File:Iron Age Coin, Silver western Unit (FindID 515599).jpg

English: A modern copy / forgery of an Iron Age Coin. The coin has been analysed by the Conservation Department at Birmingham Museums who have found it is made of a 100% tin - as this has not been alloyed with anything else - a modern 'copy' seems to be the only reasonable and therefore most likely explanation. As the findspot seems genuine its discovery cannot be fully explained

The coin has been shown to Ian Leins (Curator British Museum), Edward Besley (NGMW - Cardiff), Dr David Symons (Birmingham Museums) and Dr Philip de Jersey (formerly of Oxford Universities Celtic Coin Index - now Guernsey Museums). Sincere thanks are extended to all for their help and expertise.

Obverse: debased wreathed head facing right

Reverse: Horse advancing left - with wheel beneath - horses tail is branched with pellet within wheel in front

Ian Leins comments

The obverse seems to be derived from an East Anglian "British JB" / "Norfolk Wolf" stater with an "Apollo-wreath" type thing and the crude style and the cluster of pellet-in-ring motifs (at about 10/11 o'clock) look a lot like the obverse of British JB (see ABC 1396). The reverse is almost certainly based on the East Anglian Freckenham series. If you rotate it 90+ degrees anti-clockwise the tail makes sense as a Freckenham type horse (right facing). Furthermore I think part of the legs of this horse become visible. The 'other' horse, visible with the current orientation, also looks like an East Anglian style thing, as Philip and David have said, but it is clearly left facing which doesn't make any sense.

Dr de Jersey comments:

In terms of style the coin is a very curious mishmash of various regional motifs. The obverse could almost pass for a Durotrigan type, although the locks of hair are odd and the leaves of the wreath too circular. The pellet in ring at about 10 o'clock (as the photo is currently oriented) reminds me of some other type although I can't pin it down, possibly one of the many varieties of the Atrebatic obverse wreath.

On the reverse, the head of the horse, as David suggested, looks Icenian; the wheel is Atrebatic or conceivably Dobunnic; I would expect a bifurcated upper leg for one of the horse's rear legs, but to see both of them represented like this is strange, and the front legs seem to be represented in the same way, which is even more odd. The tail is just bizarre!

I think the very highest tin contents in potins are about 20-25%, and generally lower than that, so if this really is pure tin (which it is) or indeed anything much better than 30% tin it seems unlikely to be a 'real' Iron Age coin - unless made by somebody completely ignorant of what it should be made of, or for whatever reason it didn't matter what it was made of. Would be nice if it had some trace elements which might say one way or the other whether it's an ancient alloy. [However ...] given the anaysis it must be pretty conclusively a modern fake, I would think, with such a pure tin content. Very strange!