My Athens Tetradrachm

There is a huge collector demand for these and as a result there is always someone out there, who is prepared to fake them in good quality silver. There are lots of very deceiving fakes of this type around.

I would love to get an XRF instrument on this one, looking for trace elements in the silver alloy. Same applies to the black stuff surrounding the design details.
Also needs a die comparison study.
Small flan doesn't bother me that much, weight OK.
Needs an independently verifiable provenance.

Edge suggests flan was hot, and high silver alloy in the paste range, when pressed with a die.

Just my opinions from what I see. I stand to be corrected.
From these pictures, I am not prepared to confirm genuine or fake. Some work needs to be done first.

The Calgary Coins website has a very good on line learning reference on how confirm or expose fakes.

It is a pi-style owl tetradrachm dating 355-350 .It is easy to see at the position of the ethnicon : the A of ΑΘΕ is positioned below the head, its left diagonal wedged in the notch where the head meats the body. This creates a visual difference with earlier tetradrachms .
A second difference is the unusual technique of the planchet .this type of folded ans sanswiched flan proves to be characteristic of apparently every pi-style tetradrachm.
On the reverse , the pi on the helmet is typical ( here pi-style II , I think) and the point right at the ear above the earring . albert