Without major items striking my fancy at auction this weekend, again, I find myself trudging through the slop on fleebay and came across another seller not on FORVM's bad sellers list (do they even update theirs anymore?), but is on @Valentinian 's http://augustuscoins.com/ed/fakesellers.html Which I strongly recommend using when venturing the toilet bowl of searching for new trustworthy sellers of ebay. I stumbled across this fraudulent freak when I saw this "campsite"(?) Reverse on a mushy modern forgery: https://www.ebay.com/itm/3139601842...1v8MZbJQpa&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY Which reminded me what I've long wondered, is the bizarre, and unlike anything else from this period, image on the reverse a total fabrication of modern forgers or are there examplesthought to be legit? And what are some of the other types that are or were popular until it was revealed they were fake?
Yes, in fact I was just reading about this reverse type in Ancient Coin Collecting III by Wayne G. Sayles:
Yes, an interesting and unusual type, but certainly real. Edit: Just in case it's not obvious, I mean the type is real, not OP's coin. There have been a few found in hoards, including 6 in the Bikic-Do hoard, and the unusual Belgina "hoard" (if 22 coins deserve to be called a hoard) of which 21/22 coins were of this type! https://www.academia.edu/42004986/Constantine_the_Great_and_Aquileia_a_new_hoard_evidence_in_C_Găzdac_ed_Group_and_individual_tragedies_in_Roman_Europe_The_evidence_of_hoards_epigraphic_and_literary_sources_Journal_of_Ancient_History_and_Archaeology_monographic_series_1_Cluj_Napoca_2020_pp_453_460
The OP coin is definitely fake - there are a ton of them on UK eBay right now. Genuine examples seem to go for between £60 - £150 (which is slightly more affordable than I thought) - I guess I was mixing them up with the SPES PVBLICA types lol. https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?lot=1390&p=lot&sid=5117 https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?lot=1428&p=lot&sid=5117
Surprised anyone would bother to forge a coin in that price range but I guess that's what we have here.
Well, much easier to make junk like this than high quality fakes of more expensive types that are going to attract more scrutiny, and manufacturing costs must be very low. You only need to sell a couple of these a month to make a worthwhile addition to the average eastern european monthly salary.
And the sellers of these are managing to sell several hundred a month. In fact one such seller has sold 500 fakes on ebay in the last month. Mainly coins but some artefacts too from £1 to over £60 per item for a cast fake of Otho. His examples of the OP sold for £21.00, £10.50 and £7.50 this month alone.
If that surprises some and you really want to lose your faith in humanity check out FORVM'S fake LRBs: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/fakes/thumbnails.php?album=search&cat=0&page=3
