Is It Real Of Fake | Syracuse Dekadrachm Tourist Copy

Hi,

First of sorry to hear about your grandfather.

Secondly - more bad news I'm afraid. This is a very crude copy of a Decadrachm of Syracuse.

There are four main clues.

First, decadrachms are supposed to be silver; this is clearly not silver.

Second, the details are very fuzzy - a typical sign of a cast fake.

Third, the rim - ancient coins don't have high rims around the edge of the coin like that. Again, such a rim is often a by-product of making crude cast copies.

Fourth, this particular design has always been very popular for collectors and has been extensively copied for several centuries. We've seen quite a lot of them here on the forum. See this thread for a similar example.

Compare that one and your coin to the genuine example here.

@mija, first welcome to CCF. Second, just to be clear, are you asking where this specific fake coin was made or where a genuine coin would have been made (i.e. Syracuse...)?

Ok yes now I understand. Coins are undoubtedly faked in many countries, but we seem to see them mostly coming from China and Eastern Europe. As fakes, they have little numismatic or value beyond education (what not to buy), but some folks are willing to spend a very small amount for their so-called black cabinet. Some fakes are made from precious metal in an effort to be more convincing and those are worth the intrinsic melt value.

to the community

There really isn't any way to tell where this piece came from, it could be from a tourist shop in Greece, or from anywhere. Most of the fake ancient coins we see are either from Eastern Europe or China. They tend to look much better than this.