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The very first counterfeit coin
relayer
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Coin Forgeries Scammed Ancient Italy
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
April 19, 2006— Great forgeries might have scammed ancient Italy, according to Italian researchers who have detected an unknown, sophisticated chemical process used to counterfeit coins more than 2,000 years ago.
Giuseppe Giovannelli and Stefano Natali of the University of Rome and colleagues discovered the sophisticated forgery in what appeared to be a silver coin minted in Southern Italy in the third century B.C.
Showing a rider crowning a horse on one side and a man on a dolphin on the other, the coin was part of a hoard that was stored in a pottery vessel and unearthed in 1948 in the town of Parabita, near Lecce.
The fake was so well made that it went undetected for years despite several examinations.
In 2003, X-ray analysis performed during research on coins from the Greek colonies in Southern Italy revealed that the Parabita coin was really a lump of lead with a thin silver coating.
"Counterfeit lead coin did exist at that time, but this forgery appears to be unique. The technique does not belong to any established method for the fabrication of an artificially silvered coating in classical antiquity," Giovannelli told Discovery News.
Known ancient forgery techniques included a pyro-metallurgical process and various coloring treatments.
In the pyro-metallurgical procedure, forgers wrapped a thin silver foil around a metal lump and then heated it to fuse the foil on to the surface, so that the it would look like a genuinely minted silver coin.
Old forgers also chemically treated the surface of an alloy to give it a silver or golden appearance.
Analysis revealed that the microscopic structure of the Parabita coin was incompatible with these forgery techniques.
"We noticed a cauliflower-like microtexture, which can be obtained only by an electrochemical phenomenon," Giovannelli said.
The thin silver coating appeared to be obtained by a much more modern electroplating process, which was thought to be unknown to the metallurgists of the time.
"The forger knew that he could not attach silver to lead directly, thus he made a thin copper substrate over the lump of lead before covering it with the silver layer," co-author Stefano Natali told Discovery News.
The researchers recreated the procedure, which will be detailed in a future issue of the Journal of Applied Electrochemistry, by using only materials available at the time: copper acetate, silver chloride and urine.
The forgers would have made copper acetate by letting vinegar corrode copper, then they would have immersed the lump of lead in the compound.
Once the copper layer was created, they would have immersed the object in a silver solution obtained by dissolving silver chloride in urine.
The fakery would have worked well, according to Aldo Siciliano, director of the Department of Cultural Heritage at the University of Lecce.
"The people who used that coin believed it was genuine, otherwise they would have not stashed it. This is a very interesting discovery. It shows that coins can talk, becoming historical documents," Siciliano told Discovery News.
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If you hunt around, you'll find the article about a battery (found) used during that time... they thought it was some sort of weird wine container, until an engineer happened to see it on display.
I'd give you the world, just because...
Speak to me of loved ones, favorite places and things, loves lost and gained, tears shed for joy and sorrow, of when I see the sparkle in your eye ...
and the blackness when the dream dies, of lovers, fools, adventurers and kings while I sip my wine and contemplate the Chi.
You can learn something new every day!!!!
Thank you very much Relayer!
Hell, I don't need to exercise.....I get enough just pushing my luck.
My older son was just researching the "Baghdad Battery" for school. It definately could have electroplated the coin back then. Short write up on what the battery was/is:
Baghdad Battery
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Discoverer of 1919 Mercury Dime DDO - FS-101
Fantastic article! Thanks.
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