ANCIENT COIN Please help to ID.

"Why do we collect them? Because they are not boring. Relatively fewer ancients collectors are in it for investment and the opportunities for study are immense. Being 'sure' is not as important if you consider $10 spent on a fake to be an educational expense rather than a world ender. Why do US collectors pay 80 times as much for a Lincoln cent with an S under the date than one without? Why do they pay hundreds more for a coin which exists with only a hundred known to be nicer rather than a similar item with a thousand nicer? Because that is the hobby each of us has chosen."
Well said Doug. Holding these ancients in hand is real history, think about where and who and why of the coin over the eons. I love em.
Traci Kiss

 

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http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=55596.0

I bumped the thread at forum to try to get some people looking at it and it worked...lot of people comenting on it now. I think you should go there and post the weight of the coin...that will help.

I think the over all opinion seems to be that its fishy. It seemed fishy to me but I did not want to condemn it because of reasons I have stated before.

 

I still see no reason to believe it to be fake. Mostly, the people at Forvm stated what we already had - the arrangement of the legends is unusual, as is the lack of control marks and the odd portrait style. Now that someone's had a look through Price and didn't find a reasonable match, I think its safe to say that this is a contemporary imitation.

 

The only thing that looked fishy to me regarding this coin was the protrait. After looking at hundreds of these, I simply found no protraits in this style. Then again...as I said...there is such a wild variety if different styles for this type of coin, I have not seen all types by far.

 

I haven't really got into imitations much. The ones I have seen are usually wilder in style though, you can actually tell at first glance that they are imitatations. This one that is questioned seems to look like it was struck like it was from an offical mint, yet the style seems to be off...


stainless

 

Contemporary imitations are a slippery subject on any ancient series but the Alexander tetradrachms were the Maria Theresa Thaler of their day and produced for many years after the death of Alexander himself. The styles of the known 'legitimate' circulating issues vary wildly and there is absolutely no reason to believe that we, today, have a complete list of the variations. This coin weighs enough that (assuming it is really silver) it probably was not intended to defraud anyone. Given that it is quite possible that a small issue in the day could be represented by only one surviving specimen it is more than possible that therer will be new mints or new issues turn up now and then. Of course there is no certainty that we will ever know where and when a coin was made given that the known span of time for the type is nearly 200 years. The great book on these coins by Martin Price is a wonderful work but large enough to scare most of us out of buying it and specializing in these coins.

Don't worry about the 'experts' on Forvm that say the coin looks cast. I'm not saying the coin is not cast but just that some of them see a monster in every closet. I'm still relatively comfortable with the contemporary imitation theory but we need to remain open to further evidence.

 

I am not convinced this coin is ancient nor have a seen any evidence its modern. I had hoped the 'experts' at forum (they being some of the men who view and handle more ancients than most) might have a definitive answer like a known fake match or a known genuine die or style match. As is often the case, it seems there are mixed opinions and no match either way...so far... I think this would be a great example of a coin that needs a real expert to place it into column A or B if possible.

 

yeah, i think so too. but if you can crank out more pics too, that will help