just got these in and will educate meself more on this famous forger...these are actually reproduction copies of the originals of 1924, but i got them for about $50.00 and that's kool wid me .. POST WHATEVER YA WANT RELATED OR BTW PEEPS...
ominus, Congrats on scoring reprints of these important reference books by Hill . Sometime next year I'll try & get copies of these books through an inter-library loan because I've always wanted to read them . Carl Wilhelm Becker, 1722-1830, was the greatest forger in the history of numismatics . His forgeries & phantasies fooled museum curators & many "experts" for decades . Pictured below is a Becker forgery in my collection that would fool many dealers & collectors today . Pictured below for comparison is a genuine example of this coin type. The coin pictured below is the most expensive Becker forgery, to my knowledge, ever sold at auction. With a $200.00 estimated the coin sold for $2,875.00 ! GREEK, Sicily-Naxos, circa 430-415 BC. AR Tetradrachm: 13.28 gm, 24 mm, 12 h. Obverse: Dionysos wearing a tainia decorated with an ivy branch. Reverse: Silenos (the drinking buddy of Dionysos) holding up a kantharos. In the fields are ivy & bunches of grapes. CNG 419, lot 606.
thanks Al..yup, he was the best(and best known) at that art..and his coins are very collectable(but 2875?!?..big wow!)..i long wanted one just from what i heard about him since about the time i started collecting..i got these two denarii of Aemillian recently from Teutoburger MA...Munzhandlung in Germany had sold them back in '84 and they sent me a download of that catalogue showing the coins, which is what Teutoburger had said..and i reckon that's good enough for me..i bought these Hill copies thru abe-books...i highly recommend them
just FYI , this coin is badly described as "Hill Becker 21" by CNG, it is in fact an electrotype of the BMC 119 coin : A BMC electrotype and a "real Becker" don't have the same value and in a sense, the buyer has been fooled by the CNG description... The "know the coin or know the dealer" adage holds for forgeries as well My Becker (Hill #13), an imitation of a Rhegion Tetradrachm a genuine prototype :
I'm surprised CNG was fooled on that one ! Electrotypes are pretty easy to spot, like the coin pictured below. Notice the edge seam.
Those are nice looking examples . Do you know the weight ? Your Rhegion fake is a nice one . Do you know the weight ? I'm amazed at how versatile Becker was.
Well, i have some electrotypes with the edge seam very well hidden... The Rhegion tetradrachm weighs 14.5g way under the theoretical weight of 17.4g
Nice books. I've come across Becker's work in auction listings, but I didn't know there were books on him. And in a way fitting that the books are reproductions and not originals. I like to think Becker himself would have appreciated the irony...
