work at a coin shop.

 

Good. And that's why I posted here. I just could do with silly ridicule comments . Thank you.

 

You'll get lots of those here. You'll also get the opinion of some very experienced coin collectors. I don't think any of them will think that this is an authentic coin. Is it magnetic? You can also try on numisforums.com that's where a lot of ancient collectors went who didn't appreciate the humor or the administration here. Let us know what you find out.

 

I'll add to the others here by saying that it's a fake. The style is obviously off, the surfaces are way too even and the coin looks pressed rather than struck. These and other red flags should be a clear giveaway to any collector that has handled a reasonable amount of ancient coins that it's a fake.

Unfortunately, there are many other forgeries out there which are significantly more difficult to detect, so it's important to move past the denial stage and either buy from reputable dealers and auction houses you trust, or do a lot more homework comparing other specimens on AC Search and sites like Ilya Prokopov's Fake Coins report etc. I am sure that everyone on this forum (myself included) has gotten burned at least a few times buying fakes, but rather than getting upset, take it as a lesson and learn from it to avoid getting burned the next time. While it may make you more reluctant to continue in this hobby, ancient coin collecting can actually be very rewarding. Like everything in life these days though, it's not without its risks.

 

Like the others, I will confirm this is an obvious fake, and I rarely condemn a coin from just an image.

 

Thanks, I understand.
I stared collecting over 20 years ago, mainly Morgans, Walking Liberty, and other American silver coins but I paused for a few years. Now I am more interested in ancient Greek and Roman coins. I'm hoping to get feedback from a collector knowledgeable of Greek-Egyptian Ptolemaic coins. I found out that Ptolemaic coins standard are bit different than other Greek coins. I have a dozen other similar coins that I don't see in replica/copy companies' sites. I saw a post here of some similar bronze coins (chunky) I'm not afraid of getting burned if I see a coin I like. All the best!

 

I am sorry to be positive about this but, like all others, I think this tetradrachm is a fake. And the one on your avatar looks fake too.

 

Do you know what that (avatar) one is or supposed to be?

 

Yes, a tetradrachm of Sophytes, king of Baktria. But I could not positively explain why, the one on your avatar looks weird to me...

 

Correct. It may be. They are scarce. I have a couple of others that I got from a dealer in Thailand. Go figure

 

Any more photos of other coins?

 

Just to point out that if the coin is authentic (I don't think it is) it would actually be a decadrachm/dekadrachm, not a tetradrachm.

See here for an example https://cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=43184

On comparison the differences between the CNG coin and the OP's should be fairly obvious.

 

I've been getting some Baktrians lately (Demetrius, Menander, Eukratides) I'll post separately later. Thanks!