Hallo allemaal
Ik heb hier een eerste reactie van Richard Baker op de vraag of er barbaarse stukken bestaan met tegenmerken:
About the "Barbarous" imitations of Asses and Dupondii of Augustus (and some others), with Countermarks on them. First let me say that during the early part of the Julio-Claudian dynasty there were periodic "shortages" of AE coinage in various parts of Eastern Europe ( as well
as in Britain and Germany ). The shortage was compensated by an outpouring of "Barbarous" Imitations. Whether this was done with official sanction in some cases is still highly debateable. Some of the copies are quite good in both size and style. Others are undersized and
with blundered legends. It has been assumed that if the coins "weight" was close enough to the "official" mintage then it was "countermarked" to approve" it for general use. However, many of the undersized "Barbarous" Imitations not ony have blundered legends, but "blundered Countermarks" as well!?! To me this would indicate that the coin was
an out and out "Counterfeit"! There are also quite a few "Cast" Senatorial Asses of Augustus with the AVG Countermark on them. I haven't decided if these should be considered officially sanctioned issues, or another form of counterfeiting? One of my favorite type of coin to collect ( with or without Countermarks ), is "Imitative
Sestertii of Claudius. Some are very, very good in both the
portraiture and the Legends. Others have varying degrees of crudeness to the portrait and inscriptions. Some inscritions may be completely retrograde (backwards), while others have only certain letters backwards ( generally the "S" or "R" ). Some have inscriptions that have a few pseudo-letters combined with lines, dots, dashes and the like; total
gibberish. One type of Sestertius that I find lovely is that from the mint of Perinthus, in Thrace. There are portrait Sestertii from this mint of Claudius, Agrippina Jr., Brittanicus and a young adolescent Nero! The portrait style from this mint in my opinion is far superior artistically then the official issues from the Rome mint at the same time. Another interesting thing is that we do not know of any 'official" Rome issues in Sestertii for the last three persons I named above! Recently there have been a number of Brittanicus Sestertii
discovered; some with the lovely "Capricorn above a Globe and Rudder" Countermark!! An example of such a coin in VF to "about" EF for the obverse and "about" Fine+ for the reverse sold for $12,000 by CNG recently!!! I sure wish I could have afforded that one!!!
I hope ths letter answers a few of your questions. Feel free to write me with any others you may have.
Regards, Richard Baker
Ik hoop dat jullie een beetje het Engels beheersen, want ik heb momenteel geen tijd om dit alles te vertalen (mijn vriendin komt na een lang weekend terug naar huis en ik moet deze stal nog uitmesten

) Maar ik kom hier morgen op terug.
Greetz