Black Sea Hoard dies

The American Numismatic Society hosted a seminar on Counterfeits: the Threat to Collecting and Scholarship with presentations by David Hendin, Robert Hoge, and Ute Wartenberg.

For me the most exciting part was inspecting dies from the group of counterfeits known as the “Black Sea Hoard.” In his book Counterfeit Studios and Their Coins Ilya Prokopov describes this hoard as the work of “Studio ‘Varna-1’”. The dies are said to be the work of a single master engraver. Coins produced by these dies were sold openly in museums as replicas. They were also being sold as genuine to collectors.

These dies represent the mints of Apollonia Pontika, Mesembria, Istros, and Chersonesos. The Chersonesos dies troubled me because they were unfamiliar. I recognize the style of the Varna-1 engraver's work on facing head coins. The Chersonesos dies are by the same sculptor. My inability to recognize them proves my understanding of that style of the artist's facing head fakes is overconfidence. I am not sure I would recognize fake Chersonesos coins without carefully consulting a scarce pamphlet-book Modern Forgeries of Greek and Roman Coins by Dimitrov, Prokopov, and Kolev.