This copper Stater from Archelaus I of Macedon (10.36g; 22mm) is very strange to me as I am not an expert on Greek coins. In my opinion, it's ancient and probably it had a silver bath that was lost, so a contemporary fake. If it were a modern forgery, it would still have traces of silver, don't you think ? All opinions are welcome.
Very cool! Not easily finding and bronze examples online, though don't doubt their possible existence. The picture actually kinda makes it Appear AR with a orange ish toning. I'm not aware of ancient Greeks doing "silver baths" like the late Romans did either. But Macedon saw some hard times before Philip II. Still, very interesting:
Where did you acquire it from? What did the seller say it was? I wonder what caused the weird damage to the right side of the reverse? It doesn't pay to make any assumptions about what modern forgers will do. They could do any kind of stupid and unrealistic thing to creating very sophisticated and difficult to detect forgeries and everything in between.
I am not familiar with this coin, but I found a couple of other examples on AC Search. Here's one: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=371589 The weight of this example is 10.57g. The two other examples had weights of 10.56 and 10.57g. 10.36g is not too far off from the other 3, and the difference could be accounted for by the additional wear on your coin. Are you certain that it's a fourrée? It sure looks like silver in the photo.
It was purchased at an auction by Tauler&Fau, one of the most reputable auctioneers in Spain. It belonged to a lot of 18 Roman and Greek coins. It makes no sense that it is a modern forgery. Why would someone use copper or bronze instead of a cheaper metal alloy that looked like silver?
It's definitely not silver and I'm not sure it's a fourré. If I didn't know that this coin was only struck in silver, I would only say that it is an ancient bronze coin.
It does not look like a forgery from the photo. Now that is always difficult to judge from just a photo. Maybe this type was issued in bronze? Maybe it was a trial strike?
