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My first Aureus...a Fourrée...and it's Holed...
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<p>[QUOTE="Silverlock, post: 5126781, member: 98181"]I don’t have any aurei, gold or otherwise. But I will share this as I find it fascinating.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://images.vcoins.com/product_image/1/F/6/fMQ3Do7gm5St4YScj9NJ8psZrX2aC6.jpg" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://images.vcoins.com/product_image/1/F/6/fMQ3Do7gm5St4YScj9NJ8psZrX2aC6.jpg" rel="nofollow"><img src="https://images.vcoins.com/product_image/1/F/6/fMQ3Do7gm5St4YScj9NJ8psZrX2aC6.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></a></p><p><br /></p><p>Ionia, Uncertain </p><p>Circa 600 BCE</p><p>1/24th Stator</p><p>.43g</p><p>Clockwise swastika pattern</p><p>Incuse punch</p><p>Rosen 365 type</p><p>Fouree, electrum plated silver</p><p><br /></p><p>Here we have a coin from the earliest days of coinage. Most scholars believe metal coinage can trace its origins to Ionia in the period 600 to 650 BCE, though a few push it back as far as 700 BCE. Coins of this period tended to be simple punched designs of naturally occurring electrum or native silver. Refined gold, silver, and electrum, with consistent levels of purity, wouldn’t become the norm until sometime 600 to 550 BCE, when enterprising kings realized they could profit by tariffing coins at fixed values yet with lower precious metal content than naturally occurred in the region.</p><p><br /></p><p>This coin is fascinating because within a few decades after the invention of coinage, we have evidence of the invention of coin forgery. Not just forgery, forgery using sophisticated techniques for the day. Uniform metal plating in that period required a skilled metallurgist. You would think that would give the authorities a very small pool of suspects, but these forgers somehow managed to operate at such a scale evidence of their efforts survived to this day.</p><p><br /></p><p>Fourees such as this were the first shots in what would become an ever-escalating war of producing and detecting fakes: plating, detection by weighing, plating base metals to make correct weight forgeries, test cuts, forgeries with precious metal infill plating of test cuts, counter marks, falsified counter marks, increasingly detailed designs, casts from molds of those designs, and so on right up to today. </p><p><br /></p><p>[Unless, as has been suggested, coins such as this one are not fouree at all, but officially issued in an attempt to enrich the treasury by deceiving the public. In which case the coin is still fascinating, but for different reasons.][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>
[QUOTE="Silverlock, post: 5126781, member: 98181"]I don’t have any aurei, gold or otherwise. But I will share this as I find it fascinating. [URL='https://images.vcoins.com/product_image/1/F/6/fMQ3Do7gm5St4YScj9NJ8psZrX2aC6.jpg'][IMG]https://images.vcoins.com/product_image/1/F/6/fMQ3Do7gm5St4YScj9NJ8psZrX2aC6.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Ionia, Uncertain Circa 600 BCE 1/24th Stator .43g Clockwise swastika pattern Incuse punch Rosen 365 type Fouree, electrum plated silver Here we have a coin from the earliest days of coinage. Most scholars believe metal coinage can trace its origins to Ionia in the period 600 to 650 BCE, though a few push it back as far as 700 BCE. Coins of this period tended to be simple punched designs of naturally occurring electrum or native silver. Refined gold, silver, and electrum, with consistent levels of purity, wouldn’t become the norm until sometime 600 to 550 BCE, when enterprising kings realized they could profit by tariffing coins at fixed values yet with lower precious metal content than naturally occurred in the region. This coin is fascinating because within a few decades after the invention of coinage, we have evidence of the invention of coin forgery. Not just forgery, forgery using sophisticated techniques for the day. Uniform metal plating in that period required a skilled metallurgist. You would think that would give the authorities a very small pool of suspects, but these forgers somehow managed to operate at such a scale evidence of their efforts survived to this day. Fourees such as this were the first shots in what would become an ever-escalating war of producing and detecting fakes: plating, detection by weighing, plating base metals to make correct weight forgeries, test cuts, forgeries with precious metal infill plating of test cuts, counter marks, falsified counter marks, increasingly detailed designs, casts from molds of those designs, and so on right up to today. [Unless, as has been suggested, coins such as this one are not fouree at all, but officially issued in an attempt to enrich the treasury by deceiving the public. In which case the coin is still fascinating, but for different reasons.][/QUOTE]
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My first Aureus...a Fourrée...and it's Holed...
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