For more than 20 years, children visiting the Israel Museum in Jerusalem during the winter festival of Hanukkah have had the opportunity to go home with an “ancient” coin. Struck by the kids on a small mint in the museum’s Youth Wing, the souvenir is an exact, albeit one-faced, replica of an ancient coin.Maybe so.
Perhaps too exact, it turns out.
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Reproduction technology is now very good. Museums can produce children's toys, made by the children, which can be mistaken initially for genuine ancient artifacts. Apparently this one even fooled experts. I suspect that forgery technology is also this good, and probably considerably better. Just saying.
This also reminds me a little of that story involving the plastic toy dinosaur at an archaeological dig.
I noted the original story of Miss Halevy's coin discovery here last week. Cross-file under Numismatics (Not).
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