A buddy of mine sent a pic of this to me seeking information. My thoughts were mideval period maybe but I have absolutely no clue anyone know anything?
Looks like a fake Byzantine coin. I’m a long way from being an expert. Have your thread moved to the ancients.
Looks like a bronze follis of the Byzantine ruler Michael II (820-829 AD) in association with Theophilas. (Ref: Sear Byzantine Coins 1642). But the Ancients section may know more.
Definitely Byzantine, and therefore it does belong in the Ancients category. It doesn't necessarily look fake to me- it looks OK, as far as I'm concerned. But I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really up to speed on these, and will defer to those with more knowledge about them.
Ok I’ll try posting it over there. Thanks. I’m strictly a US guy. This belongs to an antique dealer friend that I’ve bought a couple decent coins off
I see no reason to believe it's fake. The surface and strike seem genuine, and I wouldn't see the point of counterfeiting a common bronze follis. Also, Parthicus' attribution is correct.
https://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=137300 See above. This is a better specimen and was sold by a top dealer so your friend will not get more than a fraction of the quoted price. As on modern coins, condition is everything and with ancients there are many more factors to consider than wear.
If only this were true. There are several cases where transfer dies have been created from genuine, common ancients and then these are used to create coins that are then treated and dirtied up to sell into the market as uncleaned coin. These have happened either in batches as "hoards" or salted into other uncleaned batched to bulk them out. These were being distributed as uncleaned at $14.99 each:- These were being sold in batches of 1,000 at Eur 5 each:- I put the following together to illustrate some if the odd coins that have been created via this method. All were being sold as part-cleaned ancients. Martin
