Gold Plated Stater Westerham South Contemporary Counterfeit

Contemporary counterfeits of the Westerham Stater are not forgeries in any modern criminal sense — they circulated alongside genuine issues and were almost certainly produced by local smiths aware of the official type. The gold-plated bronze construction suggests deliberate economic fraud within a society where coin weight and metal content were the basis of value, not stamped authority. Caesar's two invasions of Britain in 55 and 54 BC disrupted cross-channel trade networks that the Atrebates depended on, and metal shortages during this period likely created conditions where debased issues could gain traction.

The BMC Iron Age reference 33 places this squarely among documented plated specimens, distinguishing it from later scholarly uncertainty about whether some examples represent mint experiments rather than fraud.