Paulo Rainerio Duce , Respublica Venuta

welcome to the forum (something doesn't look right with it)not sure if its real

Thank for the replies. I had another look at my coin, and the word 'venuta' in this picture is spelt 'veneta' on my coin. So it probably is a fake.

okay. it is 8 grams, 26mm in diameter, and about 1.3mm thick.
i'll try to take a picture of it to post.

Here is the pic of my coin, as you can see it is not silver.

This coin is definitely a counterfeit but VERY unlikely to be a contemporary issue. To back that assessment up a bit - I would submit a few rather well established facts.

Silver plate comes in several different "types". Determining just what type can be rather helpful when dating fakes. In addition the method of production will also limit the earliest date of a technology.

The earliest examples of silver plate were ancient Roman coins were thin silver foils were placed over copper and then struck. This created a bond that was more or less stable. These layers tend to peel off with time and corrosion. The techniques used did vary and Roman forgers were actually not again equalled until the 18th century in terms of their technical capabilities.

In the period this coin was issued - counterfeits should be cast copies. Molds were made from original coins or were pressed in clay from crudely carved positive "dies". Struck counterfeits of that era are very rare but they do exist. Base metal copies were often painted or dipped to resemble silver. Even mercury was used as a coating. Cast coins could also be made using a lower than standard silver content. Some forgers actually used platinum which was at the time considered to be a waste metal.

About 1770, an essentially World Wide revolution in technology occurred. Silver smiths in Sheffield England discovered that a sandwich of silver over copper could be made to fuse if plates were rolled together under high pressure. This made silverware available to the common man. Prior to that Sterling Silver flatware was a rich man's item. Counterfeiters adopted this technology very quickly and counterfeiting took off. They could make a stamped copy of any silver coin that looked good - because the outer plates were the CORRECT alloy. Chinese merchants started using chop punches to cut through Sheffield Plate. That is why there are so few coins before 1770 that appear with chops.

This Sheffield Plate technology was refined until thinner and thinner layers were used and cores of off metals in White colors were developed. That way the darker copper cores took longer to notice.

In 1837 or thereabouts a second technological innovation brought German Silver into being. GS is a mix of copper, nickel and zinc which looks quite like silver when the alloy is tweaked. Before this date zinc is NEVER found alloyed with nickel and copper because Zinc boils BEFORE the other metals melt. When heated together in an open crucible the zinc disappears. It was originally called "Spelter" or "Chimney Metal" precisely because it had to periodically be scraped out of the chimneys above smelter pots. Zinc was usually thrown away because alone it makes a VERY poor coin. To get the alloy to melt together you need a closed crucible to heat the metal components. That technology simply didn't exist in the 1820s. So GS fakes date from no earlier than 1837.

But what I see here looks to me like an electroplate not any of the earlier technologies that would have been used in the 1730s to the 1830s. The principles for electroplating were actually developed in the 1830s and early 1840s by Faraday. Therefore I would hazard to postulate that your coin has to be dated after 1840.

How much after? I don't know. But it may not be all that far. The die looks like a hand made thing - not a transfer die. The details do not match the original type. Impact transfer which copies the actual design of a coin onto a steel die is later than 1840 as is Spark erosion which also produces a good looking copy.

The key to dating this counterfeit is probably contained in the answer to the following question: How was the die made?

Can you see anything that makes you think it is a struck piece? What does the edge look like?

I can probably give you other clues from there.

Edge milling - once again there can be clues to age here if it can be studied against counterfeits of known age. Modern counterfeits are often pressed through a ring die to apply reeds. When this is done metal from the grooves is displaced toward the reed resulting in a ridge on both sides of the reed - like a plow would make. Are the raised sections close and evenly spaced? Are they split at the tops or tips? This would point to a date of 1950 or after. Very regular spaced reeds with OVERLAPED sections points to a rolled on edge which would be earlier in most cases. Can you see a design overlap on the edge? The third major type are hand applied reeds - made individually with a file. These are as a class the oldest because of the time needed to do a decent job. The more labor involved - the earlier the coin. That is a good rule of thumb for forgeries with the exception of the very recent Numismatic frauds.

However, the application of vertical reeds does point to a more recent period of time. Most reeds are applied by a collar die and they are part of the strike of the coin. They imply a three part press which is fairly new technology. So we need to determine if the edge "milling" you speak of was a feature of the original coin or simply something added by a modern forger who didn't know that. Period edge milling from the 18th century was always applied in a separate step and normally looks more like a series of widely spaced lines as opposed to closely spaced reeds.

The edges of real coins are barely mentioned by most experts - but they do hold a wealth of information. It is actually fortunate that counterfeiters did not know much about edges. They rarely got them right.

Does anyone know what the real edge looks like in this case?