The reverse of this coin shows a number of striking oddities: strangely deformed and carelessly placed letters, isolated letter Λ to the left of the goat, non-anatomical representation of the goat’s hooves and of the connection of the horns to its head, a peculiar countermark depicting some animal with unusually strong legs (bull or canine?). These oddities may indicate a modern counterfeit, but the ancient origin of the coin cannot be ruled out for the following two reasons:

1. Hundreds of genuine Kelenderis coins can easily be found on the internet and in printed publications, and a potential counterfeiter would have to work with some model. Even if this model had a poorly or incompletely preserved inscription, and even if the counterfeiter did not know Greek letters, he/she could at least place them in a row and not distribute them so strangely irregularly and, moreover, modify the letters K and E them so clumsily and noticeably.

2. The obverse, unlike the reverse, shows no suspicious anomalies, but resembles a mintage from a very worn and corroded die. It would be very strange if someone had gone to the trouble of replicating something so unattractive. If, however, the obverse was merely a copy of a genuine coin struck from a worn obverse die that had been easily obtained by some modern technology, then the counterfeiter could use the same technology for the reverse and thus avoid those striking oddities stated above.

It is interesting that the Aspendos stater shown above (10.67 g, 22 mm), which could belong to Tekin’s Series 2 (Tekin 1997), also bears the same countermark. Given the identical countermark and the strange style of both coins, either both are modern counterfeits or both have ancient origins. In the latter case, given their style, they would probably be ancient counterfeits, not imitations. The countermark in this case could also be the work of the ancient counterfeiter who wanted to create the impression that the coins had been validated by some official authority. However, this would mean that the counterfeiting workshop was producing coins from two different mints.

Whether these are modern or ancient forgeries, the model was probably one of Types 3.7, 3.8 and 3.9.