And another leontini obvious fake on auction

@pprp What you said about round edges being fake is total BS. Look at the coin from ANS in this link. It has round edge and it is 100% authentic. If you don't know something it is better not to talk than confuse people and spread ignorance.

http://numismatics.org/collection/1948.27.2?lang=en

 

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It is actually true that the planchets of transfer die fakes and modern die fakes are often wrong if you compare this plachets with planchets of authentic coins from the same emission. In this case the plachets do look very similar or identical to the planchets of the specimens in museum collections with old pedigree and the Leontinoi emissions do have a huge variety of different planchets so this is not proving anything.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/resea...?assetId=1613025271&objectId=1295085&partId=1

http://numismatics.org/collection/1944.100.8556

You can of course try to count dots of the dotted border or comparing their size and position to identify recutting but you need to reconstruct how the real dotted border in the authetnic ancient dies and at different die states looked like and reconstructing seems here very difficult to impossible because the proven authentic examples in museum collection are very rare so you will only find a very very small numer of them and most seem to be pretty worn and parts of the dotted border are on all coins missing due to "off" centering (I think that the die design was very large in relation to the size of planchet which makes it very difficult to impossible that the whole dotted border fits on planchet) and some dots of dotted border can be missing or mishaped or modified due to striking for example die shift (slippage) or filled die or bad strike like soft strike or wear of the dies or wear on coins or due to corrosion etc.

I fear that the "reconstruction" of dies states and dotted border was done with the coins from the huge hoard and there with the coins Gionnysicily expected to be authentic and not with the proven authentic coins from museum collections.
So this "die study" is worthless if you can even call it die study if only some of the coins were used and the authenticity of the used coins is not close as good as for the proven authentic ones in museum collections with good and old pedigree.

To edge cracks, some authentic Leontinoi tetradrachms in museum collections have very strong edge cracks and some authentic Leontinoi tetradrachms in museum collections have no edge cracks or very small edge cracks so this is not proving anything. And the flan shape of the authentic Leontinoi tetradrachms in museum collections can differ pretty much, too.

No edge crack and similar flan but different Leontinoi issue

https://www.britishmuseum.org/resea...?assetId=1613025252&objectId=1295104&partId=1

http://numismatics.org/collection/1944.100.8540

 

Sorry I’m late to the discussion.

The fake leontinis published by the IAPN were indeed missing the flaw behind the eye. All leontinis that are missing the flaw are forgeries in my opinion. I’ve seen maybe 20 of these, and even not considering the missing flaw, they all fail in other aspects as well; flans aren’t made correctly, they are pressed not struck etc....

That in no way means that all leontinis with the flaw are genuine. Over the last several year’s I have seen quite a few modern transfer die forgeries with the flaw. As most dealers assume the the flaw = genuine, these pass the market relatively easily.

The coin that started this thread is in my opinion one of the modern forgeries. Luckily most of the genuine examples from this pair of dies come from a single hoard, and most are very high grade with good metal. This allows for easy study of the dies, strike and luster characteristics of this series. The luster on this coin is wrong and the metal, at least in the photo, is clearly modern. I may have seen this coin in hand a few months ago, but I’m not in the office to check the photos, but it looks a coin that recently crossed my desk. I’ll check next week when I return.

Barry Murphy

 

The Leontinoi is possibly form a different hard and was harshly cleaned which has removed the luster. How it is possible to tell if the metal in this case is modern from pictures is a miracle for me , pictures can be misleading, different lumination, camera settings or camera, angle etc.

Ok, the Leontini is fake and this NGC verfied Balas is authentic ?
The Balas has no luster but very soft soapy surface + transfer errors hole in hair and is die linked to issues from other mints and years with much too high weights (pheonician weight standard was 14.25 g).
And the dotted border is recutted, very different number of dots and position of dots than on the only real specimen without the whole ^^

Authentic coin same die but without transfer error hole in hair and with original dotted border

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1365813

The NGC Balas fake

https://www.ebay.de/itm/NGC-AU-Sele...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/4277260-015/NGCAncients/

About this fakes

http://www.calgarycoin.com/reference/fakes/examples/fakebalas.htm

Coin #1 on the left, is an issue of Tyre mint (Sear-7032 type). FULL IMAGE. The weight is 15.21 grams, which is almost a full gram over the correct Phonecian standard of 14.25 grams. It is dated year-165 (equal to ).

Coin #2 on the right is an issue of Berytus mint (Sear not listed). FULL IMAGE. The weight is 13.20 grams, which is almost a full gram below the correct Phonecian standard of 14.25 grams. The date on this one is not clear, as it is not clear what the first letter in the date is, but it appears possibly to be an attempt at a GAMMA, which would make the date year-163 (equal to 150-149 BC).

"The basic problem is: how can two coins struck at two different mints, most likely more than a year apart, share a common obverse die? The simple answer is that it is highly unlikely and most likely not possible. That is what first drew these coins into question, however the incorrect weight standards basically proves the coins are not authentic."

http://forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=HJwW83VQZ1E=

http://forgerynetwork.com/asset.aspx?id=X0NoixJlAeA=

 

I never saw the Balas. It was done long before I was at NGC. The old small labels haven’t been used since 2015 and I started at NGC in 2016. It is also irrelevant to this discussion on Leontini.

 

Actually, I’ve personally taken photos of close to 650,000 ancient coins over the last 30 years and have a pretty good eye in reading photos. Eventually you learn what different lighting does to an image and you can learn how to see how the photo was taken and adjust your viewing of the image to compensate for different photo techniques.

Barry Murphy

 

I do not see any real difference to the proven authentic specimens with old pedigree in BM and ANS. I will not compare them with the specimens from huge hoard because it is not clear if all coins from this hoard were actually authentic or if some were fake and if yes which ones (hoards are often mixed with fakes) or if all coins of this hoard were fake. And we know if coins are authentic or not by comparing them with proven authentic coins best with good pedigree or from excavations and this is what I did. Luster of coins can get missing due to wear or environment or due to cleaning and no lustre is no reason to condemn a coin. The silver looks ok of the Leontinoi and like on authentic but harshly cleaned coin coins, not sure what you mean.
The reason why I posted the Balas is because it is a transfer die with typical transfer die fake problems, like very soft details, missing details which have been recutted like dotted border, transfer errors like the hole in the hair, the to high weight of some of these and impossible die links etc.

The Leontinoi tetradrachms do imho not differ from authentic coin from same issue in museum collections and they do not have typical problems that transfer die fakes have like detail loss, wrongly recutted details, transfer errors and individual characteristics from the mother from striking, circulation or environment which should not be in the transfer dies and which have to be removed (recutted) or problems realated due to not being familar with the issue like wrong planchet, die axis, weight, or impossible die links etc.

 

The Leontinoi tetradrachm is actually most likely fake but it can be very difficult to prove this and I hoped to get to know something new by defending the coin and so luring out new methods of condemning fakes but I was disappointed! To dispute with dealer or experts of auctions houses can be much more annying than my defending and they do have in most cases even much worse arguments if they actually even have real arguments but they can be much more stubborn and seeing only what they want to see

I will post now what is imho wrong with the coin.
In lamoneta they have counted dots to show recutting and authentic ones has 17 dots and transfer die fakes many more.
With die flaws it is possible to show if coins are from same dies or not.
It is very unlikely to impossible that the dotted border was recutted in ancient times why should they do it? And if I read correctly in lamoneta the reason why one of these suspected coins with recutted dotted border was supposed to be genuine was that it had horn silver and that the expert of auction house pretended it was horn silver and that horn silver could not be created artificially.

How can we prove that the recutting was not done in ancient times but in modern times?
With a die study, we look if coins from the same dies exist with 17 dots but in an earlier and later die state do exist and maybe even at the same die state.

For exampel fresh die dotted border 17 dots

medium die state 17 dots and some with 25 dots

latest die state 17 dots

But we know for sure that they must be all from the same die due to same die flaws or completely identical details.

So they must have cutted in this example from 17 dots to 25 dots and later back to 17 dots, is this likely no, is there any plausible explanation why they should have recutted the same die in ancient times 2 time ?(of course tehre is no plausible explanation except the coins must be fakes from recutted transfer dies with recutted dotted border)

pprp, why did you choose they KENTORIPAI fake, which was sold as fake if you can find at his store many obvious fakes for sale every month (many will be withdrawn but not all) ?

Here is for example an Alexander fake from modern dies (reverse is compeltely modern and obverse is possibly massivly recutted from real coin or modern too).
Withdrawn of course due to no die links to authetnic coins and completly impossible die links, search at forgery network for Alexander tetradrachms and you will find more then enough die links

https://www.ebay.de/itm/LANZ-KINGS-...203710?hash=item46a273b8fe:g:nEkAAOSwkP1d1sZE