Gold Plated Stater Cheriton Wheel Contemporary Counterfeit

Contemporary counterfeits of British Iron Age staters are well-documented but rarely discussed with precision. This piece belongs to the "Cheriton Wheel" type, a regional variant circulating in what is now Hampshire and the surrounding chalklands. Gold-plated bronze forgeries were produced during the same period as genuine issues — not later imitations, but contemporary frauds intended to pass in circulation. The plating technique involved wrapping or dipping a bronze flan, and most surviving examples have lost significant surface coverage.

The existence of such forgeries implies enough monetary volume and transactional regularity among Late Iron Age Britons to make counterfeiting worth the risk.