Monetary forgery. A short history of money counterfeitingThroughout history, the phenomenon of money counterfeiting has had a variable impact on the structure of monetary circulation, depending on the time period, within each state, region, or city. Forged coins distinguish themselves from official currency mainly through their designs, their weight and the quantity of noble metals in their composition. An additional point of difference is the way images are rendered on the coin’s faces (called obverse and reverse). The forged coins often display blurry representations on their faces, and the mark of emission and state are often erroneous, uneven, or missing altogether.
Often, ancient counterfeit coins made in clandestine mints featured flawed, just an attempt at copying letters on official monetary emissions. Throughout most historical periods, the value of a coin was dependant on the quantity of precious metals it contained. Usually in the case of a forged coin a thin sheet of precious metal, such as gold or silver, was applied to the surface of a piece of common metal, like copper, lead, iron, or tin. During Roman times there was another category of counterfeit coins – imitations moulded in copper. The method of forgery by moulding was used during the 2nd and 3rd century AD. There were records of denarii with cores of common metal, just covered with a layer of silver, in order to pass as a more valuable coin. Surprisingly, this method was also used by local official mints, to supply the market with different value coins that were missing. The Medieval period represents an age carefully analysed from a numismatic point of view, with a focus on monetary forgery in specialist literature. Counterfeit money was significant, circulating in large numbers, and thus becoming a part of the economy of certain regional or even state structures, in the last five-six decades. A relevant example of this phenomenon is the apparition of coins imitating Ottoman issues, which were found in archaeological in and around Bucharest. Starting from the fact that Ottoman currency had dominated the Wallachian and Moldavian monetary markets throughout the 18th century, according to written record of the time and numismatic records, we should not be surprised that these coins were a target for forgery, in many cases counterfeited on Romanian soil. The accuracy with which the counterfeit dies used in the striking process of imitation Ottoman coins were designed betray a knowing hand, probably people who had worked in the official mints of the Ottoman Empire’s capital, or access to official older die designs. Therefore society has always been faced with the issue of monetary forgery, regardless of historical period, firstly because of value manipulation, even practiced by authorities seeking to reduce costs by lowering the amount of precious metals used in coins or decreasing their weight (a system used by some states, where rulers considered mints an important and quick source of income), and secondly because of clandestine mints. This exhibition allows visitors to become acquainted with a valuable assortment from the “Maria and Dr. George Severeanu” collection, the Bucharest Municipality Museum’s numismatic collection, as well as from the “Mina Minovici”National Institute of Legal Medicine’s assemblage. Through the combining of illustrative materials and pieces from the aforementioned collections, the exhibition attempts to represent a short history of money counterfeiting, from Antiquity until 1947. The exhibition was organised by the Bucharest Municipality Museum in partnership with the “Mina Minovici” National Institute of Legal Medicine, and is on display at Suţu Palace (I.C. Brătianu Boulevard, nr. 2, sector 3) from the 12th of August 2015 until the 29th of May 2016. |