In an old thread resurrected today I noticed some discussion of whether or not a fourrée coin can also be a cast. I thought I would comment in a new thread rather than pile on a old one. The answer to the the title question is 'yes', sort of, if the fourrée is produced by the cliché method. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliché_forgery The cliché method is also described by George Boon in his article 'Counterfeit Coins in Roman Britain' in J Casey and R Reece (eds), Coins and the Archaeologist, Seaby / London, 1988, pp. 102-188. Lastly, I found this paper just now, which I have not yet had an opportunity to digest but which looks interesting: https://www.britnumsoc.org/publications/Digital BNJ/pdfs/1994_BNJ_64_4.pdf
The answer is "No." Even cliché forgeries are stuck (according the the cited wikipedia article). The usual definition of "fourré" is a coin struck (with dies) with a flan of a base metal core wrapped with silver foil (very rarely gold foil). That way the surface looks like good silver but the intrinsic value of the coin is less than it would be if it were solid silver. This broken coin is a fourré. On the picture from the edge you can see the thin silver foil. Just behind the left forearm the thin foil projects out a few millimeters. Prototype, Antiochus III, 223-187 BC Sear Greek 6934.
Clichés aren't so much struck as "filled", which is the literal meaning of fourrée. That's why I wrote "sort of". A silver foil shell is created by sandwiching and carefully hammering the foil between a genuine coin and a pair of soft lead plates. The genuine coin is removed and the thin silver shell is filled with molten base metal, using the lead plates as an outer form to hold everything in place... not strictly 'cast' but at the same time, not 'struck' in the usual sense. The description in Boon is probably better than the Wikipedia article.
I see no reason an AE cast coin could not be plated with silver afterwards. This would produce a much thinner layer of silver than the traditional fourree sandwich. Is this cast? I found it interesting because it has a test cut in the coin before plating. another, similar This is the standard foil method fourree.
True. However, then it is not called a fourré. The term does not refer to all types of forgeries that have better silver on the surface (there are several ways to make the surface look better than the interior is), but to those made with silver foil covering base metal before striking.
I use fourree interchangeably with plated and include any of the formats discussed in Campbell, Greek and Roman Plated Coins. That does not include late Roman 'silvered' coins and makes absolutely no comment on whether or not the coin was official or a forgery. It is a terminology thing. For example, the second below is a great example of a foil technique coin but the first was not as I read Campbell. I consider both fourree. The first is obviously unofficial. I am unwilling to accept the declaration by Crawford that all fourrees are fakes/forgeries. That makes no difference. What makes the coin fourree/plated/subaeratus is how it was made, not who made it or for what purpose it was made.
