Kaleun96

Thanks for the mini review, was hoping here someone could share more about it. Out of interest, which D'Andrea book do you think is the most interesting/valuable for the study of forgeries?

I forgot to include this one, also from the upcoming January 16 New York Sale. Initially I was just focussing on the pre-Seleukos lion staters as that's what I know best but forgot to include this one when I branched it out to include the Seleukos types after finding the links between the two series. This is of course the same dies as the obverse starting from coin #8 and the reverse die starting from coin #3 that branches off and eventually becomes paired with this obverse die (coins #10-#11). Just as a side-note, the final lion stater type in that sale (lot 1102), is probably genuine. I think it's possibly from the same source as that smaller group which Heritage sold, at least the patina and deposits are roughly consistent with those coins. I haven't looked closely yet but I believe the dies are also known from other examples in my website article on these types.

Great to see you here, Amentia! Not sure if you saw but I managed to track down most of the examples in the second group of 23 staters on acsearch here. Agree with you that these ones are authentic. Heritage has sold about 135 lion staters since November 2023, when these examples first appeared in their auctions, and most examples look quite similar in surface condition and corrosion etc. So seems like this second group of 23 was only a portion of a larger hoard of authentic coins. Thanks! This is fascinating to see and I've not heard much about this method of producing dies before. Do you think this method was used here due to the softness of the details? Interesting analysis on whether they're transfer dies or hand-cut dies, thanks for taking the time to explain this. In addition to the lack of genuine examples with the same dies, I can also add that some of the styles are completely novel. For example coins #13 and #14 with the lion looking upwards - I've not seen another example that is similar to this before. There are examples where the lion is looking slightly up but either the head tilt is minimal or the lion's style is entirely different (e.g. "tall neck" style) And there are also details which make no sense stylistically and I have never seen before on any example, like these lines engraved into the lion's mane: And for the "blue line" reverse die (i.e. coins #1, #2, #8, #9), I've not come across a genuine example that has the same tail shape (looped higher than the lion's back) and where the lion has such a strong arch/curve to its back. The example on the right is perhaps the most similar example I could find and, to me, there's quite a large difference in the arch of the back and how prominently the tail rises above the lion's back. It's quite abnormal compared to all other examples of this type and related types in the series. So I think you're likely correct that these are hand-cut modern dies.

Google might be biasing the results based on your recent browsing activity but I'll take it 😁 I think my first exposure to them was this excellent paper on forgeries of the Athenian dekadrachm. Can recommend it to anyone who hasn't yet read it and is interested in forgeries: https://numismaticfakes.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/stannard_fischer_bossert_dies_hubs_forgeries_and_the_athenian_decadrachm.pdf They make a point of distinguishing between die hubs (complete design) and piece-punches (partial design) in that paper. I think for the lion staters, a hub and piece-punch would mostly be the same since each side is largely comprised of a single element (seated Ba'al or walking lion). But it does seem like the control symbols may not have been on all the reverse hubs, except for perhaps the anchor on the Seleukos types. Also this page has some great images on die hubs: https://jan.imperialcoins.com/newsletter/volume2/volume2-3.html

Back to this coin. I tried looking for other genuine examples of the obverse die and came up short. I mainly checked acsearch, SCO, and Mantis so definitely not comprehensive but it does make me a little concerned. Especially since I've been unable to find genuine examples of the reverse dies for #1, #2, #8, #9, #13, and #14 in my corpus and those reverses are generally compatible with the styles seen in the pre-Seleukos lion staters so I'd expect to have them in my ~500 coin corpus. Is it possible all the fakes are of modern dies, or perhaps just heavily modified transfer dies? I'd lean towards the latter if anything, or the third possibility that they're just regular transfer dies and I've yet to find the parent. Of course, my corpus isn't complete and even if I had every example ever sold up until now, new dies can turn up without notice. When it comes to the Seleukos era lion staters, I've spent considerably less time looking into this coinage so I'd be much less confident in being able to find a particular die from that series.

Thanks for letting me know! Glad Amentia agrees as well. I had tried searching that thread earlier to see if he had anything on lion staters but didn't come across anything, though I just did a quick keyword search. I'm sure many of us here have benefited from his work in that thread so it's nice to be able to return the favour this once.

For posterity's sake: URLs if anyone is interested. Seems I forgot to save one of them to my acsearch bookmark list and there was also the one coin I didn't find so it's 21 of the 23 in the photo: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=13058891 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=13061741 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12883470 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12885878 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12822751 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12729529 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12729530 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12691189 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12647202 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12547864 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12397272 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12338779 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12143780 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12129446 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12099750 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12062283 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=11974220 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=11952889 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=11925406 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=11825570 https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=12444781

Speaking of the second batch of coins, I managed to find all but one in Heritage's auction results. They first appeared at the end of 2023, during which time Heritage has sold 135 lion staters and most look to be from the same source.

Yeah I agree. The Mazaios ones are almost certainly genuine and I suspect the "anchor" ones are too, I'm just much less familiar with that coinage so can't speak to them with the same confidence. It is encouraging that the left Mazaios example has similar toning to some the "anchor" examples in that group. I wonder whether they came from the source as the "hoard", I'm guessing not otherwise one would expect them to be mixed in. At the time (March 2023), the eBay seller just said "these were part of the hoard too" and I replied "The second group of lion staters look much better, I think these ones are probably genuine. Stylistically they match the known types much better than the first group" but it seems we didn't continue discussing after that. Perhaps they could've come from the same middleman as the main "hoard" but the middleman kept them separate for some reason and the eBay seller just assumed they were from the same source. I had heard that when the fakes were going around on the market they were mixed in with legitimate examples, which could be these or other examples from the same source. Heritage did a good job of only selling these ones, wonder if Barry caught the others.

Thanks for doing this btw, it'd be great if some of the experts over there can take a look. I would bet Amentia would be better able to untangle the die sequence and what not too.

Just want to touch on another two coins which I forgot to include in the original post. The first is a coin coming up for sale in Pars Coins Sale 50: This has the same reverse die as coins #1, #2, #8, and #9 and the same obverse die as coins #8-#11 but most similar to #8 and #9 where Baal has quite a pronounced six-pack. Given the double die match to the above coins, I'd personally stay well clear of this one. While the reverse style is more consistent with other examples of NP 9 as I mentioned in my original post, it's still a bit abnormal and the style of Baal is also a deviation from the expected style. I do think it's possible that there are genuine examples of these dies out there somewhere but until we know more, it's best to avoid them altogether. The second coin was shared in one of the Facebook groups and sent to me by a friend. I probably wouldn't share this one without asking if I didn't think this one is probably genuine. The reverse die is the same as we see on #3, #4, #5, #10, and #11 but closest to #10 and #11 as that variation of the die is slightly bulkier. I think the sequence of the dies probably actually goes #10 and #11 and then to #4 and #5 as the latter have less detail and seem cruder. I also think it's possible that the Soldius coin #11 is genuine but I'd err on the side of it being fake. The fabric of this FB coin is much more convincing than the others. We can see what might be die breaks or die adjustment marks in the field in front of the lion, sharper detail and texture to the legs of the lion, the mane of the lion is well defined and much less blobby than the other examples, and the fabric of the flan in general and toning seems to me authentic. The obverse is the same as coins #1 to #7 but is most similar to #1 and #2. After coin #2, the next example of the die on coin #3 has changes to the angle of the folds/creases on the himation on Baal's legs but the angle of the right leg below the sceptre remains the same. In coin #4, the angle of this leg straightens and the folds of the himation turns into vertical lines. However, Baal doesn't have abs in this Facebook coin but does in the coin #2 example. On the whole, I think this Facebook coin is probably genuine and I don't see anything wrong with it per se. It doesn't have the same issues as coins #3 to #5 of the same type and dies - namely, those coins have soft details, unusual surfaces, and modifications to the die. If this below coin is genuine, it would of course condemn without any doubt coin #1 as well, which is the other one I'm unsure about the authenticity of due to it ostensibly being sold on Vcoins many years ago.

Thanks! Feel free to DM me with any suspect examples you find that aren't included here, or direct anyone you know who might've bought one to here. Until this whole thing unfolds, I'd recommend people to avoid these dies going forward and return any coins from them if they have bought one in the past ~2 years. I think your coin is probably fine, especially given it was seen by NGC. I think Barry is probably aware of these fakes and it seems Heritage did a good job of only selling the coins in the second "additional" pile from that eBay seller, which I'm sure at least some of those coins are genuine if not most/all, unlike the main "hoard". I don't believe your obverse or reverse die has come up in any of the above analysis, though it could be in the "additional" hoard photos as I noticed those coins had the typical double cross-strut placed higher up the legs like on your coin. In terms of the surfaces and patina your coin also seems genuine so I personally wouldn't be worried. I haven't and I'm not on Facebook so don't interact with Barry on any forums as far as I'm aware but anyone can feel free to share it with him if they like. I do think he's probably aware of at least some of these, it'd be good to hear his opinion on them either way. I've discussed these on the Discord server (though in less detail than I've put here) where there are some active employees from various auction houses too. I know CNG independently came to the conclusion about the coins they withdrew so it does seem like it has previously gotten the attention of a few auction houses, unfortunately not Gorny though. Appreciate the comments from everyone, thanks!

Part 1: The (partial) hoard Early last year a well-known Israel-based seller on eBay listed an auction for a hoard of lion staters totalling about 60 coins or so, all with very similar patina and in similar condition. The coins consisted of "lion staters" dated in the period 328-311 BC and the Seleukos "anchor" lion staters dated to the 311-305 BC period. That's not unusual in and of itself as several hoards have contained coins from both periods. What was unusual about this hoard though was that many of the coins were struck from the same 2-3 obverse and reverse dies even though the number of types represented was greater than this. It was quite obvious that many dies shared the same lion on the reverse but had a monogram or control symbol changed to differentiate it from another example with the same lion but different control. Additionally, the style represented on the types made no sense. Early types from the 328-320 BC timeframe depicted Baal or the lion in a style not seen until the 311-305 BC period, or vice versa. I informed the seller of my opinion that all the coins were fake. It turns out the coins weren't yet in his possession, the conversation roughly went as follows: Me: [paraphrasing] these coins are fake, here's why... Him: This is a hoard found together and most probably more to come from the same hoard. I believe the patina on the coins before cleaning is fine. [...] I hate to sell them and return them especially that they are with a third party in a different country. Him: [Referring to more coins in separate photos he sent me] These were part of the same hoard, but I chose the best condition pieces available To his credit, he did seem concerned about what I had to say and suggested he was waiting before moving on with several offers until he learnt more about them. I have no idea what happened to these coins after this conversation. Two coins from the additional photos he sent me, the only two coins from the Mazaios period (331-328 BC) with the Mazaios legend on the reverse and Baal legend on the obverse, ended up being sold at Heritage Auctions. These two coins were the only ones I thought to be genuine at the time and I still think probably are genuine. I'm unsure about the other Seleukos-era staters in these photos as I'm not as familiar with that coinage but they don't seem to share the same dies as the forgeries in the first two photos above. Bottom row, second and third coin from the right. It seems Heritage sold more of them too, I just found this one (top row, fourth from left) and this one (bottom row, first on the left).I'm sure they probably have all appeared at Heritage but this is actually a footnote to the purpose of this thread so won't dwell on it. Part 2: The fakes Before I waffle on any longer, let's get to the meat of the story - the fakes. In late 2023 I began to see examples from the big "hoard" appear at auction but so far only the "anchor" types. Both CNG and Nomos pulled these fakes from their auctions and I heard that a big hoard was being consigned to auction houses but it was soon discovered it mostly contained fakes with some genuine coins and that's when the coins were pulled. Then, a year on, I see other examples of the same fakes pop up at Gorny & Mosch, Solidus, and most recently - The New York Sale. I've attempted to diagram the die linkages between the forgeries below but it is complicated by the fact that the forgers are apparently using die hubbing to create multiple types from the same general Baal or Lion design. This means there are some major changes between examples of the same "die", such as the tail position (e.g. coin #13 vs coin #14) or control symbol (e.g. coin #1 vs coin #2), but also some more minor changes to the lion's mane, the throne of Baal (cross-strut added in coin #14 that isn't there on coin #13), Baal's himation and hair, etc. After spending a long time overlaying the coins and carefully comparing them, I'm quite confident of the die connections below but some do show differences that, in my mind, can only be explained by modifying the dies or creating multiple copies from a parent die. I will add, however, that I can't be 100% confident every coin above is fake. Mainly, I'm unsure about coin #1 sold by Athena Numismatics as it was sold on Vcoins a long time ago (based on it being on their last page of sold results). That being said, there are reasons to believe it could be fake that I will get to shortly and I've yet to find another example of the same die in my catalogue of lion staters (now totalling close to 500 coins, 200 obverse dies, and 300 reverse dies), excluding the coins included in the image above. Some of the dies shown above can be found in the original eBay hoard photos at the beginning of this post, namely the obverse and reverse dies from #12, #13, and #14. It's difficult to say for sure about other dies due to the poor photo quality. Part 3: Why they are fake The weird rough-looking surfaces and soft details give away many of the coins, and the odd patina of the coins from The New York Sale also doesn't help, however there are more convincing numismatic reasons. Starting with the hubbed dies, below I've outlined each distinct "die" and its associated dies. So the coins outlined by red or orange seem to share the same die "hub", and those outlined by green and pale green share the same die "hub". Red and orange squares: Red = anchor Orange = gamma or no control symbol Green and pale green squares: Green = delta symbol Pale green = monogram above lion, control letter below lion Blue squares are another anchor type with no variations that I can see This is easier to see in this final photo I have from the eBay seller. The reverses below are of the "red" and "orange" variety that belong to the same parent die or die hub. Moving on from the die hubbing are the stylistic problems. Starting with coins #13 and #14, which have a reverse die with a lion pointing its head upwards. This style isn't found any examples of Nicolet-Pierre 6 (delta control) or Nicolet-Pierre 11 (monogram above lion), or the chronologically related types. It is somewhat seen in an earlier series from the Mazaios period but it's associated with a different lion style and the lion's head is only slightly aimed upwards, not "howling" as it is on the dies here. It's a style more characteristic of the Seleukos period lion staters in my opinion. Next, the control symbols change between coins #13 and #14 as well as the lion's tail. I've never seen this on any other die from the hundreds I've looked at for the lion stater series. It also wouldn't make sense for these types to be created from the same die hub because they are not closely related. Nicolet-Pierre 6 (NP 6) is likely from between 327-324 BC while NP 11 is probably post 320 BC. Between these types were NP 7 and NP 8, by far the largest emissions from the series as a whole and they account for about 25% of all lion staters in my corpus. It's inconceivable that a die hub would be used for just these dies (of which no other examples of the dies are known) and for types separated by not only several years but likely hundreds of dies and millions of coins. They would have had to store the die hub for this period and break it out when minting NP 11 and decide, for whatever reason, to change insignificant details like the lion's tail or adding a second strut to Baal's throne. The double cross-strut on the obverse of coin #14 is a feature I've only found on one other coin from the 328-311 BC series (out of ~420), except for the final type of the series (NP 19). The double cross-strut then makes a frequent appearance on the Seleukos-era staters following 311 BC. Coins #1, #2, #8, and #9 have similar issues. The loopy tail seen on the reverse dies is never found on NP 4 (coin #1) and the throne style and style of Baal is also completely off. As mentioned, double cross-struts on the throne are simply not a thing for this period of lion staters. These inconsistencies remain for coins #2, #8, and #9 except that the tail is closer to expected style. However, for coin #2 of NP type 7, the tail never loops up as high as it does here, where the tail rises above the lion's back. That is a feature not found until NP 9 (coins #8 and #9). Out of the 75 examples and 42 reverse dies of NP 7 I have identified, none have this feature. The way the lion's back arches upwards is also highly unusual for the period. Stylistically, they just do not make sense. It also doesn't make sense for a die hub to strike coin #1 to then be used again for coin #2, #8, and #9. Aside from these coins, there are no known die links between NP 4 and NP 7, or NP 7 and NP 9, or NP 6 and NP 11. The mint shows evidence of sequential striking for these types where NP 4 is linked to NP 6, and NP 6 is linked to NP 7, and NP 7 is linked to NP 8, and NP 9 linked to NP 10 and NP 11. Anchor types - I won't go into these as I have not studied them as well as the 328-311 BC series of coins. Also, seeing as CNG and Nomos have withdrawn these coins and these coins are linked to the types above, it more or less condemns them all anyway. Part 4: Wrapping up There remains a gap between the coins #1 to #11 and coins #12 to #14. They don't seem to share any die links and I've yet to find an example of coins #1 to #11 in the eBay hoard. However, we know they share the same patina in some cases (e.g. the four New York Sale coins), they also share similar problems in style and non-sensical die hubbing/linkage, and we know from a study of the eBay coins that the same style issues and non-sensical die hubbing/linkage condemn virtually all of those coins (except for the additional small group that Heritage have been selling off). So I'm quite confident that most, or all, of these coins are from the same original source of fake dies but they may have been modified or copied by later individuals. Also keep in mind that the eBay seller told me he had only bought part of the "hoard", so it's possible the linkages between the two groups of fakes can be found in the full "hoard". As for the New York Sale coins, I sent them an email and had a chat with Dmitry earlier this week but he remains unconvinced and doesn't appear to be willing to withdraw the coins. That's up to him, he'd prefer to rely on his authenticity warranty instead, but I said in that case I will present my evidence so others can make up their own minds. [edit: to clarify, Dmitry has told me he does not yet have the time to look into this fully even though we've now exchanged many emails on the topic and will look into this later when he has time]. I may have made some mistakes in the above, please let me know if you spot any, it's been quite hectic trying to put all of this together quickly so I may have missed something. That said, I'm quite confident that most, if not all, the coins focused on here are fake (except the Heritage ones mentioned) and in my mind the evidence is quite strong. I've been working on a die study of sorts for the pre-Seleukos types since 2023 so am quite familiar with them but perhaps what is obvious to me is not as obvious to others, or doesn't make as much sense.

For the first one, that's actually expected behaviour as it's a mint-level filter, not type-level, so the idea is that you can see everything produced at a mint that also produced drachms. The reason I made it mint-level is that I was lacking a tool for studying the mints as a whole and PELLA already provides a good tool for looking into individual coins/types from mints. I then didn't want to make the filtering logic confusing by applying it to both the mint and type-level. I could possibly add a secondary set of filters for the gallery below but then it might start getting too cluttered. I could also add a toggle for users to apply the filters to the individual types but how the filters would apply at the type-level could become quite ambiguous. The second one I'm not sure about, can you describe the steps? If you had filtered on the mints Amphipolis and Abydos where Amphipolis has an "open" date of 336 BC and Abydos an open date of 328 BC and then entered "330" in the first "Date Opened" filter (i.e. the earliest allowable open date), it would exclude Amphipolis and drop it from the list. If you put 330 in the second "Date Opened" filter (i.e. the latest allowable open date), it would exclude Abydos. That would be expected behaviour as well since you're narrowing the filter criteria. An option is to keep the mint in the filter even though it no longer has any matches but then it will be confusing on the map and mint list view because there would be no mint visible. If the date opened/closed filters don't change anything, it's probably because the value entered was compatible with all of the selected mints, e.g. an earliest "date opened" value of 336 BC would exclude zero mints and effectively do nothing. It's a bit unintuitive at first having a dual date entry for each of the "opened" and "closed" filters and perhaps that's causing the confusion here. I don't see a good way around it though as I often need to filter on date ranges for when a mint opened or when a mint closed but not necessarily when it was operating. For a example, a basic "325 to 323 BC" filter would capture all mints operating during that time but if you specifically want mints that opened or closed during that period then you need the dual dates. PELLA is best used for this. I've got thoughts of creating my own but the main purpose of that would be so I can update the attributions and mistakes, I don't think there's any functionality I'd necessarily improve except perhaps allowing to change between OR and AND logical operators when filtering on controls etc.

These aren't mine but it was a good excuse to find some stunning examples of his. Interestingly, most of these are below $800 or so on acsearch, above that it's mostly rare and exotic types that aren't necessarily in mint state but fetch thousands or tens of thousands. Most of these have less wear on the obverse than yours but your one does have great style and is similar to the first one below Here's one from my collection, well soon to be ex. collection as it'll be coming to a CNG auction shortly. I love the gold toning on it, never seen something like it on a denarius before.