Help with Ancient ID

So I have these, what I believe to be ancient, coins. Any help anyone could give would be greatly appreciated. I have never really gotten into the ancient side of coins, and am totally lost!

 

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The first coin is what appears to be silver and is 21.5g
The second coin weighs 17.8g
The third coin weighs 23.8g

 

All three look to be fakes, sorry.

 

I figured as much. My cousin decided to buy them while he was away in Europe. I knew nothing about them, so I figured here would be the place. Can you just give a few pointers as to why they're fake? Just out of curiosity.

 

The style of the coins is utterly and completely wrong.

 

Ok. Well thanks for the pointers. I'll make a note of "utterly and completely wrong."

 

Despite the fact that ancient dies were engraved by hand and exhibit a certain amount of artistic variance, once you've looked at thousands of coins, you can discern the overall style of particular emissions. The engraving style of your coins is neither Greek nor Roman. In fact, they are probably tourist tokens, not meant to deceive anyone by the fact that they don't look much like the real thing.

 

All I'm looking for is some pointers as to what may be wrong with these coins. That's all. Not the attitude that you've apparently brought with you today. I've admitted up top that I know nothing about ancient coins. I'm not on this side of the forum for the attitude. I get the fact that you know more than I do, however are unwilling to part with some of your knowledge. Thanks for the insight and I'll be sure to take my questions elsewhere next time.

 

MC.
A real friend is the one who leads you to the right, though bitter, direction.
Good luck next time here or elsewhere, anyway.
Charles

 

Mr. Cheeks: there was nothing but a matter-of-fact attitude in my posts. I'm sorry that you read them otherwise. It's difficult to put tone into internet posts. I apologize for appearing curt, but in fact, I was looking through my references for the type of coin your first example might represent. I do not know of any Athenian drachms with forward-facing owls, and I can't find any. So on typological grounds, the design on the first coin never existed in the ancient world. Perhaps someone more familiar with these can correct me if I'm wrong.

 

I think you're misunderstanding both the nature of your own question (i.e., there is no simple reply that will give you instant insight into spotting fake ancient coins) as well as the nature of the replies above (all of which are genuinely meant to be helpful even though you don't recognize their helpfulness).

Consider the complexity of your question: with few exceptions, ancient fakes are intended to deceive less-than-knowledgeable buyers. When you're handed a fake ancient coin that's being represented as genuine, the seller assumes you don't have the needed voluminous knowledge necessary to spot the coin as a fake. There will be nothing obviously fake about the coin, and it will have been treated to look ancient.

In many cases (if not most) the only way to know it's a fake is to have accumulated many years of looking at genuine coins and to recognize that the fake simply doesn't resemble any known genuine ancient coin that you've ever seen. That, in fact, might be the only answer to your question. There is no magic answer such as "the chin on the obverse bust doesn't have enough facial hair" or "the deity on the reverse is described as Spes but is actually Diana."

You do yourself a disservice to assume that the answers you're receiving are holding back some information that you could instantly learn and apply to future examinations of fake ancient coins. This isn't true.

 

I understand that it takes years and thousands of coins to understand the complexities and designs that is ancient coins. I do know, however, that there is no more general answer than the original one I was given above. The answer of "the style of coins is utterly and completely wrong" , to me is overly general and not informative at all. I could give that answer about many things, however never teach anyone about what you see that makes it "utterly and completely wrong." All I did was ask for some pointers as to what to perhaps look for, or what you see, or don't see, in these coins. Even better, tell me to start with that there is no known example of the coin I placed above. That's all. The questions may have been complex, however the answer left more questions to be asked, than ones answered.

 

MC: I looked at these when first posted and thought the same thing JA later answered. I was certain they were fakes but didn't know how to say why. They just do not look right. So instead of replying, I waited for someone else. As it turned out, the answer was the same as what I would have given.

Speaking from the perspective of someone who posts here on a regular basis, there is not a "curt" bone in JA's body. He tries to be helpful wherever he can just as he did in this thread. No one here likes to see the dreaded words "fake" in any thread, but, alas, time and again the "f" word must be used. It certainly not used lightly. I believe there has been a misunderstanding of JA's intent, and he as apologized if that is the case.

Stick around and learn something about these fabulous little pieces of art. This is a great forum and all are welcome.

 

SNG Cop 50 has a forward-facing owl with spread wings, but it's a trihemiobol, a very tiny coin. Whether the design was made in larger denominations is unknown to me, but I think the point is moot because the largest type of Athenian owls (that I know of) are tetradrachms, which come in around 16 grams. There is some variance of course, but 21.5 grams seems unusually large.

 

JA speaks the truth with polite and professional style. He is a gracious contributor and gives this newbie ancient collector tons of time and help.

 

Let me try with the one issue I know best of the three, the Athena/Owl. First, the coin weighs too much. A tetradrachm would weigh about 17 grams. Yours is like a silver dollar with a half dollar image. The Athena in the later archaic or pre-classical style does not match the owl with the open wings. Of the owls with the open wings, the letters A TH E are not the positions of your example. The large "terrified eyes" of the owl match a much later style, after 400 BCE, after Athens lost the Peloponnesian war, suffered plagues, and internal slaughters as well. Earlier owls that match the older style Athena have open eyes without the rays (feathers) sticking out radially. Your Athena's hair comes down too far below the helmet. Also, it is in the archaic style of other cities. It matches perhaps a Sicilian city more.

So, if someone showed you a 1957 Chevy with a Ford name plate, how would you prove in words that the style was not at all a Ford?

 

The collector tag that came with this coin from 1964 and in German (so I might have this wrong) says that it is Tyche?Owl facing standing on shield, wings open. On the flip side on the tag there is another note "va says: Hera.

 

The Chevy with a Ford nameplate was not original to me. Back about 1994 give or take, I was at an MSNS convention where J. P. Martin was visiting only as a numismatist, not a speaker or authenticator. He was just there on his own for himself. But he got asked for help, of course. One guy showed him some ancients in his hands, outstretched. Martin took one look arm's length and said, "They're fakes." The guy protested, "But I bought them in Cappadocia!" His companion said, "If you saw a Chevy with a Ford nameplate, would you be fooled? That's how he sees coins."

 

Yes, there are Pontic and Mysian coins with facing owls, wings spread, but as you can see, the style is completely different from the Athenian owls. As I said, the only Athenian that I found with a similar design is on a fractional silver.

 

OP, the first looks like an [edit - decadrachm] , but is poor style and those coins are exceedingly rare, but very commonly faked. The second has overall mushiness of details coupled with poor style of the Hadrian bust, and Hadrian usually have very high style quality of engraving. The third is a greek obverse but a Roman reverse.

That is why others said they all appear to be fakes. I hear you, its nice to have details of WHY we say such things, but as AJ commented, sometimes its not so easy to verbalize. Your three do appear to have enough wrong to easily comment on WHY they are fakes. Also, check the edges for casting seams. Usually lower quality fakes will either have the seam still there, or you will see file marks where they removed it. This is a byproduct of the casting process for fakes, but never seen on struck coins.

Does this help? If not, let us know and we can go from there.

Chris

Edit: Btw OP, to be a little fair to the ancient group here, we see lots of fakes. Most of the time the postes ONLY want to know if they are real, (and of course if they are how much are they worth). So, over time we do tend to just get in the "they are fakes" mode, not going through the effort of explaining WHY simply because most posters do not really care. If you do, I am sure we are more than happy to try to show you why. We LOVE talking about ancient coins!