Modern Forgeries:
Alexander the Great
Fakes - Part 5

Carl Wilhelm Becker, a German who worked in the early 19th century, is history's most notorious ancient coin counterfeiter, a collector who started making fakes after having gotten stuck with one himself, eventually sticking the seller who stuck him. Becker also fooled many of the world's most prominent museums. Becker hand engraved and hand struck his pieces, as was the practice in ancient times. He then artificially aged them by placing them in a box filled with metal filings and attaching the box to the axle of his carriage.

The above piece is a later lead restrike of a Becker forgery, likely made from Becker dies, which some people regard as a replica rather than a forgery since it's an off-metal copy, though major auction houses have sold these as forgeries. The lead-tin alloy used for these pieces may have been "type metal," an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony used in Linotype printing machines.

It's not clear when the above and other lead Beckers were struck. Some are said to have been struck by Becker himself near the end of his life in 1830, some by his wife and new husband shortly afterward, some later in the 19th century, and some as late as 1980. The seller of the above piece said it was part of a set of more than 300 Becker restrikes he bought in Europe, with most of them identified with handwriting that matched the handwriting on the Becker restrikes that the American Numismatic Society acquired before 1930. It appears to have been struck rather than cast or pressed, with die slippage from a hammer strike evident above Zeus' head that not visible on the specimen illustrated in Hill, luster from striking most visible on the obverse beneath Herakles' head around 7 o'clock, and no evidence of casting.

The most complete reference about Becker is George F. Hill's 1924 book Becker the Counterfeiter, illustrating 360 examples of his work. You can find an abstract of the book at the Web site of the Celator.

This is one of many hundreds of Bulgarian forgeries sold on eBay by a seller from Plovdiv, Bulgaria. She claims she's not a numismatist and cannot guarantee the authenticity of what she sells. She sells only Bulgarian forgeries. The coins usually sell for slightly more than what replicas typically sell for but far below authentic coins, with many bidders no doubt buying them as examples of Bularian forgery. Sometimes though the hammer price approaches the value of an authentic coin when two or more bidders are fooled.

As with the above piece, all of her copies are originally engraved pressed coins with characteristically flamboyant Bulgarian styling and of good silver when they copy silver coins.