Featured Vespasian 'Dream Coin'

Is it for sure that the Vespasianus is authentic ?
Surface does not look good and there seem to be very similar mosts likely identical casting twins (they have better details). How does edge look and what s the weight?

There are casting twins with same centering and same wear and the Vespasianus has no new details which are not already on the other cast fakes but your coin has weaker details.

One of the twins can be of course the authentic mother, but the authentic mother should have best and sharpest details.


https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3644731


https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=768468

(same coin as link 2)
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=362447

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=281485

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=378215


I would be surprised if your coin would be authentic but you never know and I could be wrong too and the coin authentic.

On obverse strong wear on ES of Caesar and dotted border starting at N of (Vespasian) stopping at OS of COSIII.

On reverse most wear on top on legend fides there especially the S !
Same start of dotted border at about P of IMP to AV of AVG.
At AVG the planchet seems to be not perfectly round.

The funny thing is that Peus thought that their die match and twins is a Cavino forgery. Maybe anyone want to check if they are right.

Italien Padua, Republik
Bronzemedaille (16. Jhdt.) in Form eines Sesterz, auf den römischen Kaiser Vespasianus, 69-79. Kopf r. / Titus und Domitianus mit Speer und Parazonium stehen sich gegenüber. Lawrence - Cavino - RIC 413 Sehr schön

 

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Great coins guys!!!! Im new here so excuse my ignorance ..lol but Can someone tell me what ive got here .... Thanks in Advance .

 

my question is is the wear natural- I HAVE MY DOUBTS- EVEN THE PATINA LOOKS NOT GOOD not my dream coin- i think coin is fake letters are not good wear is weird to me- even the design is stRANGE

 

This is a rare coin, so being a die match is not an indication of being fake. It also comes from a very old collection from the late 1800's. Several knowledgeable Flavian collectors have seen this coin and have no issues with it. Curtis Clay has seen this coin and has no issue with it. Olding had no issue with it. It was published in an auction catalog and there was no issue with it. Granted the picture is not very sharp, but David has the coin in hand and is a respected and well known Flavian expert. I respect all of these people's opinion that the coin is authentic.

Notice his own picture is much sharper...

 

I have been quite alarmed lately by the number of people jumping up and down and screaming that a coin is fake. Joe on Forum has a saying that I like very much. It goes something like - If you do not know enough to have an opinion then do not express it. The idea being that condemnations should be taken quite seriously and not be the subject of thoughtless posts on boards like this. These spurious condemnations can influence the thinking of others and are dangerous as such. Alexander Pope expressed this as "a little learning is a dangerous thing". People who know more actually say less as they are fully aware of the power of opinion.

As for the coin let me just say that I do not find the so called arguments condemning the authenticity of this coin to be at all persuasive. This is especially so given that the coin was purchased by David who has 16 years of experience with Flavian coinage.

 

"was purchased by David who has 16 years of experience with Flavian coinage"

Killer argument so this means he is a god and that he can not be fooled by a fake ?

It is not about die matches, as I made clear in my first post !!!

Coins with good and old pedigree or coming from a good collection are often not checked very carefully because people assume they must be authentic with this pedigree or coming from this collecction.

To have almost or most likely identical flan shape (on cast twins there are often very minor differences) IDENTICAL CENTERING and IDENTIAL WEAR to condemned cast twins (one was sold as cast fake other wrongly as Cavino) from the same dies are very strong indicators for been cast fake especially if the details and the patina do not look good too and his coin has no NEW DETAILS WHICH ARE NOT already visible on the authentic mother Peus which is the mother of the other cast fakes.
The Peus piece perviously sold by Künker is authentic mother.

Cast fakes are never 100% identical with the authentic mother and casting twins from same mould !!!!

Mathematical probability that his coin is authentic is low due to the fact that it has so many individulal characteristics flan shape, centering and wear in common with the twins and the host. But as always even if something is unlikely it doesn´t meant that it is impossible.

Pedigree and that person xy thinks that the coin is authentic is a very bad argument. It is nothing special that even coins with good old pedigree turn out to be fakes or that experts get fooled by fakes.

I do authenticate the coin alone!
I do not care for the seller or the owner or the pedigree because this has only very minor to no influence on authenticity!
You do not know me how do you know how good I am in authenticating coins?
I care only about arguments.

Even experts can change their opinion if new evidence comes out.

 

last picture making is much beter- still i dont like the picture

 

Please supply me with a list of your scholarly publications. Please only supply those that are in fact peer reviewed. When you make assertions please try to give some supporting evidence for those assertions. yes, I want to see quotations page numbers and real sources. An opinion without support is not worth very much in my view.

 

"I want to see quotations page numbers and real sources. An opinion without support is not worth very much in my view."

So if I publish much about coins I must be a god in authenticating and if I do not publish anything I must be bad in authenticating ?

It would be another case if it would be about articles concerning fakes and the IMPACT FACTOR of article, reputation of magazine where they article was published and quotes of this articles. Non of your friend has published any article abount fakes so ...^^
If you publish something it should be new to be interesting for others but it is not smart to give away not know informations about fakes because knowledge is might and it is very hard to get this information so to give it to others for free is not that smart. If you write a seminar paper or dissertation work at university you will have to write in history and most other subjects about a question that has not been answered so far or at least not detailed so you can not cheat by copy + past

I think the rate of fake coins you manage to get withdrawn from reputbale auction houses is a better way to judge authentication skills and the more expensive and better the fake the better the authentication skills.
And there I am expremely good !

The epxerts of auction houses are smarter they do care about arguments and not so much about names. I wrote for example one time the coin is a published fake condemned by Silvia Hurter as fake from modern dies, Silva Hurter was one of the best in authenticating fakes but he did not care. Then I wrote again that the die axis is wrong and impossible for issue and mentioned related literature he thanked me and said what a useful hint and after he verified it the coin was withdrawn.

Smart people care about arguements only !
And smart people can express their opinion with arguments.

I have written my arguments already and because you can not disprove them you try to go after me

EXPLAIN ME WHY DO ALL COINS FROM THIS DIES HAVE SAME FLAN SHAPE CENTERING AND WEAR ????

Next one, all coins from this dies have same flan shape+ centering + wear this can not be a coincidence !!!

On the new one a part of the edge was later cutted out to distract.

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=493816




The problem is that if the same coin would have been posted by another possibly new member the opinions concerning authenticity would he most likely completely different knowing about the cast twins.

So this is more about the owner and pedigree as about the coin itself which is stupid.

If a coin is imho authentic I can find enough arguments for authenticity to defend the coin so this should not be any problem here for the others to find real arguments speaking for the authenticity of the coin if the coin would is actually authentic.

 

Thank you Andrew and Jay for wading into this on my behalf. I didn't have much time today to devote to it, life and all.

In hand the coin has no casting seam and appears struck. Ancient encrustations and patina cover most of the surfaces. It's also a double die match with the BM specimen. That's really all I can add to the discussion.



And it's nice to see ro come out of semi-retirement for a good cause!

 

No, the problem is that many of us know who David is, we know who Curtis Clay is, and we know who the other people who have seen this coin are. We don't know who you are. This forum is filled with bad opinions and statements, especially when it comes to fakes.

If you had made your point more clear and less arrogantly, maybe we would have noticed what it is you're trying to say. I thought you were trying to say that they were all Paduan's, which they clearly are not. Maybe it's a language issue. I now see and understand your point that the flans are very similar.

The edge shot of David's coin looks perfectly legitimate so I await to see what he makes of it.

Back to the Raptor's game

 

I never said the coin must be fake but that there is a high chance if all coins sold at auction have same flan shape, centering and wear. It can of course happen that an authentic coin of this issue has, even if very unlikely same or very similar flan shape + centering + wear.
This is why I asked how the edge looks like to be sure if it is one of the cast fakes or not.

To Paduan, Peus wrote that their die match is a paduan, (which seems to be wrong), the Peus piece seems to be perfectly authentic and no Paduan as written in discription but it shows well that some cast fakes were sold as authentic and authentic coins can be condemned by "Experts" of auction houses.


Italien Padua, Republik
Bronzemedaille (16. Jhdt.) in Form eines Sesterz, auf den römischen Kaiser Vespasianus, 69-79. Kopf r. / Titus und Domitianus mit Speer und Parazonium stehen sich gegenüber. Lawrence - Cavino - RIC 413 Sehr schön

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=768468

I have verified if Peus is right and they were wrong so I already posted in previous post that the coin was condemned "wrongly as Cavino" by Peus.

It is about the coin not the seller Joe always says so what is wrong about it is about the coin not the owner or pedigree?


Link to BM coin,

https://www.britishmuseum.org/resea...x?assetId=637664001&objectId=1201536&partId=1

BM coin is as posted by others from the same dies but has different flan shape, centering (has parts of dotted border which are not visible on the other coins posted here, on obverse at 5-7 o´ clock), different wear see on reverse the letters FDES, that show about the same wear as all other letters of the coin not as on the other coins posted here that, show much more wear on the letters FDES especially the letter S than on other letters.

 

Hi David - I'm so sorry that some controversy has erupted over your new coin, which you were so excited about. It's a real downer when something like this happens and I really feel for you!

My opinion doesn't matter a whole lot, but reflecting on all the above, if it were my coin I wouldn't be comfortable with it. There's enough doubt that I would return it. Lolli makes some good points, albeit not in the friendly way we've come to appreciate in this forum.

I'd be curious to know if others have encountered 19th century casts with thick patinas anything like this. I haven't, only relatively unpatinated coins. (Of course, a patina could have been chemically added later.)

You mentioned Curtis Clay helping with the provenance, and Jay has said that he's seen the coin, although you didn't say that explicitly in your OP. Has Curtis seen the coin in hand?

The patina and Clay's expertise are the two main things weighing in my mind for the coin's authenticity.

Here's my example of a 19th century cast fake sestertius:


and some die-matched coins that I think are highly questionable:
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1485200
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1687690

I still love this coin. It belonged to an older relative of mine who introduced me to Roman coins when I was a wee sprog. This was the one that most fascinated me. Too bad it turned out to be a fake!

I hope yours turns out to be genuine, and that you can be fully confident about it.

 

I have had the same experience with my first Pertinax Sestertius. After seeing two other specimens (both initially found to be genuine by the experts of well-respected auction houses) with the exact same flan shape and wear pattern, it became obvious that all three were casts from the same host coin.
Sorry...

 

If the Patina is authentic the coin must be authentic and any further discussion would be stupid. Base on pictures it is hard to tell and I do not even know for sure due to the picture which can be misleanding and which are not the best if the coin actually has a patina or only toning with encrustration.

The coin has copper oxide encrustration on the edge which look convincing but I have seen copper oxide encrustrations on fake coins too so this is not really helping.

Here are some Euboia Histiaia fakes with artificial wear and artificial
applied copper oxide.
Barry Murphy thinks that they are fakes from modern dies so the coins must be fake and copper oxide artificial.


http://ancients.info/forums/forum/forgeries/forgery-alerts/931-fake-histaia-tetrobols?t=877

http://bpmurphy.ancients.info/images/misc/histaiacomp.jpg

https://www.ebay.de/itm/two-Histiai...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

 

Thank you for the kind words. I agree that this piece has a high chance of being a modern production of some kind, perhaps even a Cavino. The evidence is overwhelming. Although I'm disappointed, I'm not devastated. I'll probably end up keeping it because of the old provenance and as a reminder to myself.

The seeming glee that others took in condemning it is a bit disturbing however and goes against many of the reason why I frequent this forum. Thank you to everyone who were a bit more polite concerning this matter.