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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Andy, post: 77448, member: 645&quot;]Ian garnered my interest with fourees and then I saw that it may pretain to this thread as well so I thought this might be of interest to those like me who are weak on the counterfeit issue.</p><p><br /></p><p>The below of course is posted by me but not written by I.</p><p>&quot;Fourees</p><p>&nbsp; Coins have been counterfeited since the invention of coinage. Before coinage, pre-coin precious metal ingots were counterfeited as well. In ancient times, forgers typically counterfeited coins by plating a base metal core with a precious metal exterior, since the value of coins was tied to the value of their metallic content.</p><p><br /></p><p>Numismatists call ancient plated counterfeits fourees, which is a term derived from the French word for &quot;filled&quot; or &quot;stuffed.&quot; The word &quot;fouree&quot; has various alternate spellings, including &quot;fourée,&quot; &quot;fourree,&quot; &quot;fourrée,&quot; &quot;fourre,&quot; &quot;fourrée,&quot; and &quot;foure.&quot; Less frequently the Latin term &quot;subaerati&quot; is used.</p><p><br /></p><p>The existence of fourees is the reason that many ancient coins have test cuts or banker&#039;s marks in them. To make sure coins received were made of good metal, people in ancient times would sometimes slash a coin with a chisel or designed punch to reveal the metal under the surface.</p><p><br /></p><p>Counterfeiting was a serious crime in ancient times, as it has been through most of history. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was typically punishable by death, though if an aristocrat were caught he might have merely been exiled, according to Ken Peters&#039; 2002 book The Counterfeit Coin Story. Later, in Europe during the Middle Ages, various punishments for counterfeiters were used. If you were lucky, you could have had your hand cut off, you ear cut off, your testicles cut off, or been blinded. Or you could have been executed or first tortured then executed, by hanging, beheading, strangling, drowning, boiling in hot oil, having molten lead pored down your throat, drawing and quartering, or breaking on the wheel.&quot;[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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