Hi Here is a contemporary silver-plated counterfeit of a Mughal (Akbar) rupee from Lahore. Can anyone tell me how the peculiar “grooves” formed within the lettering on the obverse?
I cannot but looks similar to the reeds on many fakes. They have that hollow area in the center of each reed.
All I know is that the coin was made in base metal first and then applied with a silver coating. Not sure if the base metal coin was cast or struck. It was common at the time to test the purity of silver by applying “test marks”, which the forgers evidently applied to the base metal blank as the existing “test marks”/chop marks show silvering within. The coin in the first post is 9.5 g, below the official weight standard, but the same school of forgers operating out of Lahore seem to have improved their art by the time of Shah Jahan. The following specimen is 11.52 g, the correct official weight, and has reasonably good calligraphy. In both instances, the forgers chose a newly introduced coin type, which people would have been unfamiliar with.
