Plated Iron Age Coins: Official Issues or Contemporary Forgeries

This paper discusses different explanations that have been proposed to account for the existence of plated Iron Age coins, some of which appear to have been struck from the dies used to produce solid metal coins. Evidence occasionally preserved on plated coins proves that at least some of them were struck from dies which had been hubbed from solid metal coins, and it is these solid metal coins that were struck from the dies which the plated coins appear to have been produced from. It is argued that this evidence demonstrates that plated Iron Age coins are merely contemporary forgeries.