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MAGNA GRAECIAN AND SICILIAN COUNTERFEIT COINS - A Catalogue

Ocatarinetabellatchitchix
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Ocatarinetabellatchitchix Mentor

Ocatarinetabellatchitchix

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This new bilingual book (Italian and English) is dedicated to the coins of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and Sicily. Since 2022, no less than seven books with this one have been delivered to us by the authors. After a history and development devoted to the different forms of copying or alteration since the Renaissance, the most interesting part of the work focuses on the different types of manufacturing of forgeries from lost wax casting, electroplating, striking from dies…

There is a description of the work of  famous forgers like Becker, Christodoulos, Cigoi, Tardini etc., and for each of the cities presented in southern Italy or Sicily, an original coin is illustrated compared to the fakes which are always indicated as “FAKE”.

With more than 800 forgeries identified in the work through the 427 entries, there is a lot of information to study for numismatists and collectors of this period of time. The price of 100 euros is reasonable for a book of 250 color pages and it’s a great gift to give yourself !

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Phil Anthos Grand Master

Phil Anthos

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I will probably get this eventually, but right now I'm still trying to find a way to get 'The Coins of Tarentum. Analysis of Issues and Synoptic Plates' (hardcover) delivered to the US. This title is essential to me, but so far it's only available in Europe.  

~ Peter 

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Deinomenid Grand Master

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I got this when it came out and of all the D'Andrea ones I have I'm least interested in it, other than for it  to feed my paranoia about the  insane number of forgeries  coming  out now. The book repeatedly refers to to one auction house in particular as helping with selling fakes for study. The irony of it is staggering as these helpful coins turn up constantly as real afterwards. It really is supping with the devil - a very long spoon is needed. And this particular house  is  not exactly unknown for selling as regular coins all sorts of fakes. In fact I believe it's recently been warned of its conduct by one of the main bidding sites. (No, it's not NAC but 😀)

I've never really mentioned this book in any detail here for the above plus the book makes NO attempt to help show why coins are counterfeit after the introduction - its  just endless pictures of good coin/bad coin. It's also hard (far from impossible  but annoying) that coins are all shown in declining nominal value, rather than the  usual formats we are mostly familiar with. I just opened  my copy at random and took a photo  - this is Selinos where there's some fantastic research elsewhere on HOW  to identify the many fakes. All this does is show pictures (small pictures) of them with NO help at all, which has little direct unless you are literally bidding on one of the exact clones shown - but if so there are other sites that can do similar for free.

@OcatarinetabellatchitchixI apologise if this sounds grumpy or not in the spirit of your post, but it's an expensive book to get to the US if you don't  know what you are in for and I thought I should flag the concerns. I'll get back under my rock now.

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Ocatarinetabellatchitchix Mentor

Ocatarinetabellatchitchix

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2 hours ago, Deinomenid said:

I apologise if this sounds grumpy or not in the spirit of your post

No problem. I’m not the author of the book, and it’s not even my area of collection at all. Just wanna let the members know about what’s published on the other side of the ocean. About the shipping fees, I bought many numismatic books made in France; they have special rates from La Poste to everything published in the country. A way to encourage the dispersion of French culture I guess. It always costed me only a few euros to received literature from there to Canada.

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Kaleun96 Mentor

Kaleun96

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3 hours ago, Deinomenid said:

I got this when it came out and of all the D'Andrea ones I have I'm least interested in it, other than for it  to feed my paranoia about the  insane number of forgeries  coming  out now. The book repeatedly refers to to one auction house in particular as helping with selling fakes for study. The irony of it is staggering as these helpful coins turn up constantly as real afterwards. It really is supping with the devil - a very long spoon is needed. And this particular house  is  not exactly unknown for selling as regular coins all sorts of fakes. In fact I believe it's recently been warned of its conduct by one of the main bidding sites. (No, it's not NAC but 😀)

I've never really mentioned this book in any detail here for the above plus the book makes NO attempt to help show why coins are counterfeit after the introduction - its  just endless pictures of good coin/bad coin. It's also hard (far from impossible  but annoying) that coins are all shown in declining nominal value, rather than the  usual formats we are mostly familiar with. I just opened  my copy at random and took a photo  - this is Selinos where there's some fantastic research elsewhere on HOW  to identify the many fakes. All this does is show pictures (small pictures) of them with NO help at all, which has little direct unless you are literally bidding on one of the exact clones shown - but if so there are other sites that can do similar for free.

@OcatarinetabellatchitchixI apologise if this sounds grumpy or not in the spirit of your post, but it's an expensive book to get to the US if you don't  know what you are in for and I thought I should flag the concerns. I'll get back under my rock now.

ucqvnnamed.jpg.8c17a088af8ad606a2b980a97b45e0f6.jpg

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?

Amentia Contributor

Amentia

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I sadly have not understood the sense of this book, I own it.

The fakes there are mainly replicas sold by Bertolami as replicas and a small amount of fakes from private collections.

So if you search the sold replicas by Bertolami for example with acsearch you will find almost all of these fakes.

So why buying the book, if you can find the fakes already  in internet.

It is NOT EXPLAINED why the fakes are supposed to be fakes, so the reader does not know if they are cast, modern hand cut die or transfer die fakes.

And how to recognize them, if the fake is a modern hand cut die fake, all die matches would be fake.

If the fake is a cast or transfer die fakes, then authentic coins of these dies exist, except they are not fakes of fakes.

The reader then sees a coin which is a die match to one of these fakes and does not know what influence this has on the authenticity of the die match.

 

If you post supposed to be authentic coin they call them "Original" for comparison you should be sure that they are actually authentic and not fakes that were sold as such!

They have used as authentic, 2 coins sold by Roma Numismatics as Replicas (and they are replicas) and as authentic 1 electrotype sold by Roman numismatics as electrotype! The Agathocles tetradrachm used as authentic is actually a recut transfer die fake, the forgers were stupid, on the original dies on the reverse was only a cycle line and the forgers did not know and cut there a dotted border, I own one of these fakes, too.

The part about how to recognize fakes and about famous forgers in English page 6-24 is not colse as good as in other books about these topic.

There is writte about metal of Sybaris coins page 63 AE = Bronze, the problem is that the auction houses sold the "Original" authentic one and the fakes as silver ones and on the pictures they look clearly made of silver.  So they did not made a correction read to recognize such errors.

 

The idea itself to make a book with all Sicilian fakes know so far and to list the fakes under the specific mints is great.

And if you would write why they are fake it would be awesome and really helpful.

But they  mainly posted fakes sold by Bertolami and which were made by the guy called Dardani/Tardani.

Not to be confused with the real Tardani.

Many dies of these fakes were sold by katz auctions and they were previously in the possesion of G. Manfredini, who published some of them in

G. Manfredini - I falsi Numismatici, Brescia 1981

I have bought many of the katz dies and they were used to strike many of the Bertolami fakes now published in this book

(Magna Graecian and Sicilian Counterfeit Coins - A Catalogue von Alberto D’Andrea, Gaetano Faranda, Umberto Moruzzi)

I am not even certain that all of the supposed fakes are really fakes (maybe 2-3 could be authentic it is not clear on such small pictures).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Amentia Contributor

Amentia

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The 2 replicas listed in the book as authentic "Original"

Magna Graecian and Sicilian Counterfeit Coins - A Catalogue von Alberto D’Andrea, Gaetano Faranda, Umberto Moruzzi, Seite 210 Nummer 352

Sold as replica by Roma Numismatics

"Paduans, Electrotypes and Copies Modern Reproduction"

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=8384480

The other replica listed in the book as authentic "Original"

Magna Graecian and Sicilian Counterfeit Coins - A Catalogue von Alberto D’Andrea, Gaetano Faranda, Umberto Moruzzi, Seite 156 Nummer 234

Sold as replica by Roma Numismatics

"Paduans, Electrotypes and Copies Modern Reproduction"

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=6766247

 

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Edited by Amentia
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Amentia Contributor

Amentia

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The transfer die fake listed as orginal

As written before this artist always cut a cycla on the reverse and not a dotted border and on authentic coins from this reverse die is a cycle.

The forgers did not know and cut out of habbit a dotted border on the reverse.

I own one of these fakes, too!

The fake shown in the book as authentic with wrongly recut dotted border instead of cycle, was sold 2 tines at auctions

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1295047

https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1176140
 

 

 

 

 

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