Genuine Greek Pantikapaion/Pan Or Fake?

to the Community!

Thank you Sap, for the explanation. I thought it might have been repatinated, and it's good to hear a 2nd opinion back that up.

Any idea why there are tabs on either end that look like they've been snipped?

@hyper, first welcome to CCF. Second, while I agree with @sap, I wonder if you might be able to add a picture of the edge of this coin to the thread. The surfaces are awfully porous but I suppose that the sprue indicates that these were cast and may show a parting line.

I don't have a photo of the edge handy, but they are rounded without any casting line.

Pantikapaion (now Kerch) is indeed (just barely) on the Crimea side of the strait rather than in mainland Russia. Occupied (with the rest of Crimea) in 2014, though, so not quite an active warzone the way most of the rest of occupied Ukraine is (though reportedly it's starting to become one).

Their coins already felt like some of the most common ancients in Moscow coin markets back in 2013; even more so after the 2014 annexation, when (I'm guessing) a lot of newly uncovered examples turned up from Russian diggers, and suddenly everyone had a bucket full of Pantikapaion bronzes. They seemed almost more common than LRBs sometimes.

I don't see anything obviously wrong with your coin; they have those sprue-like bits sometimes, and plausibly it's just that the flans were cast, but of course it's not impossible that it's just a cast fake. I'd call that unlikely, though, given how common they are.
Kwinto has an immense collection of Pantikapaion coins. There are many more examples online.