Too Much Yellow!

We call it a die transfer fake. Some sophisticated fakes out of China have been showing up (Classic US coins, German Thalers, among others) using genuine coins as a host so that all the details look, for the most part, legit. The ONLY tell are "sister" marks, which I highlighted in your examples above, these are identical marks that should not exist on pairs or groups of coins. In an Ancient coin, it is even less likely there should be any sister marks given the complete lack of consistency in everything about the minting process at that time. This is a dirty business indeed, and to be quite frank, if this is the level of quality fakes in ancients, I may just stop buying them altogether. Unlike with more modern coins, where you have die studies and can root out fakes such as these, with ancients, it is nigh impossible to do that. This seller made a mistake in that they listed all the fakes at once, giving collectors an opportunity to see the obvious sister marks that just shouldn't exist. Should have run these out one at a time over a period of months. Greed I suppose. Or, the seller honestly has no idea, or doesn't ask questions of the source/supplier.

Have a look at the two Orodes I drachm he recently added. They also seem to come from the same die pair with very similar wear patterns. I am not a student of this series and cannot say how often double die matches occur but something doesn't smell right with the matching wear patterns.

Yes, Zach Beasley (VCoins management) emailed me this morning to let me know that the dealer was asked, by Zach, to remove the coins.

The ''A'' is back!!

And the ''Z'' never really left!