Decadrachm, What Kind Of Fake?

to the community

Whoever made this did a good job. The details are very good along with the patina. The roughness on the edge and surface could be caused by the environment. I would be interested in knowing the size and weight of the piece. I could see where this could fool a novice collector.

Ok, its 23 grams and 36 mm.
So definetly a fake, but there are also 'special' fakes... Antique ones made by artists some centuries ago etc.. Since it really doesn't look like a modern fake, does anyone have more knowledge?
I also got cylinder seal with it, which is authentic. I think it's recovered in Apamea, near Qa'at al Madiq in Syria.

Contemporary counterfeits are, of course, valuable ancient artifacts in their own right and can easily be worth as much as, if not more than, the genuine article. This is not a contemporary counterfeit. They are closer than this to the genuine weight, and don't look this nice since they usually have a base-metal core that has corroded through in spots.

There are some famous counterfeits of more modern times. "Becker" counterfeits from the 1700s are, likewise, historic artifacts with niche collector market. This isn't a Becker, or a Paduan, or from any other modern famous counterfeiter. Such pieces often differ very much in style and design from genuine coins, since they were usually copied from drawings or with designs extrapolated from very worn coins. You also won't find them in Syria, since Becker and friends made their coins in Europe, for sale to European collectors, and very few of them have ever left Europe.

No, sadly, this piece is a "tourist copy". Such pieces are usually copies of copies: someone goes to a local museum, buys a museuim replica, and makes copies of that replica. It was most likely made sometime in the last decade or so, probably. They have little interest to a modern collector, except as an example of the type of fake.