A fake Greek coin may have been made from real ancient metal. Here is how scientists spotted it

Can someone wonder that even a small bronze coin can raise a big question. Is it really ancient, or was it made much later to look that way?

In 2017, a coin from the Pember collection was brought to the British Museum to be compared with known examples before a sale. The design looked familiar, but some details didn’t sit right next to other examples. The check grew into an investigation of a group of coins linked to Ithaca, the Greek island tied to the hero Odysseus.

What came out of it was unusual. The coins suspected of being forgeries may have been made from metal melted down from genuine ancient objects.


The researchers described the first investigation in The Numismatic Chronicle. A later paper in Archaeometry looked at the metal composition of six coins and considered whether ancient material had been reused to make a counterfeit.

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The design looked right but some details did not

The coins belong to a type linked to Ithaca and dated by the researchers to roughly 300–191 BC.

Looking odd was not the whole problem. The researchers found two variants of the design. One had a fuller Greek inscription and a monogram beside the bird. The other had a shorter inscription and no monogram.

The second group was also strikingly consistent in how the designs had been struck, which the researchers considered unusual for coins from an ancient mint. Measurements and the alignment of the designs added to the doubt.

There was a further wrinkle. Similar examples were already in the British Museum’s collection. So this wasn’t about one coin offered for sale. The researchers had to look at the collection’s history as well as the objects.

The metal offered another clue

The eye can catch obvious inconsistencies, but it can’t always say when a coin was made. Scientific analysis helps there.

In the follow-up study in Archaeometry, Laura Perucchetti and Amelia Dowler analysed six coins with X-ray fluorescence equipment. The technique measures which elements are present in a material, so researchers can compare the makeup of different objects.

They found chemical differences between the two groups. That backed the suspicion that one variant hadn’t been made the same way as the genuine Hellenistic coins.

The researchers then proposed an explanation. A skilled counterfeiter may have melted down more common ancient coins or other old metal objects and used the material to make new pieces. If so, the metal could have an ancient history even though the coin’s design was not ancient at all.

That is a hypothesis about how the suspected fakes were made. It is not a record of a known forger at work, and the study doesn’t name who made them.

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Why use real ancient metal?

The idea points to a problem for the antiquities market. A fake need not be made of modern material. Someone who knew both metalworking and ancient coin designs could try to copy the look and the composition of an older object.

That wouldn’t automatically survive scientific examination. Metal is only one part of authentication. Researchers also consider weighing the style of the design, any manufacturing marks, measurements, historical records and provenance, which is the documented history of ownership.

In this case, the researchers put several strands together: the unusual lettering, the repeated alignment, the measurements and the chemical differences. None of them is a stand alone test that can authenticate every ancient coin.

The study also says that collection records matter too. A coin’s history can show when it first appeared and whether its supposed age fits the paperwork.

A museum collection can hold many questions, not just answers

The British Museum inquiry began with a coin a collector wanted compared with known examples. Then it widened to coins already held in a major public collection.

Museums don’t stop researching an object once it goes into storage or display. A catalogue entry often reflects the best knowledge available at one moment, and later on comparisons or new methods can lead specialists to rethink about it.

The money at stake is real, though no sale price has been established. Collectors buy ancient coins for their historical value, rare appearance and its authenticity, and a misidentified object can affect its standing on the market. The published research gives no verified valuation for these coins, so no figure can responsibly be attached to them.

There is also a less obvious cost to counterfeiting. When fakes circulate, researchers and collectors spend time and money distinguishing them from genuine objects. And if a real ancient coin is melted down to make a fake, in this process one historical object is destroyed to create another whose story is misleading.

The suspected Ithaca coins are small pieces of bronze, yet questioning them took more than a look at the image of Odysseus. It took historical records, close comparison and chemical analysis.

The most unusual possibility is that a fake coin could hold genuinely ancient metal. The age of the material is not necessarily the age of the object.