Gold Plated Stater - Eisu Eisu Tree Contemporary Counterfeit

The Dobunni occupied a territory roughly corresponding to the modern Cotswolds and Severn Valley, and their coinage is among the better-documented of British Celtic series. The "Eisu" inscription identifies a ruler whose name appears across a small cluster of issues, though his precise political relationship to neighboring Dobunnic rulers like Bodvoc and Corio remains unresolved. Contemporary counterfeits of this type — gold-plated bronze cores — circulated alongside genuine issues and were not necessarily the work of criminal actors; in a pre-Roman British economy without centralized enforcement, plated coins sometimes entered circulation through trade networks without detection.

The plating on surviving examples varies considerably in adhesion and coverage, which affects how much bronze core is now exposed after two millennia of soil contact.