You should avoid any silver coin that looks like it has a visible seam on the rim. Such a seam often indicates that it was cast in a mold rather than struck by dies.
That what I was thinking. I saw it at the coin shop last week. The shops last day of operation is tomorrow. I do not own a scale so I could not weigh it. Thanks for your help guys.
Looks like a cast. The letters are so filled in looking. Wear does not produce that appearance but casting does. John
the obverse and reverse doesn't feel(look) quite right and that seam is a bad sign..here's a few for comparison for ya.. i'd pass on it.
Thanks. I love the design so I was hoping it was real. I'm assuming the real deal is too expensive for my budget.
You can get good Drachms for reasonable prices as 20-30€.. Tetras are usually bit more expensive, but still nice could be around 100€ or less.
@Ed Snible , Here is a bronze 4 prutah inexpensive lead/copper alloy that appears to have a seam. Do the same parameters apply to non-precious metal coins? It appears genuine but it sure does have a seam
Many coins from this era were cast, so there would be a casting seam and sometimes a casting sprue. I do not collect these, so perhaps someone with much more expertise will chime in.
Copper and bronze coin blanks were often cast and they will have seams even if later struck. Silver blanks were probably not cast. I saw a lecture earlier this year by Dr. Thomas Faucher of the French National Centre for Scientific Research, IRAMAT. He has attempted to recreate ancient minting techniques. He says it is difficult to standardize the weight of each coin when making blanks from molds. For example, in his molds he was getting blanks between 13 grams and 19 grams (50% weight variation). That is fine for bronze but not for silver. If you are interested in ancient minting techniques I recommend his 18 minute video at
Thank You Ed, great video. So then they didn't use casting molds for silver and gold I suspect. Interesting that there are only 50 to 100 ancient coin dies extant- probably mostly in museums. We better watch ebay- to see if any come up for sale(just kidding).
Season Greetings Mike—here is a short paragraph from a lecture that relates to the appearance of some of the Judaean coins. The flans apparently were produced from a two part mold. This diagram illustrates the process and the hi-lighted text describes them as moving coins. Added 12/25/17 Here's an image of one side of a Judaean Mattathias Antigonus period flan mold.
It is never safe to refer to the ancient peoples as 'they'. They were individuals who did things their way and did not realize 'they' were going to be lumped together into one group following one set of rules. Most flans were cast but the video only shows one of several possible techniques which we can reverse engineer from the coins. Some molds were open face on top; some two piece. Some were trimmed and adjusted individually (but not using the power tools seen in the video) while others were struck on blanks that were still attached by sprues. It only makes sense that blanks for precious metal coins would be produced with more attention to detail than bronzes. One thing that seems pretty consistent in ancient mints is that an effort was made not to spend more making the coin than the coin was worth. Who knows how much the US mint spends to make a 2017 Lincoln cent? We warn beginners of such things as casting seams because so many tourist grade fakes have them but in doing so we create a monster with people thinking they know all they need to know to separate the real from the fake. Still we have had people asking if their coin is real when it has a stamp 'copy' on the surface. There are many artifacts on coins that give clues how they were made but one important skill is to learn which ones are normal for which coins. I wrote a page which probably tells 1% of what you need to know to be half dangerous on the subject of flan preparation. I regret if it causes harm by making people think they know more. http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/fabric.html
