[HN Gopher] Ancient Counterfeiters and Their Fake Coins
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Ancient Counterfeiters and Their Fake Coins
Author : goles
Score : 39 points
Date : 2024-03-05 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (coinweek.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (coinweek.com)
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Article says they would make cuts in the coins to tell if they
| were counterfeit and that "greatly reduces their value to
| collectors" but wouldn't that be cool to have an ancient cut and
| verified coin? Seems they would be more rare and more valuable.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Genuine fake coin vs fake genuine coin.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| The article even mentions fake fake coins - modern-day fakes
| made to look like ancient fakes!
| nwiswell wrote:
| > Seems they would be more rare and more valuable.
|
| They are not. There are many, many, many cut coins, and often
| the cuts are "disfiguring" which will typically harm the "eye
| appeal" of the coin.
|
| Cutting coins was common practice of the time, and if a coin
| passed through many different hands, it was basically
| inevitable it would end up cut.
|
| It's kind of like seeing writing on cash... Most people don't
| write on their money, but enough people handle it that it's
| going to happen.
|
| The most valuable coins typically sat in hoards, uncirculated,
| since circulation would itself wear on the coin and reduce the
| grade. I agree that seems a little backward, since it's not
| nearly as interesting to imagine the "life" of a pristine coin,
| but it is what it is.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _I agree that seems a little backward, since it 's not nearly
| as interesting to imagine the "life" of a pristine coin, but
| it is what it is._
|
| These things don't have intrinsic value. They're worth what
| collectors think they're worth. I'd be happy if I'm
| interested in collecting something that is
| unpopular/inexpensive. Now, if anyone really cares, like if
| someone has their own hoard of defaced genuine coins, they
| can try to hype them up in normal ways, write editorials in
| trade mags, talk at coin shows, or, most likely get
| numismatics influencers to hype them up, etc.
| suzakus wrote:
| The challenge is that cut coins are far more common than
| uncut and pristine coins as well (edit: on certain types) -
| scarcity drives demand
| nemo wrote:
| The aesthetics really matter with these coins, the Ancient
| Greek coins held to a fairly high standard of art and
| collectors often see the nicer Greek coins as ancient art
| objects are much as coins. The portrait of Athena and the
| stylization of the owl on the Athenian tetradrachma are
| part of why people like them, nicely struck examples with
| centered art and no wear are the most expensive.
|
| The ancient tests didn't just chop into the edges like the
| article mentioned, but cut gashes into Athena's face, into
| the owl, and often both with several severe gashes marring
| the coin, significantly reducing their value as an ancient
| art object.
| roshin wrote:
| slightly related, but I've always wondered, why don't criminal
| governments (N Korea, Taliban, ...) make a professional US dollar
| forgery factory (or another currency, if some other kind is easy
| to forge)? It seems to me like a very profitable business.
| TinyRick wrote:
| North Korea already does that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar#North_Korea
| realce wrote:
| Two sources that you might find interesting:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Hour_2
|
| :)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| North Korea is known to be a widespread user of high-quality
| counterfeit US currency ("superdollars") and widely suspected
| (and there are defectors who have supported this and described
| details of different parts of the operation, though their
| remains some uncertainty about the accounts) of being a major
| producer of such counterfeits.
|
| OTOH, high quality counterfeits are expensive and there is
| _lots_ of energy directed at identifying counterfeits and, once
| identified, dealing with the production and distribution (and
| even if you are a state actor that thinks your production is
| safe from outside retaliation, the channels you use to benefit
| from it in interaction with the outside world are generally
| not), so a literal unlicensed money printing operation is not
| as much of a metaphorical license to print money as it might
| naively seem.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| There are also only a handful of companies that sell the
| equipment for producing real currency. They only do business
| with governments. North Korea has a government and its own
| currency. They are perfectly capable turning those legitimate
| tools to the generation of other currencies.
| smokel wrote:
| European bank notes contain a little Europium, a rare-earth
| element.
|
| Ironically, large deposits of minerals that contain it are
| found in China, the US, and Russia.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europium
| PepperdineG wrote:
| During WWII the Germans had Operation Bernhard, which was very
| interesting. It was run out of a concentration camp and
| operated by jewish prisoners. It was a money printing machine
| for the Germans.
| bruce511 wrote:
| A) they do, but B) cash doesn't scale terribly well. Think a
| million $ in cash is cool? How do you spend it?
|
| You can't really take it to a bank. You can buy a cheap banger
| (car), but forget wandering into a dealership and dropping 25k
| in cash. (Apart from anything else, they'd be worried the cash
| was stolen or counterfeit.)
|
| Travelling with it is risky. Flying especially. And in the US
| there's the danger of confiscation by the police. Everywhere
| else there's confiscation by the public as well.
|
| You can't buy a house. Certainly no shares or most other
| assets. Hotels, maybe, depending ion the hotel. Nothing too
| fancy.
|
| Groceries sure. Day to day expenses, sure. Just no Amazon.
|
| Like I say, cash just doesn't scale well (despite what you see
| in the movies.)
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| You don't give millions to one person, you give $30k to
| 15,000 agents around the world, and that's one percent of
| your GDP right there.
| pvg wrote:
| You probably don't have 15000 'agents' that need $30k in
| cash and you expose every single one of them to an
| unnecessary risk if they get caught with fake money.
| Somewhat similar case:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Nickel_Case
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> but forget wandering into a dealership and dropping 25k in
| cash.
|
| Motorcycles. Work at a motorcycle dealership and you will see
| customers with cash for a 10 to 25k$ motorcycle. Also, in the
| middle east it is normal to spend cash on even large items. A
| Saudi millionaire wanting to buy a car with $200,000 of cash
| is not unusual.
| taway_6PplYu5 wrote:
| yes, and transactions over a sum much less than 200K
| require AML/KYC paperwork.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| If you were dealing in a constant supply of cash you would
| have front organizations setup to launder it. A bunch of
| small businesses that normally do a lot of cash sales, then
| you get to deposit it in a bank (and pay taxes on it) like
| any other business.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> Many surviving owls bear such test cuts, which greatly reduce
| their value to collectors. Some counterfeit owls, even with
| noticeably deficient weight, managed to survive intact and be
| collectable today -- a 12.44 gram example sold for $300 in a
| recent auction.
|
| Collectors be damned. I would rather own a coin with a history. A
| ancient coin with a test cut, or even an outright forgery, is
| more interesting than any pure and clean coin. I also like the
| old coins with the punctures, the ones that were clearly worn as
| a necklace. A coin that was around the neck of a real person
| walking around ancient Rome is way more interesting than one sat
| gathering dust in a vault.
| nemo wrote:
| I'm a collector with a few fourrees and a few other ancient
| counterfeits, they often are a bit cheaper and so long as
| they're still decent to look at they've just got added interest
| to me. I've got other ancient forgeries too, I collect ancient
| fakes since they're interesting.
|
| My Athenian owl doesn't have test cuts since I'd rather have
| one that's prettier to look at, but if I could get my hands on
| an ancient forgery of an Athenian tetradrachma with a forged
| test cut then I'd be interested. Those exist, the
| counterfeiters escalating to fake marks of authenticity was
| inevitable, and those have a fun enough story that the fact
| that they're ugly wouldn't bother me so much, but in general I
| prefer more attractive examples that I like to look at. The
| test cuts were definitely not all on the side, lots of
| circulated coins are severely marred with 1 or more face gashes
| or owl gashes which is why they're not desired.
| mjhay wrote:
| > It appears that many ancient counterfeiters used "fire gilding"
| to apply the coating.
|
| > Mercury readily forms a very soft alloy (called an "amalgam",
| it has the consistency of butter) with gold or silver. This was
| smeared evenly over the surface of the base metal core, which was
| then heated in a furnace to drive off the mercury as a vapor,
| leaving the precious metal firmly bound to the surface. An
| example is a gold plated quinarius of Augustus, described by the
| cataloguer as "amusing," that sold for $254 in a recent auction.
|
| I didn't know that was around back then. Fire gilding is as bad
| as it sounds. I'm sure they were somewhat aware of the health
| effects of mercury as they were with lead. This process would
| absolutely destroy the brains of anybody doing it consistently,
| but I guess that was worth the risk (and counterfeiting would
| usually have been a capital crime anyway).
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