> 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).
Somewhat off-topic, but some time ago I read Thomas Levenson's "Newton and the Counterfeiter", and by the end, my sympathies were with the counterfeiters.
===Mild spoiler alert===
Isaac Newton was offered the position of Master of His Majesty's Mint more-or-less as a sinecure, not really expected to do much, but he took his responsibilities seriously, firstly by effectively managing the replacement of the realm's old coinage (a project that he had proposed as a solution of the then-unfolding currency crisis), and secondly by tracking down counterfeiters in a deadly (to the latter) game of cat and mouse. He seems to have taken counterfeiting as a personal affront.
The counterfeiter dude accused Newton of being a thief as an excuse to try to get an up close look at the mint's equipment (or something like that). Newton was incredibly upset and made it his life's mission to make that man pay...and ohhh he did.
I couldn't finish the baroque cycle, which is an unusual experience for me -- I'd been reading a bunch of old philosophical transactions articles at the time and Stephenson had wrapped up so much actual history (including a lot of really mundane stuff that people put in their publications back then) with unadulterated fiction that I felt like I was being gaslighted by the book!
For a modern take, in the 90's there was a man named Louis Colavecchio who made counterfeit slot machine tokens that even fooled the experts. He was featured in an episode of Breaking Vegas on the History Channel.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> Ancient counterfeits are a special case, since they are authentically ancient and therefore of considerable historical interest. When they come on the market, they are usually quite inexpensive compared to their official counterparts.
Is that just because they contain less precious metal? I’d have though that was a small part of the value
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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:
I think the entire point of the super dollar is that it is basically impossible to tell from a legitimate $100 bill, save from checking for duplicate/non-existent serial numbers.
Counterfeit cash adds risk to your agents. It also increases the chance they'll be tied back to you if they're caught. Also the operation to get them the money is, in itself, an expensive and difficult operation where the people doing the work probably need to be paid in real money.
None of those drawbacks mean it's a bad idea - just that it's not simple and ultimately comes back to fundamental questions of value exchange. I.e. Most of the time it costs fewer resources to exchange things for money on the black market than arranging to have extremely high quality forgeries in the hands of your agents.
>> but forget wandering into a dealership and dropping 25k in cash.
Motorcycles. Work at a motorcycle dealership and you will see customers with cash for a 10 to 25k$ 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.
KYC/AML is literally only law in the US and US licensed banking infrastructure. They are the US terms.
Other countries have their own terms for what they’re doing, and they aren’t the same terms.
The confusing part is that due to the US dollars reach, a LOT of foreign banks are US ‘licensed’ in order to interact with the US banking infrastructure, so there is some degree of it they need to apply in some cases. But it’s still US law only, and they don’t apply it in general.
>> 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.
I'm a collector with a few fourrées 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.
Fun fact, the punctures aren't necessarily from necklaces - it was also common for coins be nailed to doorframes for good fortune, and occasionally to the masts of boats and ships.
All of these usages (including as amulets) are extra frequent if the coin features a gorgon's head, because the image itself was said to repel bad luck.
I'm into ancient coins and I completely agree with you about cut coins being extra interesting - another interesting dramatic thing to dive into are overstrikes, coins that have been 'reminted' at a later time than their original minting, and ancient imitation coins - such as those made by tribal peoples living adjacent to Roman territories.
These are generally interesting for such fun features as very eclectic fusion art (think Roman iconography by way of celtic or germanic swirls and stylization), and by sometimes having gibberish text on them when made by an illiterate artisan.
> 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).