+ DAVE'S : RARE : COINS

This page will feature pictures of deliberate modern forgeries [as opposed to honestly sold copies and reproductions] of Anglo-Saxon broad-flan pennies.

Some fakes available to purchase as genuine coins at www.anglosaxoncoins.net

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1] Coenwulf of Mercia. Tribrach Penny.

2] Eadwald of East Anglia. Quatrefoil type.

3] Ceolwulf I of Mercia. East Anglian mint.

4] Aethelweard of East Anglia. Cross & Crescents.

Please note the perfectly round flans on each of these examples. The Eadwald if genuine would be a Great Rarity. For a genuine coin of Eadwald please see the East Anglian Kings photo album. I also have an example of a Coenwulf Tribrach penny, in the Mercian kings album. All of these types are easily proved as fakes by simple comparison with the genuine coins in any book or museum collection.

Eadberht Praen coins sold recently on ebay etc....

The first three coins are fakes of a genuine coin [4] of Eadberht Praen of Kent. His coinage is excessively rare, and most is in museums. His genuine coins have neat, thick lettering and straight lines. These three are struck from the same dies of Trevor Ashmore. The first [1] is for sale at anglosaxoncoins.net for several thousand pounds. The second [2] was recognised as a copy and sold on ebay for a predictably small amount. The third [3] was advertised as a 2007 metal detecting find and sold as genuine on ebay. I have contacted the sellers to inform them that these are copies, and have of course recieved no reply.

The genuine coin of Eadberht Praen which these were copied from [4] is EMC 1020.0642. SCBI 20 [1973] Mack Collection : 642. Also published in BNJ 32 [1963] coin number Ep 2e.

Another Selection of fake coins available to buy as genuine coins at www.anglosaxoncoins.net

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5] Offa. Heavy coinage. 

6] Aelfred. London Monogram. 

7] Ecgberht of Wessex. London mint.

These are very crude as compared to the genuine article. Each is extremely rare. The Aelfred excessively so. Most museum examples are not as good as this coin !! Note perfect flans again, no chips, breaks or marks from time in the ground. A simple search of the EMC database or BM catalogue would no doubt yield the genuine coins that these fakes are taken from.

Special thanks to Clive K for obtaining the ASC photos for me.

Eadgar of All England. East Anglian Bust Crowned penny. Fake sold on ebay 10. 09. 07.

This coin [left] was sold on ebay 10.09.07. It realised £102.00. It is a reproduction, aged with a corrosive chemical. The [perfectly round] flan has been damaged purposely.

As usual I contacted the seller, and eventually he ammended the listing, although he used the words 'might be' instead of 'is' a fake coin. Ebay blocked my attempts to contact the bidders and warn them, as I was not involved in a transaction with them !!

Genuine coins of this type [right, EMC database 2005.0238] are extremely rare. My own is a very small fragment. For me the telltale sign that this is a forgery is the reverse cross which is [as usual, as its easier] cut in one piece on the modern die, but  composed of four [unjoined] wedges on the original 10thc dies. The lettering is also not typical of the style of this  period, and the shape of the obverse inner circle is not correct. The bust is a very crude copy of a very crude original. The crown and nose give the game away. There is no outer circle on the obverse or reverse of the fake, as on most genuine coins [which as a rule are struck on oversized flans]. This coin may not be based on a genuine extant coin, but on type alone.

More Fake Coinage from ebay. Eadward the Elder, Plain Open Hand + Viking St. Peter Sword & Cross.

The coin on the left is a forgery of an extremely rare penny of Eadward the Elder. There are several variants of this Plain Open Hand type, of which this die is possibly unique. The coin it is copied from is recorded on the EMC database [formerly of the Mack Collection] where it is the only one of its type. This fake [again with perfectly round flan] has been 'aged' with corrosive chemicals to make it look old and worn as if from being in the ground. The lettering style is incorrect for early 10th century, but the reverse motif is a reasonably good imitation. This is probably a Victorian fake. The era was notorious for producing fakes of very rare Anglo-Saxon coins.

The coin was listed as genuine. The seller noted my opinion and conceded that it may be a fake. The listing was not ammended, and the coin eventually removed from ebay.

The coin on the right was listed [genuine] as a beach metal detecting find. I am certain it is not genuine. Perfect flan, perfect condition. No evidence of being anywhere near water, certainly not for over a thousand years !! This looks like a standard tourist reproduction produced at places like the Yorvik Centre in York. Note the purposely made hole.

I contacted the seller of this coin who did not reply. The listing however was eventually ammended to include the possibility of the coin being fake.

Aelfred the Great. Quatrefoil penny. Fake sold on ebay, 22. 11. 07.

This coin was recently sold for £220.00 on ebay. It looks very much like a cast fake [with the sprue at 1 o'clock] albeit a very good one. Said to have been found while the seller was digging a friends garden to lay a path. He professed to know nothing about the coin except found in Colchester, Essex. Very poor quality camera phone pics, said to be the best he could take, except that his other items, [nothing else coin-related except a small cabinet] even the dirt-cheap ones have absolutely crystal-clear photos on the listings. A zero-feedback new seller. Dosent add up. The buyer [a well known ebay coin dealer] will, I think, have a shock when the coin is delivered.

Genuine coins of Aelfred of Wessex are very rare, this type is exceptionally so, the book price in fine [F] condition being well over a thousand pounds.

[Incidentally, my phone is by no means top-of-the-range, but I can take clear pics on it].

Special thanks to Paul from my ebay forum group for contacting me about this coin.

Fake Offa Portrait Type and Aethelred II Long Cross Type. Sold on ebay 20.01.08.

These two obvious fakes were sold for approx £15 & £10 respectively on ebay. January 20th 2008. Only the obverses of the 'coins' were shown on the listings. The seller maintained that he had no idea whether the coins were genuine or not, as he was not a coin expert, he had obtained them in a job-lot of coins from a family member [now where have I heard that before !!]. Fair enough, BUT having said that the seller added to the listings each email he recieved about the coin,  several regarding authenticity, and a couple from the same person identifying the coins [as genuine] and quoting the high Spink book price for the coins, over £700 in the case of the Offa [an instance of shill bidding ?].... except he most definately DID NOT add to the listing the email that I sent to him regarding these. I pointed out [politely] that they are extremely poor fakes, they have a 'cast line' and are probably made of pewter or something similar. I also pointed out that if the Offa had been genuine, at that point [day 4 of a 7 day listing], bidding would have reached several hundred pounds by then, as these coins are extremely rare. I am willing to bet that the reverses of these items are blank, as they are probably tourist souvenirs produced for children.

If the seller had nothing to hide, my email would have been added to the listing to balance out the positive and neutral ones already added.

In the event this is all academic as the coins sold for 'peanuts' - as did the similarly poor cast fakes of Celtic coins that he also offered for sale the same week.

A Spate of 'doctored' Replicas of Ceolwulf II coins.

The coin in the top pics was recently offered to me [early Feb '08] as a genuine coin of Ceolwulf II of Mercia. Naturally I was gobsmacked - an opportunity of a lifetime !! Until I looked a little closer, and compared this coin with other coins of Ceolwulf II. There are three or four, from a total of perhaps fifteen known, recorded by this moneyer. The lettering is too thick, the lozenge should be gracefully carved and incurved and the reverse small cross should be composed of four wedges joined at their thin ends. The outer circle is plain rather than pelleted as it is on genuine coins. Alarm bells rang and I contacted the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Mark Blackburn, Keeper of Coins and Medals, confirmed the coin as a forgery of Trevor Ashmore of Devon, produced in the 1980's or early 1990's. Trial strikings of Ashmores dies are kept at the Coin Room of the Fitzwilliam, and the coin is struck from one of these.

The coin dealer who offered me this coin, with an asking price of almost £1000, made a genuine mistake with this coin, and is a reliable and trustworthy seller.

The coin in the bottom pics is another Ashmore forgery, listed on ebay 15. 02. 08. Offered for sale as a genuine penny of Ceolwulf II, in two days the bidding reached £255. Then on 18. 02. 08 the coin was suddenly removed from ebay by the seller, who presumably had had an attractive offer to purchase the coin outright. The rather comic caption on the listing info section read "FOUND BY MY MATE RICK METAL DETECTING IN A SUFFOLK FIELD." The same seller had several coins removed by ebay the same day for a scam involving Paypal, and was believed to have been involved in shill bidding with another ebayer who had listed among other things a genuine, albeit broken, Aelfred penny in a listing with very similar wording to that above. The Aelfred listing was also removed on 18. 02. 08.

Genuine coins of Ceolwulf II are excessively rare - and most noted Anglo-Saxon collections do not have an example. Around fifteen coins of this king are thought to exist, and most are in museums. The last genuine coin I saw sold for £4500 and was badly mishappen and marked, although it did feature previously unknown drapery.

Both of the above coins have been 'doctored,' that is scored and scraped, and perhaps had chemicals introduced, to make them look older. The top coin has also been heat-treated to 'ripple' the flan. Note the almost complete obscuring of Ashmores bust on both coins, with reverse left almost untouched to identify the type.

The Ceolwulf II page from the published CD flip-album of Trevor Ashmore reproductions. Note the die-match to the coins above.

To sell forgeries of this type of coin is as futile as selling fakes of coins of Eadberht Praen, as there are so few genuine coins to compare them with !! See above.

Thanks to Alex, moderator of my ebay forum group, and to Dave S.

Wiglaf of Mercia Fake. 28th Feb '08.

This coin was listed on ebay for two days only in Feb 2008. The seller stated he did not know what it was, and believed it to be made of tin or copper [presumably due to its colour]. The auction was ended after less than 48 hours due to 'an error in the listing' and it has to be wondered whether the seller recieved a private offer to purchase such a sought after coin ?

Genuine coins of Wiglaf of Mercia, 827-829, 830-840, are amongst the rarest in the entire Anglo-Saxon series. Only a literal handful are known. This fake [which may or may not be by Trevor Ashmore] is copied from a genuine coin, but the crude bust style is wrong, the lettering is too thick and bulbous, and in general appearance the coin lacks the 9th century aesthetics of the East Anglian-minted original. It has also been purposely damaged and aged with chemicals - but is probably made of silver, which does in fact sometimes age to this colour. If this coin was genuine I would have expected much interest from numismatists and museums, including the British Museum and the Fitzwilliam Museum. Of course the museums did not bid, their usernames are for the most part known. And the coin has not subsequently appeared in any numismatic publication, as such a genuine find of major importance surely would have. Nor have I had any correspodence from Anglo-Saxon researchers regarding the coin. Indeed Mark Blackburn, Keeper of Coin & Medals at the Fitzwilliam agrees that this coin 'certainly does not look right'.

 Heaberht of Kent. Fake sold on ebay, before 08.05.08.

I was contacted by the purchaser of this coin with regard to whether or not the coin was genuine. He had identified the monarch himself but was unaware of the fact that only one genuine coin of the king is known [illustrated in JJ North, Volume One. Plate II - Coin 44]. This is in the British Museum, and was found in Italy and subsequently purchased by the late Christopher Blunt.

I was fairly convinced that this was a reproduction, but made a comparison between this and the BM coin. I found that the main giveaway was the 'five wounds of Christ' motif of pelleted circles on the reverse of the coin. On this coin the circles [or annulets as they are sometimes called] vary considerably in size. This does not happen on genuine coins of this type, struck by Heaberht, Ecgberht II of Kent and Offa of Mercia, where they are of a uniform size with the central circle slightly larger. Also the letter A in the legends is different in the area of the crossbar, and that of EOBA is not central in its quarter. The Rx motif on the obverse is also not as it should be for genuine coins of the era on which it appears.

I advised the seller to seek an opinion from the leading experts at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, which he did. He then kindly let me know the outcome by email. The coin was condemned by Dr. Mark Blackburn [Keeper of Coins and Medals, and president of the British Numismatic Society] and a colleague [probably Rory Naismith, an expert in 8th/9th century coinage] as a Trevor Ashmore reproduction. A somewhat expected result for us both.

As usual the coin has been 'doctored' in order to sell it as genuine, in this instance quite expertly. It has been age-blackened and the flan 'waved' to simulate the results of a thousand years in the ground. Advertised on ebay with the notoriously suspicious 'found by my grandfather metal detecting ...'

I have seen literally hundreds of Anglo-Saxon fake coins. This is one of the very best.

I would estimate a genuine coin of Heaberht, in this condition and considering its highest rarity, at £20,000 +

I am grateful to Rob for bringing this coin to my attention, and for kindly allowing the use of his images reproduced here.

Another Heaberht Fake.

Another Trevor Ashmore fake of a Heaberht of Kent, sold on ebay shortly after the previous coin. Bought by an American from a seller in Israel. The coin is struck from the same dies as that above, and is similarly [although more crudely] doctored. Brought to my attention by the seller who sought a confirmation of his ID of the coin as Ecgberht of Wessex, Rochester mint [not a bad guess as it happens].

Once again the futility of selling fakes of such rare coins lies in the fact that so few are known to compare it with. In this case a single genuine coin.