How to Make a Rare Coin out of a Common One? Early Modern Forgeries Using Original Ancient Coins / Jak z monety popularnej zrobić rzadką? Wczesnonowożytne fałszerstwa przy użyciu oryginalnych monet antycznych (PDF, 2,7 MB)
Bartosz Awianowicz, Nicolaus Copernicus University
ORCID: 0000-0001-7380-2272
How to Make a Rare Coin out of a Common One? Early Modern Forgeries Using Original Ancient Coins
Abstract: The practice of forging ancient coins and medals was extensively discussed as early as the 16th century. The first author to devote an entire chapter of his published 1555 work to this problem was Enea Vico (1523–1567). In the first half of the 17th century, Louis Savot (ca. 1579–1640) postulated the need to collect both ancient coins and their forgeries for comparative purposes. In the second half of the 17th century, two very popular textbooks on numismatics were published: Introduction à l’histoire, par la connoissance des médailles by Charles Patin (1633–1693) and La science des médailles by Louis Jobert (1637–1719). The former distinguished three main types of forgeries, while the latter identified as many as nine types of forgeries and frauds related to ancient coins and medals. The main purpose of this article is to identify specific coins that Jobert described as examples of the “seventh fraud”, which involves the alteration of the head and obverse legend of a more common coin (usually sestertius) into a rarer one.
Key words: Ancient Roman coins, Early Modern forgeries, fake sestertii, Charles Patin, Louis Jobert
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52800/AJST.1.19.a11
Awianowicz, B. 2024. “How to Make a Rare Coin out of a Common One? Early Modern Forgeries Using Original Ancient Coins”, Notae Numismaticae – Zapiski Numizmatyczne 19: 215–228. DOI: https://doi.org/10.52800/AJST.1.19.a11