Ancient Greek, right? I've done some research but can't pin-point it. Looks like: Pontos, Amisos. Either helmeted Mars or Ares on front. Sword in sheath on back. 1st century BC. I'm seeing many similar but not the exact one.
Thanks for the link. I've seen many VERY similar coins on that wildwinds page- just not the exact one. Size- slightly bigger than a dime and 3 times as thick.
Back then coin were made they also were counterfeited then & now too.but are the old counterfeits still worth the same as the real thing
Not worth the same, but they are still collectible. In fact, I have a collection of them myself, not completely uploaded yet: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=1602
Modern collectors moving to ancients often have trouble with the concept of each die being individually cut rather than being mass produced as clones of a master. Common coins may have been produced from hundreds of dies. Finding an 'exact' match is not always to be expected unless your definition of 'exact' is not so exact. Some issues even numbered the dies (open coding) but more often we find controls letters, legend spacing variations or dots here and there that may be intentional or may have just meant that the mint did not see any reason to make every die exactly like the last. Several different die cutters usually worked together on the same issue and students sometimes separate their works (by name if they signed the dies). In the case of this very common coin, the consistant things on the reverse are the sword and the word Amisoy. I am no student of the series and can not tell you the meaning of IB or the symbols half off the small flan at top and bottom. In this case it would be quite possible to have a coin from the same die that showed the bottom part of the design and lost the IB. Compare my example which is certainly a different die but may have the IB at top (possibly '12'???) and certainly shows a monogram (PLKK?) at the bottom mostly missing on your coin but probably on the die that produced it. There may be someone out there who has done a die study of these coins but I have not seen it. The fact that our two coins are not identical does not mean that one or the other is wrong, it just means that they were not made by a modern minting technique that valued every coin being identical to thousands upon thousands others of the type.
ancients I'll admit you have a really nice coin there. Refering to the comments on ancient counterfeits, I'de actually like to come across some of those myself. They have a value all their own and are highly collectible. Who knows, maybe I already have a few in my collection. I would really like to find a good book/website on how to identify ancient counterfeits and how they did it.
http://esty.ancients.info/imit/ The above will get you started. Be sure to visit all the pages linked from the above main page. Most of the best material is on the detail pages. Of course, I'd be glad for you to see my pages on fourrees and barbarous coins but Warren's are better and easier to sort out from his pages on real coins while mine are mixed into one menu. http://dougsmith.ancients.info/
