I just got back from the 2020 NYINC. So I did about a 4 hours walk around the show and a little bit over half an hour at a interesting lecture concerning Countermarks on Byzantine coins. Purchased 2 simple Ancients and 2 Foreign (The foreign I will show in another thread to separate from the ancients) First simple Ancient purchase - Roman Empire House of Constantine Constantiniam AD 330-340 Roma/She-wolf & Twins (Romulus & Remus) Second simple Ancient purchase - Gordian III Rome 238 AD (Plated) So this coin had an interesting story. I asked the seller Dirk Drijver from Agora-Ancient coins of the Netherlands about the significance of it being plated. He stated that these types of coins were considered either real or counterfeit. Most likely they were struck in bronze then plated with silver due to a shortage of silver. The idea was to put them into circulation and make the people believe they were actually silver.
I also enjoyed meeting some fellow CoinTalk members who attended. I hung out with @frankjg Got a CoinTalk button from @Terence Cheesman Here is @Ed Snible And the CoinTalk button! I also met @rrdenarius but didn't get our picture
The Gordian photo does not make it clear whether the dark material is core or encrustation on top of the silver. Less brightness and better focus might help. Plated Gordians with decent style are less common than earlier periods because the profit to be made over a solid billon flan was becoming less. My only one is a very obviously barbarous denarius.
Plated coins are called fourees. There were usually contemporaneous counterfeits. I don't think your Gordian III coin is a fouree. I think it's an official issue, a double denarius, usually called an antoninianus by modern collectors. By the time your coin was minted the amount of silver in them had dropped to around 25-30%. That's why some dealers who don't specialize in ancients assume that they are plated. I once had a customer write me an angry message stating that a dealer had assayed the silver in the Elagabalus denarius that I'd sold him and told him that, since it was only around 30% silver, it was obviously a fake. Fortunately, we got things sorted out. He ended up keeping the coin and learning a bit about the history of Roman coins in the process. The card said that your coin cost $30. Is that what you paid for it? If so, I think you paid a fair price, especially for the NYINC, where prices tend to be pretty high. So it probably worked to your advantage that the dealer assumed the coin was plated.
Thanks for your response. Good explanation. Yes I paid $30.00 This was the dealer. Every year right before I leave the show I get 1 or 2 coins from him.
Hmm. Interesting that he appears to be an ancients dealer. Perhaps my assumptions about your coin are not accurate.
