http://cgi.ebay.com/RUSSIA-CATHERINE-II-Co...1QQcmdZViewItem

Edit: corrected link

Hi Igor. The link didn't work for me. This one appears to be better:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=180194781234

Steve

And I agree it doesn't look right. Undercoin letters and numbers are crude enough to warrant a fake flag in my opinion.

Steve

Igor, by "funny looking" do you mean "unusual" or "fake"?

I'm no expert in the various overstriking programs, but I doubt this thing is real.

The more I look at it, the more my doubt grows.

I agree it has a less than authentic look to it.

but isnt this an awfully obscure (and not very attractive) rarity, for someone to go to the trouble of reproducing as a counterfeit?

Not at all. Paul's 2K overstrikes of Catherine's 4K Ciphers start at a couple of hundred dollars and often show little undercoin. Such a spectacularly visible undercoin like this would likely push value to closer to $1000. It may be well worth counterfeiting.

Steve

I was thinking fake as well.
And I agree with Steve, they are worth making with such great undercoin details.

$261.50 Caveat emptor.

The high bidder, "russianrubels", seems to be a frequent buyer of Russian numismatic items.

Hopefully, he/she will one day stumble onto this forum and take part in the discussions here.

I am not quite too sure what to say on this. On first glance it looks like it has the characteristics of an overstrike but as mentioned, the elements look unusually crude. I cannot quite tell if this is due to the pressure from the overstrike and corrosion or it's just a counterfeit. There seems to be another layer underneath but the details are quite blur to make any proper analysis.

I am guessing it's a matter of time that there are more overstruck counterfeits popping up - a 1793/96 4 kopek over 2 kopek is actually quite scarce compared to a 1793/1796 10 kopek over 5 kopek. Basok has an example for both of them and price difference is usually at least twice as much from what I have seen, and even better depending on the underlying image and overall condition.

It's not just that the letters are crude; there is no real flattening at all of the supposed undercoin letters or date; they're just too well defined. It's as if the overstriking die was missing whole areas that never touched the undercoin. Alex Basok passed around a similar piece at the 2000 RNS meeting I attended in New York. In that case it was a 10K-->5K fake. The supposed Cipher showed an extremely rare EM mintmark below the 1796 date. It was a fake though. Interestingly that coin, and this one, showed no broadening of the flan (normal for an overstrike), suspiciously crisp undercoin letters, and a raised rim. Could be from the same people (albeit 7 years later). I don't have an image with me of the 2000 fake (I'm in England) but it's in one of the JRNS's. I can post the image when I get back if anyone's interested, or perhaps somebody has else one.

Steve

See, this is where I struggle to understand or even attempt a proper explaination of how overstrikes should appear. Perhaps a better understanding of how overstriking on uneven planchets with uneven striking, pressure etc might give a better overview but this is beyond my understanding.

Areas that should be flattened aren't necessarily flattened in quite a fair bit of examples that I have seen such as this example that I have:

(the latter words of "4 kopeks" should be very visible)

However though, anything that has high value is prone to counterfeits so I guess it's a matter of time when an explosion of them will start popping up.

Speaking of which, I believe this is a counterfeit:


Just kept it for the oddity sake.

GX, I dont believe your 1788 MM 5K overstruck is counterfeit. It looks like a nice overstrike, just cleaned or polished at one time.

Gx, what do you see about the coin that makes you doubt its authenticity?

There are lots of people here who know more than I do about copper overstrikes but, like squirrel, I don't see anything in the picture you've shown that looks suspicious.