My biggest and heaviest ancient coin

Sorry to be a downer @Multatuli, but I concur with Carausius that the style of the piece is questionable, especially the prow of the ship, which looks more like a fantasy piece than official. The patina looks good but patinas can be faked very convincingly. Forgeries of ancient coins were made 130 years ago too. I would seek out other experts to review it.

Here's a link to some museum examples: http://numismatics.org/crro/id/rrc-36.1

 

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Hmm, that prow really looks nothing like the examples shown on CRRO, does it?

 

A US silver dollar is "only" 26.7 grams, or about 1/12 th of a Roman Pound = As = one uncia.

Cast Uncia = 1/12th of an As
Obv - Astragalus
Rev - dot
TV-6a

@spirityoda A Roman soldier was paid 3 Asses per day. That would have been 3 of the OP coin and would have taken a big purse to hold a week's pay. In 270 - 220 BC, Romans were mostly farmers and did not go to the grocery or hardware stores for goods they produced.

 

@Carthago and @TIF are right in the reverse looks different. It seems like the celator was trying to show heads in the above deck room.
Attached are the plates from Haeberlin's Aes Grave. The first 3 are the good examples. The last plate shows a "false" copy on the top left that weighed 390 grams.

 

Just sneaking in my Ptolemy III octobol here (93.3 g, 46mm, ex Dattari):


I hope it all turns out well with the aes grave....

 

I looked in Haeberlin and did not see your coin in his plates. Not all of the specimens listed in the table of examples are shown on plates. I don't see one listed at a weight of 368.7, but there is one at 367.00 grams, or pretty darn close for a century + later. The table line:
2. 367,00 Neapel, Cat I, 496, s gut (Borgia)
I do not know what all of the notes say, but it looks like your example would be about the size of the 2nd largest known by Haeberlin out of 104 examples.

 

Thank you very much @Carausius, @TIF, @Carthago and @rrdenarius by your observations and opinions.
This reverse with the different prow always paid my attention and brought me doubts about the real thing of the coin. Of course, there may be forgeries of more than 120 years. What strikes me are the real signs of aging and the pedigree, in addition to the other features already mentioned above. When I get a chance, I'll try to show it to some respected specialists in this kind of piece. If it is false, it will be a pity. Maybe it will turn into the most expensive paperweight I've got news of!

 

That was very kind of you. Thank you for the information about the weight. Very high, but not certainly too high.

 

Almost any quoted pedigree can be invented unless the catalog had a photo, and photos were not common in sales before about 1950. Any criminal can claim such-and-such a coin is from the old Lord such-and-such collection sale if it had a coin of the type because in the old days very few of the coins were illustrated. For example, the major firm M&M did not even illustrate their fixed-price catalogs at all until issue number 77 (1948). I have many Seaby catalogs from the 1970s that are only partially illustrated. They offered many excellent coins without photos.

I, personally, think the OP coin is false (because of the odd prow). If that is so, it is not hard to imagine a seller inventing a false pedigree to go with a false coin.

 

I agree with you @Valentinian. It's not difficult to create a false pedigree, specially on the thirties. But the last owner (the industry magnate) apparently acquired it directly from the sale of the collection of this german (or austro-hugarian) noble, at least 80-90 years ago. I really don't know if the Freiherr bought it from a forger or from someone who did know what it was.
Anyway, the fact is that I will search more about this. But the fact that this reserve not appear in Haeberlin does not necessarily makes the coin a forgery. There is a semis type that the prow resembles that my coin. I can't remember the Thurlow-Vecchi number...
Thank you!

 

Just looking more closerly at your post, RR, I didn't realize that Haeberlin had forgeries in his corpus. Fascinating. And that was originally published in 1910. Forgerers have always been among us.