I need some help on this one. It appears to be a Corinthian stater or one of its colonies' staters, but it is a crude strike. If you look at the head of Athena it almost looks like a caricature of the goddess, a very chunky cheek goddess rather than beautiful one. She appears to have the mumps or is ready to blow bubblegum. I see no writing on this side of the coin. On the reverse, the colt seems equally cartoonish, with disjointed legs, a very narrow head and a pretty big eye. it also seems to be oddly struck with double edges on the left side of the flan as though struck twice but only on the edge. Above and between the head there seems to be some kind of perhaps control mark resembling a triskelis. There is some sort of inscription there but I cannot make it out , possibly something making it a colony of Corinth. The tag on the coin says .75 Ag, well below the purity of staters from Corinth, but perhaps her colonies issued them at a lesser purity. What is really throwing me for a loop is its weight which is coming in at 4.9 grams which does not seem to fit any Greek weight standard that I know of. A Corinthian stater is supposed to weigh over eight grams (three drachmai) and this one at 4.9 does not seem close to any individual weight of any denomination I know of. I am also thinking of some kind of barbarian copy. The flan is much thinner than the usual stater while the diameter is larger than the Corinthian staters I have seen.Any help appreciated. I do hope to get some better pictures up later.
Thanks for your input but could you be a bit more specific on why you think that? Does it appear to be struck from a die or does it appear to be a cast coin? Does it appear fake as in ancient copy or fake as in from the Balkans made two years ago? Does the crudeness of the images give it away or the fact that it is labelled as only .75 silver and light weight? Is it from a batch of well known fakes?I need to know what to look for to avoid costly errors in purchasing. Thanks for any more specific input you can give.
Its pressed, you can see how the flan is split and spread out where the pressure took the metal too far. The patina is chemically induced. You can see where there are odd areas of 'flowing' toning. This is because the coin wasnt cleaned before they patinated it and likely it had some oils on the surface. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the reverse. The photo looks like the 'unstruck' area of the flan is lower than the rest of the coin. That would mean the coin die was made, hmm. I guess partially in the positive as well as the negative. Its not very well done.
Thanks. I appreciate your input. Any other readers detect something amiss? I will have to check out the "pressing" method. I had not heard of that one before.
You got a professional opinion from Ken. If you look at the edge it will look horizontally stretched, with small vertical tears from the metal being pressed.
Yes, indeed and I am very glad to get that expert opinion The reason why I asked what he had detected is that I looked at the coin and saw no signs of casting and no seam around the edge of the flan and since I had no means of weighing the coin I concluded that despite its odd ball features, it was likely genuine. This method of faking a genuine coin by "pressing" is new to me and I will have to learn to look for signs of it. The vertical tears being mentioned looked to me like some of the flan cracks frequently found on genuine double denarii of the Third Century emperors. Are there some obvious signs to look for in a "pressed" counterfeit that others have learned to look for? Thanks, again.
I can’t speak for Ken, but I look along the edges. If it looks like metal was squeezed under continuous pressure, with lots of small vertical splits along the edge, almost like reeding, I strongly suspect pressed. Pressed coins often have small, round or oval bubbles in the surface as well. Look at the nose and the cheek on the obverse. Hope this helps.
