There is a seller on eBay France named monneron. He has been listing some LRB's again after being at the center of a huge controversy...at least as big a controversy as one might expect in the small world that is ancient coin collecting. It was a little over 10 years ago and monneron was selling many LRB's on eBay. They looked odd and had a peculiar patina. Many people claimed that these where fakes. A few people thought that they were genuine, initially I thought it might be best to see them in hand before condemning all of them. Eventually I got many examples and posted before and after pictures that showed the coins were fine when cleaned and photographed with different lighting. I have a page about these coins -
http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/monneron/At the bottom of the page is a link to the topic on FORVM. This topic is a nice example of hubris, but there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance. More than a few people were insulted (some of them are "guests" in the topic, including my old account of vic9128), some posts were deleted, including mine that said it would be nice to see them in hand before condemning them based on a picture. After getting many examples, I had no doubt the coins were genuine. I even sent one for certification to David Sear, who agreed the coin was genuine. In 2006, there was an article in the
Celator about the chemical composition of some of these coins. In short, the coins tested had different alloys. Fakes would have been expected to have the same alloy, but genuine coins differ as they are made from different batches of metal, sometimes separated by years.
Some people, though, still think that these coins are fake. Ferrando's
L’atelier monétaire d’Arles, published in 2010, has many of these coins listed as fake.
The second picture below is the campgate that I had certified.
