Both coins appear to be genuine - the designs including the fonts all fall within anticipated ranges for dies that were punched individually. These dies were NOT HUBBED so variation is the rule not the exception.
Spacings and punches used do vary. I have never located a complete die sequence and I have not even found data on how many dies were used.
In my collection of counterfeits and forgeries, I do have two different forgeries of this date that I consider to be extremely well made. These are strikes in silver and they are troubling. However, the coins in this thread are still superior in appearance. I am not aware of any forger that has succeeded in doing better - at least not yet.
When I worked for
ebay, the 1815 Parma was a forgery we saw very often. Most were routine junk made from transfer impressions of one sort or another. But we got a few that were really well made. This coin was similar to the 1849 Gothic Crown of Britain which was also very well forged.
I would estimate almost 1 coin per month fell into a "better than normal category" so that I needed to resort to punch studies. Because of that I developed my own die study of genuine examples
which I will not publish. There is a range of variation typical of dies which were made following a very tight pattern but for which punches were set individually.
The Parma 5L dies are easier to type and sequence than are the Overton 50 cent coins, in my opinion. So anyone looking for a challenge should try to make their own die sequence for this date.
For authentication I focused on broken or chipped element punches. As a cursory look at these coins will demonstrate - many of the die punches (letters and numbers) were chipped. There are numerous alpha-numeric characters which were set more than once. There are also many variations in spacing and alignment by which individual dies can be identified as different.
Here is a picture of 9 dates as seen on different coins. Remember first you need to decide if the 4 numbers were to be placed on a line or an arc. If they follow a line the center lines of each number will be parallel and they will not point to the center of the coin. Along an arc the center line of each number should follow a radial crossing the coin center. The final element of alignment is center to center distance. In the 9 examples that follow you can see alignment (all three components) is NOT THE SAME. Or is it?
But by focusing on different broken letter and number combinations, it is possible to distinguish the dies with some accuracy.
Once that is done, there will be some elements that appear on every genuine example. These tells are largely (but not exclusively) based on broken punches. So by using this die list I believe it is possible to isolate genuine from forged coins in seconds. Unless you run into a new genuine die that breaks the pattern (possible but very rare as long as you have 20-30 die pairss identified).
Of course as forgers improve their techniques of making dies from coins accurately they may eventually get it correct. However, that date has not yet arrived as far as I am concerned.
A low 5 is actually seen on many different dies that are genuine. Some are actually low others (straight line alignment) only appear low.
I re-read this and I confused myself so I edited it. I hope it is not confusing now, but if anyone has questions just ask.
One last point that I did not make the odd D punch with the notch on the inner side of the upright at the top of the letter is NOT a broken punch I am familiar with. I would opt for further study of that coin in particular. Other than the D it does look genuine.
Posted 02/12/2017 04:23 am
