Gold Plated Stater Freckenham Crescents Moon Faces / Freckenham Moon Face Contemporary Counterfeit

Freckenham-type staters are among the better-documented issues of the Iceni, struck in what is now Suffolk during the decades immediately preceding the Roman conquest. This piece is a contemporary counterfeit — gold-plated bronze produced to deceive in circulation, not a modern fake. Such plated forgeries were not uncommon in Iron Age Britain; the practice of fourrée production existed here as it did in the Roman world, and some examples may have been tolerated or even issued semi-officially during periods of metal stress.

The core is bronze beneath a gold wash thin enough that wear exposes it readily.