I assume it's fake. But what is it supposed to be?

Just picked this one up from the 5/$1 bin today, assuming it's not genuine (I mean, sure, it would be great if it was something valuable or at least genuine but I bought it assuming it was fake.) Don't really know hardly anything about ancients, so I'm hopeful someone here can at least tell me what this is supposed to be:



Diameter: 30mm
Width: 5mm
Weight: 19.6 grams

Very appreciative of anyone who can give me some more info. Thanks!

 

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Looks Greek.

 

Indeed it is fake. It is imitating this type
https://cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=387916

 

It's supposed to be a tetradrachma of Alexander the Great issued by one of his generals, Ptolemy, who managed to get ahold of Egypt in the fallout of the breakup of Alexander's empire after his premature death in 323 BC. It shows, on the obverse, Alexander wearing an elephants headdress and on the reverse is an image of Athena as a warrior goddess. Ptolemy went on to become king of Egypt and replaced Alexander with his own image on his coins. It is either a reproduction coin worth less than one US dollar or a $100,000 pristine, fleur de coin, BU museum grade rarity. Considering what you payed for it I suspect the former.

 

What's funny (to me at least) is that when I first looked at it, my brain said, "Greek tetradrachma?" and then immediately my rational mind said, "I think you're just saying that because it's one of the only ancient coin type names you can remember."

How odd to actually be correct. Hey, a blind squirrel eventually finds a nut, right?

But you guys think it's easily a fake, right? I don't need to do anything apart from toss it into the bin of counterfeits I have here? Just making sure I'm at doing due diligence.

 

If only it had been a little LESS perfect. (Knowing as much as we do concerning the steps ancient mint masters & celators had to go through to strike each piece)
However, 'Tis a nice rep. of what this issue should look like.
J.T.

 

At 5/$1 I would expect it to be plastic, not metal. Unfortunately things like this sell with some frequency to people who know less about it than you do and there are a few billion of them on earth. Do some searching for Sear 7748-50 to familiarize yourself with real ones with minor differences in monograms etc. We tell people to either "Know the coin or know the seller." At 5/$1 we can modify that to "Enjoy!"