Featured FEL TEMP REPARATIO imitations

I will point out that there are some coins if shown to several 'experts' will not be classified the same by all. The worst product of the official mint might be no 'better' than the best product of the ancient unofficial operation. My Trier shown above is such a coin.


This comes up most often with coins of the usurper Magnentius for whom we have a continuous range of very well made to laughable styles with no certain division between the two. I regret now having passed up some I saw years ago when I was only buying coins I considered 'proper'.

It is not all that unusual in the history of the hobby for coins first thought to be barbarous to later be classified as a branch mint. Nearly a hundred years ago (1921) a French numismatist Laffranci suggested that a group of denarii of Septimius Severus was similar in style to the tetradrachm mint in Alexandria so should be classified as a branch of the official system rather than as barbarous as previously believed. In the 1990's I bought more than one 'Emesa' mint Septimius denarius from unillustrated lists of one favorite seller who always listed them as barbarous because he, then, was not familiar with the recognized branch mint. I have no doubt that further study will result in some other groups of 'different' coins being upgraded to branch status by some numismatist not yet out of elementary school.

We need to remember that we do not have written records pointing out that there were a certain number of official mints and where they were located but such classifications are made 'reverse engineering' by studying a large number of coins using style and find spot data. This is not a good hobby for people who think all that needs to be known is available in one neat little package. We are dealing with a work in progress.

 

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I appreciate it, good to know! Definitely not like modern world coins, which I’m used to. But ancient coins has a high learning curve that might just hook my inquiring mind

 

I can't figure out why anybody would want to make copies of coins whose intrinsic value was so small. it would be like counterfeiting nickels.

 

I have heard this said many times. Recently (2004 and again in 2009) people were not willing to believe that it would be worth the effort for modern counterfeiters to make fakes to salt into batches of uncleaned coins, to sell as premium uncleaned coins etc. Yet they did. They made the coins and then artificially treated them to give the impression of uncleaned coins. A lot of effort for low value per item.

If there is a shortage of local currency then I can see people taking a coin in hand and creating "local copies".

How closely did people look at individual coins? Were they good enough to pass the casual observer? This was evident in the UK where there were approximately 1.6 billion fake £1 coins in circulation leading up to 2017 when it was replaced. The quality of these £1 fakes improved over time from crude casts that were spray painted through to being a close enough alloy to fool vending machines.