Hi folks, Just a quick query about a Double decadrachm of Amyntas. A tourist in Dublin has shown this coin to an acquaintance of mine and I suspect it might be a fake or a modern replica. Any thoughts on this ?
The legend style is totally off from those I'm familiar with...as well as the devices in general. I suspect a modern reproduction. Hopefully, someone with even a little more familiarity than I will chime in. EDIT: I removed the non-images from acsearch... I wonder if Ken is not correct. Definitely worth further investigation
It matches the few known dies and examples. Either it is one of those once in a lifetime situations or it is an electrotype. I have no idea if copies were ever made, but I suppose it warrants further examination.
Not possible they are just from the same die. The flan is also identical in shape and surface. There are more occurrences than the ones I highlighted.
So, the Kunduz (Qunduz) hoard was stolen from the museum and several of the coins have made it into auctions. I am positive of this. Two came up about 5 years ago. I corresponded with one of the auction winners. After learning that they had made it into circulation, I bought the book below. It was tough to find at the time. It details the hoard. It has plates of all the coins. If it is worth the time, I will look this up later. But if it is in the book............. btw if you go here , you will find this http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/afghan/list.html More than 30,000 coins, from the eighth century B.C. to modern periods, among the largest such collections in the world. An important group was a Greco-Bactrian hoard of more than 600 coins dating from the third to the second centuries B.C. found in 1946 near Kunduz, in Kunduz province. This cache included the largest Greek coins ever discovered, double decadrachmas issued by the Macedonian king Amyntas ca. 120 B.C. and weighing 3.4 ounces each. It also included hoards from Chaman-i-Houzouri near Kabul (Greek and Persian coins from ca. 380 B.C.), Tepe Maranjan (gold and silver Sasanian coins including 368 silver drachmas of the fourth century A.D.), and Mir Zakah (8,000 fourth- to first-century B.C. Indian and Indo-Greek coins, 3,500 Indo-Scythian coins, and various Indo-Parthian and Kushan coins of the early centuries A.D.). Most are gone; some gold coins may be with Tillya-tepe gold said to be in bank vault in Kabul. Editor's note: according to The Art Newspaper (February 1994), a British dealer had been offered a coin from the Kunduz hoard, said to be very rare and one of six, presumably a double decadrachma.
It's either THE Qunduz hoard coin or a copy of the Qunduz hoard coin. Back in the 90's, Qunduz hoard coins showed up fairly regularly. I probably saw 30-40 or so coins that were consigned to CNG auctions, that if I recall correctly we turned over to the ANS who was holding them until they could be returned to a legitimate government in Afghanistan. We used to have to check every Bactrian coin against the Qunduz hoard reference. Barry Murphy
Different pictures of the same coin, there is no doubt. Now, if it is in fact true, that coin has gone out of the way like many in museums in the Middle East and countries in civil war: stolen and smuggled, especially by people seeking to raise funds for terrorism.
