A Denarius of Otho

I mean Zach Beasley. Vagi works with NGC. Sorry for the confusion. I edited my original post to correct the error.

 

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Yes a genuine from the emperors of that year is spectacular. Not necessarily referring to this particular coin I wonder about obvious wear. How long would a particular coin have to circulate to accumulate wear?
And then lost or ending up in a hoard somewhere. I've seen silver dollars from the early 1900's with substantial wear-what 30/40 years?

 

I imagine what happens is that these coin circulated for a while and then were buried for centuries or millennia whether because they were dropped or intentionally buried or something like that.

 

Thanks for the info Roman Collector!

I sent Mr. Beasley an email since he appears to work specifically in the ancients department whereas Sarah is Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Heritage’s New York Office. She is a great employee and I have nothing but appreciation for her but she might not have been the right person to contact about this.

Perhaps as a specialist in ancients specifically Mr. Beasley will be able to pick up on the areas of concern and let me know if there is anything to worry about.

I wish I had some sort of evidence aside from “knowledgeable people on the CT forums” since I don’t know how much weight that will carry with Heritage as a big time auction house.

But on the other hand I’ve spent alot of money with them and I’ve always paid promptly in full and never complained or questioned the authenticity of any of the dozens of other coins I’ve purchased so hopefully that might carry some extra weight with them.

If a customer was emailing them about the authenticity of every single coin they purchased I could understand why they might not take it as seriously (like the boy who cried wolf).

Hopefully this matter will be settled one way or another pretty soon. I don’t want any fakes in my collection and I don’t think I should have to pay for a coin that is fake yet listed as authentic so as long as neither of those two things happens I’ll be happy with the outcome .

Even if I don’t get the coin and they just issue a refund I’ll be okay with that. It might take a while to find another Otho but I’m still relatively young lol! xD

 

I'd be interested in @maridvnvm's opinion on this coin - I noticed he posted many of the fakes on the Forum fakes list. (Martin: my concerns are listed here.)

 

I am not an expert on the coinage of Otho.

The hair is the least Otho like I have seen on any of his coins. Even worn examples show traces of the distinctive hair style / wig.

The legends are very peculiar too. The formation of OTHO doesn't follow the beaded edge. The Os are irregular in shape and the letter T and H merge. The E of CAESAR is odd too.

All that being said I don't know what to make of it. I wouldn't have bought it because of those issues I list above but it could be an Otho and just an outlier style wise.

I did think it might be tooled from something else but have spent a while trying to figure what it is derived from but I have no idea what it could have been.

 

Thanks for your thoughts, Martin. I didn't notice the mismatch between the paths of the beaded border and the legend, good point. I also wondered about the tooling possibility but also couldn't come up with a plausible starter coin.

 

For me the key to the OP coin is the dot on the obverse between the M and O:




I researched CNG's entire archive of Otho denarii and among the obverses on which OTHO is readable, the only one that I found with a dot between the M and the O was this one:


CNG clearly indicates that this is a forgery and speculates "Becker?"

For this reason I believe that the OP coin is unlikely to be genuine.

 

Here is a question: Could it potentially be an unlisted type?

I’ve seen ALOT of auctions where certain coins of rarer types are listed as not yet listed.

 

Well I guess I’ll find out on Monday when I hear back from Heritage .

Fortunately I have a few tricks in my playbook to get a refund if it’s not genuine.

My last resort is to file a complaint with the BBB for selling fake stuff as authentic but that’s a bit of an extreme measure and I want to give Heritage the chance to respond to my claims and correct their mistake on their own if it is indeed a counterfeit.

I wonder what the odds are if it being an ancient forgery vs a modern one.

 

Other then Barry, Jyrki Muona the specialist in all things Otho. That's where one of my Tets of his is from. One of my Otho denarii I got ended up being a really damn good fake and he was surprised but no die matches werefound so he condemned it and I ended up with a refund.

Sadly, Jyrki hasn't been active on Forvm since March & I only conversed with him via PM on forvm.

His whole collection was pretty much sold on Forvm.

https://www.forumancientcoins.com/catalog/roman-and-greek-coins.asp?vpar=1784&pos=0&sold=1

 

Very interesting!! (Though obviously the dot location is a bit different due to the different legend: IMP • OTHO vs. IMP M • OTHO on the OP coin.) I note that the hairstyle at the back of the CNG 19th century forgery is actually quite similar to the OP coin. Seems like a 19th century forgery is a good bet.

Not sure what you mean here. It's not an unlisted type (types are differentiated quite coarsely in ancient coins) but it could be an unlisted die.

I'm quite sure you won't need these on the strength of this thread. There's enough doubt that a return shouldn't be a problem.

 

Oh yeah I meant an unlisted die.

Also is there anyone at Heritage who would give some credibility to the people on this forum?

My biggest worry is that Heritage might respond with something like:

“Both ANACS and Heritage experts believe this coin is authentic who are the people on the forums to question our experts?”

I don’t want them to assume I’m just getting opinions from random people online and then Heritage not take my concerns seriously.

 

Don't fret. Relax. Wait and see what they say. I'm sure you'll get a refund without any fuss.

 

If this coin is a modern forgery (I am not qualified enough to express an opinion, but I tend to agree with the logical deductions made by colleagues) then I can only wonder how much imagination can one have.
Counterfeiting - OK, not the first example.
Wearing it down to a low grade - we have a saying in my country "this effort could have been performed for a better cause" :|

 

A weak strike plus a small amount of wear can achieve the same look. To me, both obv. and rev. look like the products of a weak strike.

 

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Have you ever filed a complaint with the BBB before? You should be aware, if you aren't already, that it has no power whatsoever to require any business to do anything. And it certainly isn't remotely qualified to pass judgment on the authenticity of an ancient coin, or to conclude that you're entitled to a refund.

Also, I hope you phrased your communications as an inquiry rather than as a claim or demand. After all, nobody here has definitively pronounced the coin a forgery; they've simply raised questions.

 

Yeah I have filed a report with the BBB once in my life and it’s always as a last resort if nothing else works.

I am aware they have no power over businesses but if you look at Heritage’s BBB page they tend to be very active in responding to and addressing legitimate complaints through there.

You can even read other people’s complaints and some of them found Heritage didn’t help them via email but the BBB complaint did result in a resolution.

As I said I don’t like to file BBB reports but I have to have Plan B and Plan C ready in case things don’t go according to plan.

I’m not the kind of person who constantly complains and files BBB reports. As I said that is a last resort option if the coin turns out to be of doubtful authenticity and I run into roadblocks in trying to resolve the issue.


There are several steps I would take before filing a BBB report. First I would contact someone higher up at Heritage. If they stood by the authenticity of the coin I would send it into NGC. Only if NGC doesn’t slab it and sends it back in a body bag with a “not genuine” label I would contact Heritage again with this new evidence and request a refund for a second time.

Only at this point if they still refused to take any action would I consider a BBB report.

I’m pretty sure it won’t get to that point though. I’ve spent so much money with Heritage that it would be dumb of them to lose me as a customer over a $400 lot.

It’s just nice to have more options than fewer options.

 

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the coin is OK. It has some weird stuff going on and hopefully getting a more professional opinion will yield something to put it to rest.

But looking at all known fakes, very few have victory advancing right, which is a plus.