I have an interest in fraud that stretches from hypothetical exploits on the technological/psychological cusp back to con games run a very long time ago indeed. As a manifestation of this, for example, I collect ancient counterfeit coins (cf. http://www.emigh.org/numis/fourree). These were made from the dawn of coinage, generally by hand-engraving dies and striking a base metal (e.g. bronze) planchet that had been fused to a thin layer of noble metal (e.g. silver) foil. I like them for a lot of reasons: they are beautiful, eclectic, rare, and have the interesting property that whoever made them was risking his life, as all ancient cultures that issued coins practiced the death penalty for forgery.
I am especially excited about my latest addition:
What makes this coin so special? For starters, it's a pretty rare coin. It's from Mylasa, a city in ancient Caria (part of what is now Turkey) around 500BC. The style is really excellent. Some counterfeits look amateurish: this one was created by a skilled celator (die cutter) and looks like the real thing. The plating is intact: no ugly bronze patches showing through. It's really a beautiful coin. But what makes it especially interesting to me personally is its relationship to another coin in my collection:
This is a very similar coin -- each ancient coin is different because they were struck by hand, on hand-engraved dies -- but whereas the one I just got is a stater (about 9 grams, slightly less than an official issue because bronze is not as dense as silver), this one is a hekte or sixth stater at about 1.5 grams. It's very small. But it's the same series as the stater -- and also a really beautiful example. It's unusual to have this kind of pairing among counterfeits. I am very pleased with this -- I had picked up the hekte about a year ago and just happened to run across the stater serendipitously.
Just for fun, here's what a genuine (i.e. not counterfeit) stater from the same city and time -- though not exactly the same type -- looks like:
