Hello Everyone, I was cruising EBay recently and came across this "silver" one-sided "bullion" piece that's being sold in the Romans section. I was pretty surprised at the ongoing feeding frenzy around it given that to me, it's a pretty obvious fake. Still, I have to admit that forgers are getting more creative... in addition to forging coins, they're also making some money on the side with more whimsical "fantasy" pieces... What does everyone else think?
Good ones, @Restitutor and @Mat! ...It's wryly reassuring that for ancients, some of the fakes are still obvious. With medievals (overwhelmingly from eastern Europe), they'd be funny, if they didn't clog up US ebay with Zombie-like regularity.
Is there any sort of parallel whatsoever from antiquity or is it truly a fantasy in the extreme sense?
Well, I have several one-sided ancient Roman coins, but these are mistakes, usually cause by placing two blank flans in a die together. I don't know of any legitimate one-sided issues. Even the very earliest Greek coins had an incuse punch on the reverse. The eagle looks sort of similar to the eagle on the reverse of many 3rd century CE Alexandria tetradrachms, albeit much smaller. I think that's about as close as you're going to get to any genuine ancient Roman coin.
Right, but presumably this doesn’t imitate an official coin type, but rather counter marks on an extremely worn coin. I also have no doubt it is fake, but I’m wondering if it is even copying known counter marks.
