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Portable Antiquities County Blogs - revived

An archive of the old PAS blogs that went missing.

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David Shotter is  Roman coin expert based in Lancashire who keeps a catlogue of all Roman coins found in the North West of England has upturned the ID on LVPL-F139A5. He has corrected the ID from a quadrans to a copper alloy core of a dopy of a denarius of Antoninus Pius (138-161) minted in Rome, 145-161 AD.

This shows how tricky coins can be, especially when people in the past were so good at making copies. The forgers did such a good job of this coin that it was mistaken for a legal copy. It should have had a surface plating of silver to complete the coin and allow it to pass as a denarius but at a much lower cost to the makers. However, Sam Moorhead says

There is no evidence of any plating on the piece. It might be that it was never in fact plated’. This added to the confusion with the ID as usually plated copies will retain some of the plating, giving the clue as to their identity.

central unit (23) danish research (8) denmark (1) essex (8) finds advisers (1) frome hoard (20) hampshire (1) isle of wight (1) labs (3) lancashire (1) lincolnshire (13) news (3) north east (9) north west (20) north yorkshire (1) northants (9) oxfordshire (2) piercebridge (3) roman coins (1) roman numismatics phd (7) somerset (14) sussex (3) technology (1) the marches (11) treasure (21) west midlands (6) wiltshire (1)