New Akragas Hemilitron

Unless the seller is willing to cover David Sear's charge, you will still be out some money. Last time I used David Sear, I think his charge plus shipping cost me $60.

 

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oh man. could the fake have been made from a die match with theos coin? i hope it's all good theo! keep us posted!

 

When you send such a coin to David Sear, do you include any information you have on the matter (for example the link to that website) or leave it to him to know and keep up on everything? While I have not heard David Sear accused of it, I recall someone not wanting to send a questioned coin to another 'expert' for authentication because his being known as a worker in that specialty would tip off the service that there was a hidden matter and the result might be safer for the reputation if declared unable or fake. After all, there are those who might be trying to slip one by the 'expert' knowing full well the coin was bad.

 

Looking in the Hoover book on Sicily, I believe that 131 is a die match for my coin. The photo even shows a die break on the right claw that also exists on my coin. The reverse is also a die match with my coin. Hoover references CNS 1, pp 173-175 nos 31-35 and 37-39. If anyone has CNS and can look it up I would be grateful.

Mine coin has no trace of a casting seem, and no bubbles in the fields or fuzziness in the devices that casting can bring. The patina looks very good, not thin and like it was recently applied. I am referring to the real patina under the green powdery coating that almost looks like BD. :-(

The coin rings like a struck coin when gently dropped on a table and not with the dull thud of a cast coin.

So I think this is either a really good struck fake or a genuine coin.

If I send it to David (pretty sure I will) I would not say anything other than authenticate this for me. Why bias him either way?

I would also be interested in what made people condemn the coin from Kunker, was it a cast fake, which would be obvious to experienced dealers? They said it was a horrible fake, which is not very specific.

Thanks for everyone's help.

John

 

Does the article say cast? I do not read Italian. I'd say it is more likely struck from the photos. I would not have suspected yours but I do not like the one they had. Please keep us posted on the Sear certificate.

 

[edit] - see next post

 

Good evening all,
I was privately called by an user of this forum to post my opinion on this thread.
The coin posted here by Theodosius IMHO is a forgery, struck on a genuine ancient flan by modern fake dies probably obtained by transferring and reworking an original type from a genuine host coin. This type variant was a great rarity indeed, until ten years ago: only three specimens were known according to Calciati (CNS vol.III p.174). Starting 2006 many more specimens appeared on the market, all forgeries struck by fake dies, that the forger improved over time, especially the obverse where (like the sample posted by Theodosius shows) there was at first a ridiculous rendering of the eagle's eye and beak, resembling a pigeon, and errors in epigraphy.
Beyond stylistic matters, I will not clearly explain in details why they all are fakes, because disclosing too much technical informations is the best way to help forgers to improve their infamous work. But let's play a sort of quiz... try to sharpen your observation and spot at least one problem by yourself... in particular, there is an obvious detail screaming "Transferred die, forgery!", a detail that could not in any way recur, but we can see it on Theodosius' sample and on the five specimens I link here:

https://numismaticfakes.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/akrafake.jpg?w=700
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1374617
http://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=83947
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=2013092
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1732679

If you spot it leave a comment here:
https://numismaticfakes.wordpress.c...ecently-listed-on-auction-griechische-munzen/

Italian is not my native language, but I can easily read it because my father was Italian and he taught me to read from his books. The opinions by Lamoneta experts I cited on my blog on that coin were unanimous indeed, when you read "un capolavoro" ("a masterpiece"), it is sarcastic, no one of those experts would ever dream to doubt it is a fake. Of course I cannot disclose the identity of numismatists writing on lamoneta, you just have to trust me when I say that they are skilled experts and reliable scholars. Sorry folks, I fear I'll be unpopular now here, but the truth is that european numismatists (Italians in particular) are much more skilled than americans when dealing with spotting fakes. I saw at least three fakes certified by Sear (one I posted on my blog, a second sestertius of Nero, another one a tesserae of Augustus), to not mention Hoover's books. Going back to the Akragas bronze sold by Kuenker, discussed on lamoneta and posted on my blog, it screams "fake" also looking at it from miles away, it is pressed, and later tooled... simply numismatic butchery.


With kindest regards.
Raul


PS It is not the case of this coin, but the same I'll say this for those reading my blog and using this forum: please do not send me anymore emails asking expertise on your coins, I cannot reply to those kind of messages or I should spend all my life doing that. I will not give private expertise to anyone. Just post your questions on the Italian forum www.lamoneta.it (you can also write in English, it is not against the rules), if you have doubts on your coins, or even on coins you are planning to buy (not against the rules screening purchases or linking to seller's sites, the only rule is to not talk about values of coins you plan to buy), in some time someone will surely help you.

 

awwww *rats* .. man, that is always shitty news, eh?

Theo, I'm sorry to hear that there is smoke surrounding your cool new OP-score (I definitely fell for that baby as well)

Good luck with your coin's journey to David Sear's ranch (Doug's question is an interesting one => I think that I would tell Sear that people suspect your coin and that way if he comes back and says "no, the coin looks good" then you'll have confidence in his ruling ........ if you don't give him the heads-up, then you'll always kinda wonder if he was fooled like the rest of us "experts")



Ummm, errr => hey sorry, but this is still an opportunity to flex and post a sweet coin, right?



... again, I loved your original post (I hope that your cool OP-coin runs the gauntlet and ends-up being a total winner)

=> we all want "our" coins to be authentic

Cheers, coin-brother!!

 

For those of you planning to bid in Nomos 12 tomorrow, based on information I have received, bid on this lot at your own risk:
http://nomosag.com/default.aspx?pag...nid=12&id=165&p=2&s=&ca=0&co=0&re=0&ci=0&ru=0

 

I have discovered a simple way to translate information on the Lamoneta site from Italian to English. It requires that you have Microsoft Bing on your computer.

Highlight the phrase or paragraph you wish to translate. Right-click it and click on "Translate with Bing" and voila, the original and translation open in a new window!

 

I have looked and cannot see what Raul is talking about. Please, please, if someone sees whatever it is that Raul is talking about, share it here for the rest of us dunces.

 

On seeing this coin but without reading anything, my first thought is the style looks Renaissance rather like the Paduans but I was not aware that they did Provincials. If it is, the price may be right even though it is a fake. Of course it is more likely to be a more recent product but there is something about the style that makes me think Paduan.

 

Thanks very much Odysseus for taking the time to look at this and post about it. That is very kind of you.

I noticed the beak of my eagle is not open as much as the Hoover coin. The eye area looks a little funny too now that I really study it.

I guess I am boned at this point. :-(

Now let's see how easy it is to get my money back.

John

 

It's always a bummer when a coin of ours gets condemned as a fake, but on the other hand, it's also always an opportunity for education.

Does anyone have an authentic example of this type to post for comparison?

 

Bing, it appears that each example all have the same corrosion pit in the midsection of the Triton, the same flaw in the crab's right claw (except for the recent tooled one in Kunker), and at 5 o'clock on the Kunker coin (not Theo's), it's clear that the transfer die was incomplete, as the pellet shears off a little BEFORE the edge of the coin, where it should shear off (there is also a sort of threshold / line in that region).

There were some Syracusan decadrachms of the Euainetos and Kimon types coming onto the market in the early 1990a which were clearly from transfer dies (I won't tell you who first educated me in looking for such things, but he is a well-known and highly regarded professional): the problem was that the legs of the horses at the front of the quadriga were cut short well before the edge of the overly-broad flan, indicating that the original from which the dies were made had been struck on a typically compact flan with the horses forelegs off the flan. This had slipped past the well-respected numismatists running the auction in which they appeared, but were withdrawn immediately upon notification.

Nowadays I supposed a smarter forger would reengrave those details; but if you see a coin where the design cuts off oddly before the edge, that will be a pretty obvious sign of a problem coin.

 

I believe it is the error in the tail of Triton. The double dots.

 

IMO Yes on all counts. You type faster than me.

 

PS: As I look at the CNG one (http://www.cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=83947) I can't help but think that it's the authentic one from which the others were made, imho. The corrosion lump on the right claw looks genuine, as does the pit in the triton's midsection (down to grainy metal through patina. And, it has more and better detail and modeling than the others, despite being from an auction 10 years ago. What do you all think?

 

4to2centBC: I may type faster, but not always grammatically, as I was in haste to post and cut and pasted some things...

 

The chunk of corrosion on the (possibly) real CNG coin has been transformed into what looks like a die break on mine because it is made of good metal on mine. When you look at the CNG coin and then at mine it is obvious. There are a lot of small pits in common between them as well, which should be random.

Take a look at the Hoover 131 photo, I think it is the CNG coin. In the black and white photo, the chunk of corrosion on the claw looks like a die break, which made me think mine was a die match for a real coin. That says something about the value of looking at black and white photos.