MODERN FAKES OF ANCIENT COINS

FOR CLASSICAL NUMISMATISTS any discussion of fake ancient coins is... a delicate subject. Dealers worry that fear of fakes will scare off potential collectors. Collectors worry that the prevalence of fakes could depress the value of their coins. In reality, most ancient fakes are not dangerous to an expert, or even to a well-informed beginner. In the eternal war between forger and authenticator, the good guys still hold the advantage.

"Some people differentiate between the terms "counterfeit" and "forgery", using "counterfeit" to refer to fakes created to circulate and "forgery" to refer to fakes created to deceive collectors."

--Reid Goldsborough

Counterfeits are almost as old as coinage. Ancient counterfeits circulated widely in a world where small change was often in short supply. Whether, cast, struck or plated, such fakes are still ancient coins, and many are quite collectable today. Modern fakes, on the other hand, are usually worthless, unless they are precious metal with some melt value, or examples of the work of famous forgers of the Renaissance and early modern eras.

Becker
The most famous ancient coin forger of the early modern era was Karl Wilhelm Becker (1772-1830), who produced high-quality, hand-struck struck fakes of some 300 different Greek, Roman and Medieval coins. Many of Becker’s fakes were struck in tin or “white metal” (an alloy of tin, lead, antimony and other metals in variable proportions). But others were overstruck on worn ancient coins of low value, so the metal is actually authentic. He simulated wear on his coins by packing them in a box of iron filings attached to the axle of his carriage.

Becker always insisted that his work was not intended to defraud collectors, but only to make great works of numismatic art available to collectors of modest means. In 1824, the Austrian Imperial Coin Cabinet in Vienna acquired Becker’s dies, and a detailed catalog of his work was published a century later (Hill, 1924). Becker fakes frequently appear (correctly attributed as fakes) in European auctions.

Peter Rosa
Peter Rosa (1926-1990) was born in New York City, where he lived most of his life. He served in the Coast Guard during World War II. After the war he worked in the Merchant Marine and often visited London, where he began collecting casts of magnificent ancient coins in the British Museum. He worked briefly for a metal stamping and casting firm, but he was mainly self-taught, learning die making and metallurgy from books and through trial and error (Sayles, 5).

In 1955 doing business as the “Becker Manufacturing Company” he began selling reproductions of ancient coins and Becker’s fakes. Over the course of three decades, he produced many hundreds of different coin dies; some 331 were acquired by the American Numismatic Society (ANS).

To read the complete article, see:
CoinWeek Ancient Coin Series: Modern Fakes of Ancient Coins (http://www.coinweek.com/recent-articles-video/coinweek-ancient-coin-series-modern-fakes-ancient-coins/)

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