Martin of Upper Hutt, New Zealand writes:

Collectors and members of the general public occasionally ask about ancient or mediaeval coins that they have discovered, and are either mystified that they cannot find them in any of their catalogues, or think they have stumbled upon something highly valuable, as the case may be.

Known at school as a keen collector, I was once shown pieces that purported to be Ancient Chinese knife coins, but they seemed oddly small and of a strange colour. I didn't have examples of the real thing at the time, but had a vague idea from my reading as to what they should have looked like. A couple of years later, a junk tray turned up what looked like a Roman Republican As of Agrippa; the size was about right, but the colour again was wrong, and the lettering looked too thin for the period. For six cents, I figured it was worth it as a curiosity, all the same!

It was only about fifteen years later, in the mid-1990s, that the mystery was solved. I was given a cardboard sheet containing what were described as "Authentic Replicas of Ancient Coins", made, as readers may have guessed by now, in Hong Kong. Because these items do occasionally turn up separated from the board for which they were originally produced, I propose to give a description both of the original board and the various items on it, so readers will know what they are if they are ever presented for identification. I shall describe only the "visible" side from the board display in cases where I don't have a duplicate of the item that I can turn over.

The board itself ... is dark blue and measures 223 x 200 mm. There is a decorative gold border (not shown in the illustration) and recessed holes for sixteen "authentic replicas", as described below. All of the items are in white metal, and appear to have been cast.

To read the complete article, see:
AUTHENTIC REPLICAS - FAKES(http://www.winsociety.org/library/replicas.html)
http://www.winsociety.org/library/authentic.jpg

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
MAN PAYS LAWYER WITH ANCIENT COIN(https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n48a28.html)