this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2025
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Historical Artifacts
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Just a community for everyone to share artifacts, reconstructions, or replicas for the historically-inclined to admire!
Generally, an artifact should be 100+ years old, but this is a flexible requirement if you find something rare and suitably linked to an era of history, not a strict rule. Anything over 100 is fair game regardless of rarity.
Generally speaking, ruins should go to [email protected]
Illustrations of the past should go to [email protected]
Photos of the past should go to [email protected]
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Sometimes i curious about ancient money, do people back then create counterfeit coins/money like gold swapped with brass or something ?
Yes! They absolutely did. And they were wildly creative about it.
Some knock-offs were semi-genuine. For example, many cities minted their own version of legitimate coins, like the wildly successful Athenian Owl. They look a little weird, but they aren't strictly counterfeit because they contained the equivalent silver content. There was no intent to deceive, but there was a desire to show that coins from your city were as good as the ones accepted in international trade.
I have one that was minted in Egypt in ancient times and it just looks a little funky. If you put it next to a real one, you can see obvious differences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetradrachm
Some were straight up fakes. For example, pretty much what you said. It could be a convincing looking bronze core with a light coat of silver.
To make things a bit more murky, even officially minted coins may have been debased in times of economic hardship.
A good place to start down this rabbit hole is the term "fourree" https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=Fourree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourr%C3%A9e
Modern fakes are a whole 'nother story.
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