Posted 04/07/2009 8:30 pm
You have good reason to be confused. Both counterfeits and restrikes are coins that purport to be something that they're not. In the case of your Maria Theresa thaler, it claims to have been struck for the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the year 1780, when in all likelihiood it was not struck in Austria, and definitely was not struck in 1780.
The basic difference between a "fake or copy" and a "restrike" is the location the coin was made: a restrike is made in an official government mint, in full public view, with the knowledge of the government that controls that mint.
Counterfeit coins are made privately, and their existence is not publicised by the people that made them.
So, why were so many restrike MTTs made? They were popular Trade dollars in the Middle East, particularly among the local peoples of the Red Sea, in what is now Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. The colonial authorities that ruled these areas found they had difficulty persuading the locals to accept anything other than thalers; they found it easier to create restrikes of the thalers instead. And they had to be very good replicas of the original MTTs, otherwise the locals wouldn't accept them.
The basic difference between a "fake or copy" and a "restrike" is the location the coin was made: a restrike is made in an official government mint, in full public view, with the knowledge of the government that controls that mint.
Counterfeit coins are made privately, and their existence is not publicised by the people that made them.
So, why were so many restrike MTTs made? They were popular Trade dollars in the Middle East, particularly among the local peoples of the Red Sea, in what is now Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. The colonial authorities that ruled these areas found they had difficulty persuading the locals to accept anything other than thalers; they found it easier to create restrikes of the thalers instead. And they had to be very good replicas of the original MTTs, otherwise the locals wouldn't accept them.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
