Die struck forgeries

I always wondered if there is any way to know a die struck coin is a forgery? I have read some say from style they know it but what if that given king has many variety of die styles and it is virtually impossible to have access to all die varieties to know if a given coin is outside those styles or not? Any opinion is appreciated. Please post any die struck forgeries you might know of for educational purposes. Also on the side note, I am hearing from folks that recently in some countries forgers started to die strike the coin instead of casting so I assume it will make things quite difficult for us to know if a coin is genuine.

 

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I am not surprised struck coins have not become the norm for counterfeiters. Imagine 1,000 SLQ's dated 1916 appearing in the market or 1,000 1893 S Morgans over the span of a year.

 

For educationel purpose, a biblical set for sunday schools , struck by the Royal dutch mint in 1919.

 

The way people know if they are fake is because of the design. Or where they come from. I would neve buy a coin from China unless it was an actual Chinese coin. If you ever see a Morgan dollar coming from china, I could almost guarantee to you it's a fake. You also have to look at the design though. Some features may be off.

 

DIE-STRUCK CONTEMPORARY FORGERY

Roman Republic
Anon
AE Victoriatus
after 218 BCE
Rome mint
Ex RBW
Anon Jupiter
Victory crowning trophy
Craw 44-1 Syd 83 Sear 49
Fouree

 

Thanks for sharing some example guys. As I said design comparison only works for modern coin where we know every single detail of design documented but how about ancient coins? I don't think for any given ruler we have a resource that listed all die variety out there even if that was the case there is a chance that new legitimate coins found with new die and new style of portraits etc. So my point is when we lack such data for ancients, how could one be confident that a given die struck coin is indeed modern forgery or a genuine one?

 

The standard advice: 'know the coin or know the dealer'.

Here's two links. A sort of 101 on spotting fakes. Perhaps they're useful.

I'm still learning. We're all still learning...


Fake ancient coins | how they are first spotted | Calgary Coin & Antique
Ancient Coins and Modern Fakes - NumisWiki, The Collaborative Numismatics Project (forumancientcoins.com)

 

About five years ago I won a Hadrian Hispana aureus, part of his travel series, at an NAC auction. A few months later, my dealer informed me that he had been contacted by NAC and informed that the coin was a forgery. You can read about the saga here:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/hadrian-aureus-a-tale-of-subtle-differences.283959/

It's my belief that the coin that I won at auction is a die-pressed forgery, although NAC did not comment on this aspect of the coin.

 

Thanks @IdesOfMarch01 This was quite educational. However, I still don't understand why the example on your earlier thread do not show flow line on the forgery? If it was a modern die-struck, then we should still see the flow lines because flow lines are a result of striking no matter if it is ancient or modern strike right? The other question I have is in your case you were lucky that there was few examples found to compare with but what if for a given period (for example early Sassanian where there were many variety of die engravers) we do not have all die or genuine examples available to compare with? In such cases how one could discover whether a die struck coin is forgery?

 

As an example, how do we know if these 2 coins are modern die struck or not? They are definitely die struck and not cast but question is whether they have been struck last few years or 1800 years ago. note that the weight and other factors are correct in these coins.

 

It's my understanding that ancient striking on a hot flan produced flow lines due to the maximum force being applied in the center of the die, with force decreasing radially outward from the center. This causes the hot metal to slightly "flow" toward the edges.

In a modern press, the force is applied equally across the entire surface of the flan, thus no flow lines.

(Anyone with more specific knowledge and understanding of this process, feel free to add to, or correct, this information.)

This is outside my area of expertise to knowledgeably answer, but I would speculate that if there are truly no other genuine examples with which to compare a specific coin, one would have to rely on the existence or non-existence of flow lines and possibly metallurgy analysis that would indicate the content and/or age of the coin's metal.

 

Thanks for this very detail explanation. So I guess what I mean is that if a skilled forger uses the same technique of hammer strike on hot metal as used by ancients and of course such skilled forger would use the ancient metal for the flan and since it is not cast, the edge would look good in this case (no seam or filing of edges) then in such case can we say it will be virtually impossible to detect such forgeries?

 

That is incorrect. I would point you back up to @Ignoramus Maximus post above. Click the links and read.

 

Thanks @Ryro I read that link. When it comes to struck fakes, it mentions in most cases they using the modern metal but it also does mention that the more professional forgers would use ancient but common coin in this case metallurgy analysis would fail. On crystallization I should say I don't agree with it not all genuine coins are crystallized so lack of it can not be a reason for condemnation

 

@mightyknighty I understand your fears, and I am sure many collectors have it. But it doesn't only apply to coins, it more or less extends to everything collectable. As some say, if something is of value, people will try to make fake versions of it...

There are fake coins yet to be discovered, that is probably to be expected. Are they so common though to such a degree that they will seriously ruin the hobby?

To answer this, we need to think of two main principles. Difficulty and financial return. It is not easy to create the perfect forgery. It would have to be struck using traditional techniques, and the artistic style needs to be right too. On top of this, I imagine it must be difficult to recreate the natural wear and metallic surface of an object that was supposedly buried for 2000 odd years.

To satisfy all of the above, I assume it would require skills, effort and time. Now would that be worthy from the forger's point of view? I imagine only if it was done in a sufficiently large scale. And this is where I think it goes wrong for the bad guys. I simply don't see how they would be able to throw in the market multiple coins from the same fake dies without collectors and dealers noticing it. If such a thing would happen, it would raise red flags and lead to increased scrutiny of said coins. To create only one or two examples and then create new fake dies simply sounds like too much hard work... Striking a coin is one thing but making a die is even harder. Not to mention that every artist has a signature style. Sooner or later the style of a specific forger may become noticeable. An alternative would be to try to create forgeries of very expensive and sought after coins so they don't have to rely on large numbers. I guess it may be possible, but those coins due to their price are scrutinized to a great degree by default so it would have to be a darn good forgery to escape the experts.

All of the above is of course just a random non-professional opinion, but I think that there are enough real ancient coins out there and I hope that I won't be unlucky to ever buy a 'bad' one. But if it happens, most proper dealers will offer a refund so personally I do not worry too much about it.

 

an educational book-- Numismatic Forgery by Charles M. Larson

 

I understand about knowing the dealer but as I look at the large inventories with some pretty quick turnover I am somewhat less than completely confidant that these dealers are examining what they are selling with the time necessary to determine their authenticity. Yes, I would probably get a refund if some turned out to be bogus but by the time I find that out that they are bogus, will they still be in business. I have been snookered by presumably reputable dealers who were mistaken about what they were selling but only my discovering this decades after the purchase. Knowing one's dealer only works when the dealer is taking the time and making the effort to authenticate all of the coins he is selling. If handling fifty to sixty a day, can any dealer spend that much time on each coin to be certain of their authenticity. Knowing the dealer may help somewhat, but it is far from doing more than establishing a fair degree of probability and nothing more than that.

 

I personally find this topic to be interesting on both a practical and theoretical level, and my thinking and analysis of it run along similar lines to Only A Poor Old Man's post.

If a forger is willing to go to the effort that you describe above -- engraving original obverse and reverse dies, melting down ancient metal, and using ancient striking techniques -- the resultant forgery would have to be valuable enough to be worth the effort and cost. So I tried to think about the process, from start to finish, for a specific type of coin -- an ancient Roman aureus.

The ancient gold for such a coin's flan will cost at least, say, $3,000 give or take a few hundred. Since you're avoiding suspicion by striking only one coin from these original dies, you'd want an aureus that you could sell for at least, say, $15,000, but more likely $25,000 - $50,000. Remember, the Hadrian aureus that I won but later turned up a forgery hammered for over $30K.

To be truly undetectable, the dies need to be from ancient metal as well, since traces will transfer to the flan during the striking process. But even if the forger uses modern metals and assumes that metal transfer from the die won't give away the forgery, he still has to engrave convincing obverse and reverse dies. Does he copy an existing aureus and try to make some subtle changes so that it doesn't look 100% like the original? If so, it will be unique but have no provenance and its sudden appearance in the coin community is sure to raise questions, due to the price at which it's intended to sell. But if it's an exact copy of a coin with an existing provenance, that, too raises its own problems, since it enables it to be compared to the one from which it's copied.

Somehow, I don't think all this work and expense for one coin that realizes $30K at auction is enough of a profit to go through this process for each new forgery. So it's likely the forger will try to sell multiple (and thus identical) copies under the radar to high-end dealers or collectors, rather than increasing the forgery's recognizance at multiple auctions. But the more dealers by whom the forgeries, the higher the likelihood of detection.

Ultimately, I think that there's too much risk and too little reward in high-end forgeries, and that's why there are many more medium- and low-end forgeries whose existence and appearance in auctions and dealers' inventories doesn't arouse a lot of suspicions. And these coins certainly aren't worth the effort of melting down ancient metal, engraving original dies, and using striking rather than modern pressing techniques on the flan.

While it's possible that unforeseen technological advances might make undetectable, high-end, forgeries possible in the future, I'm not concerned about it in the present. Even my own forgery was detected, albeit by a diligent and scrupulously honest auction house.

Yet... is that EID MAR aureus that sold for $3.5M recently truly authentic...? ;-)

 

I agree with you I also thought it does not make economic sense to do so much work for a perfect forgery but the issue is in some poor third world countries where a person get paid couple dollars a day, it would still make sense if he spends days to make a perfect forgery of not so expensive coin. Let's say a coin that sells in western market for 300-400 dollars (which means is not very rare or expensive) can be made by someone who get paid 3 dollars a day spending 2 weeks on making it perfect (create a perfect die , remove all telltales of forgery) the cost is roughly 34$ but will return 400$ almost 10 times! So in this case even few good fakes still is economical!

 

Yes I agree! It is a great hypothetical topic to discuss. On making a die exact copy of the original coin is not too hard. With modern cast technique or even some machines like spark laser you can make an exact impression of a coin to be used as a die for striking forgeries. For gold roman coin if they use a worn example (can be obtained around 1-2K) and make one with 35K as you said will be a huge profit isn't it? I am sure they would be happy of spending even a month of workmanship and spend 3K for a worn example and make 35K return. on a separate note, they usually change centering and wear in a way that even if two forgery are strike from same die but not easily detected as identical coins.