Copper 1904 Indo-China Piastre with Reversed, Concave Lettering

I've done all the googling I can think of to find out why this coin exists, and I haven't found anything. Any ideas?



It's a copy of a 1904 Indo-China 5a.1 Piastre with the following specs:

Metal: 99.9% copper
Size: consistent 39.1mm (same as original silver coin)
Thickness: 2mm +/- .05mm (thinner than original)
Weight: 18.97g ( 8 grams lighter than original)
Design and lettering concave and reversed (like full brockage).

The pattern is very good -- I can't find any differences with my 1903 silver one, except that the edge thickness varies (visible in photos).

Thanks in advance for any help.

Chris

Looks like what is used to make counterfeit coins

Quote: WernerLooks like what is used to make counterfeit coins

Thanks for the idea.  I'd have thought copper would be too soft to strike a pattern. Are you just speculating or do you know that it can be done?

no offence, not speculating. i have posted earlier a piastre indo china coin on the forum that i have purchased and it ended up being a counterfeit. check it out..

None taken,  I will check out your post.

https://en.numista.com/forum/topic39156.html

Quote: WernerLooks like what is used to make counterfeit coins

This was also the first thing which came to my mind, but I couldn't get it working: dies do not come as a coin, but rather in two halves, and as chrismck says, copper is too soft to use as a die. In addition, the impressions in the metal show hardly any fine detail, so if you would manage to press a coin with this die, it would look very bad.

But I can't completely exclude that this is some intermediary product in producing fake coins. Pity that I'm not a falsifier myself, and therefor cannot tell at which stage such a thing would come into being.