THE EARLIEST ANCIENT FORGERIES

The Earliest Ancient Forgeries
The Early Date and Surprising Extent of Counterfeiting in Ancient Britain
By Robert D. Van Arsdell

British rulers began striking their own gold staters around 70-60 bc. Almost immediately, counterfeiters made fakes of them. Every coin-issuing tribe was targeted by counterfeiters – some by multiple workshops. Most heavy staters (over 6.0 grammes) are known in plated versions. The phenomenon is so widespread and intensive it deserves special study.

Researchers are investigating the way Britain came to use money. The role of counterfeiting must be an integral part of the study of monetization.

In 1986, I suggested that forgeries of Trinovantian staters showed coins were used as money. Ancient Britons were aware of the problem and were taking steps to counteract it. Test cuts, to expose the base metal core, appeared on some of the fakes. Eight years later, Jeffrey May published yet another coin with test cuts and commented on how many forgeries were appearing.

Today, these forgeries are still not given enough attention. It's surprising how long it took for numismatists to identify them in the first place.

Ancient forgers – the most skilled of coin makers?

Perhaps it's not obvious that forgers must have had better skills than the workers in the official mints. Not only did they need to know alloys, flan production, die-cutting and striking, but they needed to duplicate all these skills using inferior materials to make their coins. Plus, once the fakes were made, they constantly had to pass inspection for size, weight, strike, colour and imagery.

This close inspection was seldom demanded of the coins made in the official mints. Once official coins were in mass-production, the die-cutters could become sloppy and the moneyers could get by with coins struck with broken dies, or struck too hard, weakly or off-center.

Perhaps the biggest challenge the forgers faced was avoiding flan cracks. It seems the official mints paid no attention to them. Large cracks appear on many genuine coins. The cracks expose the interiors of the flans and show the metal is correct. It's possible the official mints allowed them to pass as an anti-counterfeiting measure. It would make the work of the forgers difficult. They had to strike up the image without creating any flan cracks to expose the base metal core.

Today, most existing forgeries are just corroded lumps of copper missing their gold covering. It's easy to assume they were crude imitations, easily detected and quickly thrown away. The coin on the left is typical, it's lost all of its gold.

However, a few exist that show us how deceptive the ancient fakes once were. These rare survivors retain most of their original gold covering, revealing the skill of the ancient forgers.

We also now see that the ancient forgers worked to improve their forgeries, just as modern forgers do. When authenticators engage in counterfeit-detection work today, it sets off a race between the forgers and authenticators. Ancient forgers faced this same problem. They had no respite – people were watching.

The best surviving forgeries

The coin on the left is a genuine Gallic War stater, the other two are ancient forgeries. The fakes give us a glimpse of the way ancient forgers' worked to outwit their victims.

There's reason to believe the two forgeries might be products of the same workshop. They share the same manufacturing methods and the die-cutting is similar.

They're unusual because they have silver, not copper cores wrapped in gold. Silver cores would be denser, making it easier to get the weight right. The middle coin is ever so slightly bigger than the genuine coin, but it's too small to have the correct weight. Had the core been copper, it would have been lighter, still.

The coin on the right, presumably the later product from the workshop, is a bit bigger and it gets the weight right. Though most genuine Gallic War staters are 16-18mm in diameter, some can be as large as 19mm. The fake would not have been suspiciously large.

It shows other improvements – the colour is a bit yellower, closer to the genuine stater. The die-cutting is better, too. Note the horse's neck on the middle coin is stringy and there is too much separation between the two curves. On the third coin, the neck is almost perfectly cut. The coin on the the right would pass a quick visual inspection. But, if it got weighed, it would pass that test, too.

It's difficult to judge whether the forgery on the right is the same thickness as the genuine coin. But we can anticipate the forgers used thickness as another variable they could adjust. Anyone seeing and holding the two coins in ancient times would have been forced to detect a difference in specific gravity to unmask the forgery – an impossible task. There is one test cut on the coin. When the forgery was unmasked (in ancient times), it took considerable skill on the part of the authenticator. It would, however, be too much to suggest that someone in ancient Britain knew of Archimede's Principle (and could measure specific gravity). There's no way to prove such a tantalizing suggestion.

There is still the possibility that this coin is a modern forgery of an ancient forgery. This is unlikely, because first, both the forgeries have enough corrosion to suggest they are ancient objects. Second, both the fakes appeared between 1984 and 1986. The best Haselmere forgery of a Gallic War stater appeared in September 1986 – it was much inferior to the two ancient fakes. That Haselmere forgery has already been discussed in an earlier article.

As it stands today, the coin on the right is a masterpiece of the ancient forger's art.

To read the complete article, see:
The Earliest Ancient Forgeries : The Early Date and Surprising Extent of Counterfeiting in Ancient Britain (https://vanarsdellcelticcoinageofbritain.com/articles-numismatic_ccb3/van_arsdell_2025b_ccb3.html)

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