Here are some newer style Athenian owl coins that were offered to me. I doubt their authenticity but I have not seen fakes of this type of coin before. I would like to get others' opinions. Real or fake? Sorry about the poor photos, they are not mine. Thanks
I am not a collector of these types and as such cannot and will not present an opinion on the authenticity of the ones shown, but I will give you some tips on my own thought process in this case. This group appears to be at least a portion of a hoard, or at least someone is trying to make it look like that. When I'm presented with such a group or even a single coin I believe the first step is simply comparing the style with published examples which I know to be authentic, principally those with a known hoard provenance. You can find plenty of hoard reports for hoards found in various places across the Mediterranean on JSTOR and I suggest you take a look as there are many new-style owl hoards out there. If you don't have JSTOR access, ask around and you can probably find a way. I graduated a few years ago and found that I still have access through my University and failing that I know a few people either in school as students or professors who don't mind fetching the occasional PDF for me. Secondly, I like to compare dies and try to figure out the number represented in the group I'm looking at and once again compare to known good coins and compare what I see with the hoards I find. This takes a good eye and with such a large issue as new-style owls you may not find a die match outside the hoard but perhaps the ratio of the number of dies identified to the number of coins will lead to some insight. If all are from the same die pair it might be reason to be suspicious unless you can think of a good reason for that. You might also compare with dies of examples that have recently come to market - if you find that a particular die represented in the hoard has had 20 examples sold in the past 6 months, that too may be suspicious or it may be OK, there's really no hard and fast rule here and I have no idea how many dies were used to strike this series and how common it is to find matches. These are the sort of questions you need to learn to think through when presented with coins like this and trying to do due diligence on them. Depending on the type of coin, the source and the amount of money involved some purchases warrant more or less due diligence than others and even with seemingly good sources like big name dealers and collectors it's always good to be able to check their work, so to speak. Good luck.
The fact that the shape is weird does not condemn it as fake. Misshapen coins from this time period are fairly common. Although it is possible to spot a fake from a photo, it is not possible to be 100% certain that a coin is genuine. Including the size and weight would help. But the best anyone can do in a forum like this is to say either: "I am convinced it's fake because . . ." or "I can't see any reason to doubt its authenticity from this photo." Even with the coin in hand, the best any expert can do is be about 99.9% sure.
The photos are poor, but nothing in the photos suggests that the coins are forgeries. There are no cast copies, the style is fine, the flans look OK, the patina looks passable. No way to say from these photos with certainty, one way or the other. Barry Murphy
I got him to send more pictures but I'm not sure if these are any better. Any further comments on these pictures are greatly appreciated.
From the photos, I'd lean toward genuine but i still have doubts...and that usually makes me pass on a coin(s) unless I had confidence in the seller offering an unambiguous return/refund policy.
I would guess they're too beautiful to be true. Some counterfeiters can tool or play with the toning in order to hide the casting signs. Be careful..
True. In fact, I think it makes a coin more likely to be genuine, but not desirable. If you were a criminal counterfeiter, why make a fake so off-center? I wonder if the weights are even close to right. They seem to be high grade so they should be full weight. If they are not, it is a very bad sign. Most people don't really want several similar coins, so when offered a group they think about keeping one and selling the rest. This triggers the greed response when the coins seem cheap. A nice coin of that type is worth quite a bit. Don't think those are worth anywhere near what a nice one is. They seem to have "problems." Don't let any "this is a good deal" idea mislead you. It is highly unlikely to be a good deal you can profit from. If you could, the man attempting to sell them to you would do it himself.
