Did “authentic” reproduction count as counterfeiting in Ancient & Medieval times?

This is just a question that came up in my head while I was watching Game of Thrones.

In Ancient, Medieval, and even Colonial times counterfeiting was considered a serious crime. On Colonial American banknotes there is even a warning that says “to counterfeit is death”, meaning counterfeiting was punished with execution.


It was not a minor crime but a capital crime on par with murder or rape, some would consider it to be treason as it damages the entire nation by increasing the money supply illicitly. Every dollar put into the money supply decreases the value of every other dollar already in the money supply. Inflation.

But does anyone know if it counted as counterfeiting if coins were made privately with the correct amount of precious metals?

Usually when we think of counterfeiting we think of something like this.


A silver plated copper planchet denarius


A coin that was made to fool people by having less, or zero, precious metals when authentic coinage of the time would have had a certain amount of precious metals such as gold or silver.

But what if an individual made coinage with the correct weight and fineness of precious metals simply because he/she had bullion and needed money?

For example a denarius under Augustus would’ve weighed 3.8 grams of ~97% pure silver. What if a private individual struck replications of the same denarii but also used 3.8 grams of 97% pure silver so that the precious metals content is the same as the authentic denarii minted by the government?

Imagine the silver plated copper denarius above but made with 97% pure silver.

Did that count as counterfeiting and was it punished with the same harshness as the former kind of counterfeiting?

It doesn’t seem like it would be as severe of a crime since no one is really being cheated. The coin has the exact amount of precious metals that the so called “victim” (the person being paid with it) would be expecting when they received it. No one is being deceived or harmed.


If, for some reason, anyone happens to know any more about this I’d love to hear it.

Thanks!

 

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I did find an article on Quora about counterfeiting in ancient times. It might shed some light.

https://www.quora.com/How-common-was-counterfeiting-money-in-ancient-Rome

 

Didn't Snodgrass write about this, and this exact issue that faced Aethelred, when he had to buy Peace from the Danes at 40 million pennies a year? I think I recall that he started trial by ordeal punishment. In effect, it was stealing tribute that should have been paid to Aethelred, to be able to pay the Danes. It has been a while since I read Snodgrass, though, and may be mixing up all the stuff I read. I am getting old.

However, there was a reason he was called Aethelred the Unready, after all.