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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Volodya, post: 2763304, member: 19615&quot;]I see no particular reason to doubt the authenticity of this piece, but when a coin is this corroded, it&#039;s hard to really be sure. Assuming it is ancient, it&#039;s the sort of thing I would expect to be a plated ancient counterfeit. I looked with that in mind, and I do think I see a base metal core peeking through the banker&#039;s mark (or perhaps simply damage?) at 12h on the reverse. The 3.4g weight is plausible for a corroded but good silver coin, but correct weight isn&#039;t as clear an indication of good silver as is often assumed. It&#039;s easy enough to find unmistakable fourrees which nonetheless are of proper weight. I imagine they&#039;re just a bit thicker than an official coin would be; enough to beef up the weight, but not enough to be detected at a quick examination.</p><p><br /></p><p>The question of banker&#039;s marks on plated coins is interesting. One would&#039;ve expected that the coins would be removed from circulation and presumably destroyed when the core was revealed; isn&#039;t that the whole point of testing them? That absolutely <b>isn&#039;t</b> always the case though. See for instance the following coin, with several banker&#039;s marks and an obvious core:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]635571[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]635572[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m fond of this coin from my imitations collection. Once upon a time, I devoted most of my Celator column to it. Here&#039;s a bit more discussion on my web site, with a link to the Celator column:</p><p><a href="http://rrimitations.ancients.info/platednearroman1.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://rrimitations.ancients.info/platednearroman1.html" rel="nofollow">http://rrimitations.ancients.info/platednearroman1.html</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Phil Davis[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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