quadriga tetradrachm

Hi, guys.

I'm newbie to the forum, but hopefully not a complete noob and the question makes some sense.

Saw a coin on Ebay this past week (auction had already ended so I guess it's ok to discuss now)

Seller used a kitchen scale and perhaps inaccurate. Says 0.55oz on display, which translates to just 15.7gr max. I asked him and he said coin weighted 17gr.

Its reverse featured a quadriga, resembling that of roman denarius with jupiter (thunderbolt in right hand?), but style of the horses were different, and of course more detailed (horse mane), being so much larger than that on a denarius...

I've seen pictures of tetradrachm from sicily or syracuse with quadriga but never without flying nike figure, and the pictures often faced left instead. Also never seen any with this style of herakles on obverse.

I've gone through fake lists on forvm and forgerynetwork and there was no match for the reverse. Can't say I've found any direct match for the herakles but there are so many...

Well, it probably isn't a coin of great value, but I'd like to know whether there was such style or it was just a fantasy. TBH, it has some fairly nice details and I would be surprised if anyone had spent this much efforts to create a fantasy.

 

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I have never seen one quite like this I wonder if it is supposed to be one of these....


Kamarina Tetradrachm or similar?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/antiquitiesproject/4758678840/

 

kamarina was a syracuse city?

this "philistis wife of hiero II" from 2nd century BC had the style of horses and rider (nike) close to some later republic roman silvers, and this is one of the few where the horses were all in sync. earlier syracuse coins featured quadriga usually had the horses looking at different directions (like the one you posted), and they generally had someone else galloping the horses, with a little nike flying above.



I guess dates for coin like the above does raise the possibility of this type of herakles but there are way too many different versions and I can't tell one from another.

 

I'm not at my computer at the moment, but that sure looks like a Roman Republican reverse. I'll get back with you in a little while, but I think there is something wrong with this coin.

 

The reverse shown here is a perfectly normal and nice example of the anonymous Republican denarius style RSC226, Crawford 350A/2. Without further evidence, I'll say the photos do not all show the same coin. Any other explanation involves the word fake. The horses are distinctively chesty. Unfortunately, my specimen has the scoop weight adjustment which makes it hard to see.

 

I'm fairly certain the reverse is Roman Republican. Here is one of mine that is similar (not an exact match):

C. GARGONIUS, M. VERGILIUS, AND OGULNIUS, ROMAN REPUBLIC
AR Denarius
OBVERSE: Laureate head of Apollo right, thunderbolt below
REVERSE: Jupiter in quadriga right
Struck at Rome 86 BC
3.86g, 19mm
Cr350/2

I'll keep looking to see if I can find that reverse.

 

Found it. It looks exactly like this one that sold by Forum:

Roman Republic, Anonymous, 86 B.C.
A late anonymous issue struck by the moneyer triumvirate of Gargonius, Ogulnius and Vergilius

 

I agree, it resembled some republican roman quadriga but the size is very different
A denarius is like a drachm, bit over 20mm diameter. Even in the case of a quadratigus didrachm only 22mm or so, like this.

The chariots only occupied 4/5 of the coin and that's a large example. They fit easily on 18mm dia denarius.

Coin in question has 28-30mm diameter, and the chariot barely fit. Like bling had noted, style of the horses, although similar, wasn't the same as on republic coins.

Initially I thought it was a fantasy, but really not so sure anymore. There were sicilian tetradrachm featuring similar style of herakles (again, I'm no good at reading different variations of this), but not the quadriga. The more republic coins I had checked, more differences I see in those horses.

 

If intended to be a tetradrachm, the weight is low.

...which further points to it being a new creation. You're right that it wasn't struck by a Republican denarius die. Among other reasons, the scale (size) is wrong.

For any given situation, the simplest explanation is usually correct :: it's a fantasy coin. If the seller is asking a price appropriate for such a coin, it would be a fun thing to own.

...
Usual disclaimer: I'm not an expert and have been know to be wrong once or twice... per hour

 

I didn't see your last reply, Bling. Do you know how big that anonymous coin was?
Those horses are by far the best matches I've seen, and even the chariot wheel on opposite side matched well.
Wonder how they compared in size.

 

Here are your coin's reverse next to one sold at Forum:


No, I don't know the size, but I can go back and find the coin again.

 

Regarding weight, we are both wrong. According to the seller's picture the coin weighs 17.1 grams. The unit of display in the picture is troy ounce (ozt), not avoirdupois ounce.

 

Here is the description from acsearch:

 

So it actually had reasonable weight.
Here are some additional info I've gathered from the seller, not that they are useful...

Seller claimed the coins (he listed a few, I bookmarked 3) were from a private collection and authentic, which suggests that they came from an older collection and not newly created/purchased.

He also listed these 2 coins from presumably the same collection, which is kinda strange in their own way. These 2 coins looked almost identical. Almost because they were actually off 2 different dies... Details on the palm leaf and letters were slightly different (letter B for example), but almost seemed the two dies were carved by the same person. Actually, more like one die, which was altered to produce the other copy.

Normally I would had thought one was a copy. What's the chance of a copy being so close to real, yet with such small differences though?
On other hand, if they were both genuine, what's the chance of 2 coins from dies made by the same person, going separate ways more than 2 millenniums ago, to end up in the same hands again...

 

I was just photoshopping a composite of this seller's offerings-- six in total, two of which sold.

They are fakes.

 

care to elaborate?
how do you confirm that the augustus were fakes?
They were off by different amounts so they had to be pressed or struck? Then that doesn't explain the letter fonts were slightly different, and palm leaf had different strands (or w/e you call those, leaf pieces).
If they had gone through the trouble producing two different sets of dies, shouldn't these had shown up on fake databases?

 

Not all fake coins have been reported to databases. I should have said "to me, they all look fake" rather than stating it as fact. In my opinion, the coins all look porous, have somewhat melted devices-- they look cast. This opinion is rendered without having searched through fake databases and without side-by-side comparison with known authentic coins.

You may wish to post some of these to Forvm's "Authenication, Fakes and Frauds" board if more opinions are not forthcoming here.

 

I'm not going to go so far as to label them all fakes, but where there is smoke.....

If there are doubts in your mind, if the prices seem too god to be true, and if other collectors have their doubts, I would just stay away. Just my opinion.

 

Just searched through completed auction and think I found another by the same seller. Might as well, post the all onto forum, and see what they say.

Can't say I don't feel a little schadenfreude for the seller and buyers, but definitely wasn't my goal here. Just the curiosity

 

For whom do you feel "schadenfreude"? I certainly wouldn't be overjoyed to know someone may have unknowingly purchased a possible fake. If these are determined to be fake, the seller should be nominated for the NFSL and the coins listed on the fake databases.

BTW, since you used German, Sind Sie Deutscher?