Irish King George II counterfeit - Next to Fugio Field

BlackX

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Worked the Fugio Field for a while tonight with nothing to show for it but a 1942 wheat. Had a theory that I tried at the end of the evening--a straight line when walking between two points that show on the old maps. Didn't seem to be working much until I crossed the road and, after a call from the GF, said I'd dig 3 more holes. Dug one. Nail. Next signal sounded really nice but was bouncing around the screen a lot. Showed as about 8". Started digging. It was one of those that, at least when you have an Explorer, you have to trust that what you heard was good and just keep on digging... Pulled the plug and couldn't hear a thing with the probe at about 5", dug another 3", thought I could hear something faint, dug another 2" and it was starting to sound good, dug another inch or so and it was sounding really good!, then popped out a large copper. Since the oldest coin I've found on this side of the road was the seated dime I found a few weeks ago, I thought it would be an early American large cent but, with a little spit, toothbrush, and flashlight, looked like an old British coin. Got home and water and toothbrush showed up a "II". Checked the Notre Dame site and the bottom of the bust and the thickness of the neck doesn't match at all. Nor the weight and diameter. This one measures 7.9g and 26.9mm, which is distinctly less than theirs, so I presume is one of the counterfeits. How many counterfeit variations of the KG II were there?

080812_KGII_cmbtri1_obverse.jpg

080812_KGII_cmbtri1_reverse.jpg

After one round of H2O2 and cotton swab cleaning:

080812_KGII_cmbtri1_obverse_b.jpg

_Rich_
 

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treasurefiend

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Re: KG II counterfeit? Next to Fugio Field

Sweet!!! :thumbsup:
 

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BlackX

BlackX

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Re: KG II counterfeit? Next to Fugio Field

Thanks, TF.

I've seen you're enjoying that SE already. Wait until it really starts to kick in! :)
 

Iron Patch

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

Nice oldie.

There is no known number for counterfeits, only an amount that have been recorded, info. I can not provide.
 

Don in SJ

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

I believe your coin is a King George II IRISH Halfpenny, the bust is more like that. With that weight, even accounting for wear I believe it is a counterfeit, but not 100% sure.

http://www.irishcoinage.com/MILLED.HTM I did not examine closely the differences, but here is the site for you to look and compare.

For general Info I have seen figures of around 40% of KGII coppers, being counterfeit, which greatly later with the KGIII coppers. There is a group of collectors that are grouping the counterfeits by "family" and they have done a lot of research on the different counterfeits, and I believe detectorists can be a big help in contributing to the research. Anybody really interested in learning more, contact me by PM and I will suggest a group to join or at minimum, sign up for their forum.

Don
 

TORRERO

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

Don in SJ said:
I believe your coin is a King George II IRISH Halfpenny, the bust is more like that. With that weight, even accounting for wear I believe it is a counterfeit, but not 100% sure.

http://www.irishcoinage.com/MILLED.HTM I did not examine closely the differences, but here is the site for you to look and compare.

For general Info I have seen figures of around 40% of KGII coppers, being counterfeit, which greatly later with the KGIII coppers. There is a group of collectors that are grouping the counterfeits by "family" and they have done a lot of research on the different counterfeits, and I believe detectorists can be a big help in contributing to the research. Anybody really interested in learning more, contact me by PM and I will suggest a group to join or at minimum, sign up for their forum.

Don

Something I think that gets overlooked by a lot of people when we are treasure hunting or relic hunting
is that when we dig things from the "Colonial" era.... it means just that...
The king of England or Spain or Portugal or France .....
they owned many different "colonies" around the known world at that time...
Each one minted their own coins for their own "Colony" but the coins had the kings profile and Latin
inscription just like the home coins, so that the colonists would know who was still boss...
But these coins did not always look identical to the home country coins, just similar...
So if your looking for a coin in a coinbook for England and its not there...
it might be a "colonial" coin made in a Kings province or Colony.... FROM ANYWHERE

My 2 cents worth...
Richard
 

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BlackX

BlackX

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

Don in SJ said:
I believe your coin is a King George II IRISH Halfpenny, the bust is more like that. With that weight, even accounting for wear I believe it is a counterfeit, but not 100% sure.

Thanks, Don! It sure does match the Irish halfpenny. And I can quite trying to turn the harp into Brittania. :) I can now see the harp, particularly the top of it.

http://www.irishcoinage.com/MILLED.HTM I did not examine closely the differences, but here is the site for you to look and compare.

It doesn't match any of those dates exactly. I'm still trying to figure out if it's a counterfeit of the 1736, 1741, or 1753.

...There is a group of collectors that are grouping the counterfeits by "family" and they have done a lot of research on the different counterfeits, and I believe detectorists can be a big help in contributing to the research. Anybody really interested in learning more, contact me by PM and I will suggest a group to join or at minimum, sign up for their forum.

Sounds pretty cool. I'm particularly interested in the forum, since all I'd be able to provide is images of possible counterfeits in case it's a variation they haven't seen before or are recording instances of them.

Now that the sun is finally out again, here's some photos--as opposed to scans--of it (w/ the last H2O2 bath), as well as the Wm. III from last week.

080811_Wm-III_Irish-KGII_obverse.jpg

080811_Wm-III_Irish-KGII_reverse.jpg

_Rich_
 

CRUSADER

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

TORRERO said:
Don in SJ said:
I believe your coin is a King George II IRISH Halfpenny, the bust is more like that. With that weight, even accounting for wear I believe it is a counterfeit, but not 100% sure.

http://www.irishcoinage.com/MILLED.HTM I did not examine closely the differences, but here is the site for you to look and compare.

For general Info I have seen figures of around 40% of KGII coppers, being counterfeit, which greatly later with the KGIII coppers. There is a group of collectors that are grouping the counterfeits by "family" and they have done a lot of research on the different counterfeits, and I believe detectorists can be a big help in contributing to the research. Anybody really interested in learning more, contact me by PM and I will suggest a group to join or at minimum, sign up for their forum.

Don

Something I think that gets overlooked by a lot of people when we are treasure hunting or relic hunting
is that when we dig things from the "Colonial" era.... it means just that...
The king of England or Spain or Portugal or France .....
they owned many different "colonies" around the known world at that time...
Each one minted their own coins for their own "Colony" but the coins had the kings profile and Latin
inscription just like the home coins, so that the colonists would know who was still boss...
But these coins did not always look identical to the home country coins, just similar...
So if your looking for a coin in a coinbook for England and its not there...
it might be a "colonial" coin made in a Kings province or Colony.... FROM ANYWHERE

My 2 cents worth...
Richard

Richard, did you just make all that up? People (crooks) in England & the US produced counterfiets to defraud the Government & individuals to make money for themselves. Been happening since Roman times & before.
 

TORRERO

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

Richard, did you just make all that up? People (crooks) in England & the US produced counterfeits to defraud the Government & individuals to make money for themselves. Been happening since Roman times & before.

Why would you think that ?
When I lived in Spain, we dug a lot of coins that were minted..... hhmmm in Spain...
but the books we looked at for reference shows hundreds of coins that we never found that were obviously
in circulation and minted by the Crown for the Crown...
If you dig a an 8 real from Pettossi in South America will it look the same as an 8 real from Mexico ?
they may look similar but not exactly the same, but they were all authorized by the Spanish Crown as
real currency, there may be some counterfeit coins out there, no doubt there are....
but if there were so many counterfeit copper coins out there then why don't we dig tons of American
counterfeit copper coins...

Copper coins were made by the millions and not worth all that much for buying power, counterfeiting has to
assume that to make one coin good enough to pass off as real money you must be able to buy some significant
with that coin.... to make it worth while...
to go to jail for 10 years for making a coin that might buy you a piece of candy does not make sense...
and to make them in vast quantities entails knowledge and skill and resources that few in Colonial America
had at that time... large amounts of copper, made into a form to mint coins, dies that could stamp the coins
that then could be passed off as real....
we are stretching ourselves here....

Personally I would tend to believe that these are Colonial variates that may or may not be cataloged somewhere
that you just have not found...
So many coins came over from all over during that period that countless varieties have turned up in just about every imaginable place... from just about every major country in the known world at that time..
just because a coin looks different than the last one you dug, does not mean that its counterfeit...

If you ran a store here and someone presented you with something you did not recognize and told you it was good
money... and that you should take it for your product or service... you would not take it for sure...
If you can see a difference in a coin after its been in the ground for 200 or 300 years...
don't you think the people who used it could have told the difference...

Its hard for me to believe that so much of these were counterfeit and that everyone was making them...
 

Don in SJ

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

Richard, I suggest you look and read several of the sections on the Notre Dame coin website.

http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/CtfBrit.intro.html

And the main site home page is this: http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinContents/TitlePage.html

And for good measure it is interesting to view this site:
http://www.geocities.com/copperclem/Counterfeits_page1.html

The coin in this post is a KGII Irish Halfpenny, there is no doubt it is a KGII Irish Halfpenny and by the weight given, most likely a counterfeit.

Don
 

TORRERO

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Re: King George II (counterfeit?) - Next to Fugio Field

Don in SJ said:
Richard, I suggest you look and read several of the sections on the Notre Dame coin website.

http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/CtfBrit.intro.html

And the main site home page is this: http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinContents/TitlePage.html

And for good measure it is interesting to view this site:
http://www.geocities.com/copperclem/Counterfeits_page1.html

The coin in this post is a KGII Irish Halfpenny, there is no doubt it is a KGII Irish Halfpenny and by the weight given, most likely a counterfeit.

Don

Yum Yum....
Eat my words...
ha ha ha

Oh well..
 

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