Is This 1862 Coin Fake?

If you should unexpectedly come up with a couple of thousand brides, I'm your man

 

Hi AF,
Thanks I'll remember. I have 5 coming up really 6 but one is being married on the beach and in bare feet.
greg

 

I got a bag full of coins at a thrift several years ago. Some local subway tokens in it more than paid for the bag, and there were some coins interesting to me but of no particular value. There was also this:



I asked about it on the eBay coin board and here's the response:

agathetyche May 21/08


Actually, this is an interesting coin. It is a sestertius from the later years of Geta, son of Severus. Obverse legend P SEPTIMIUS GETA PIVS AVG BRIT, bearded laureate head. Reverse probably FORT RED TR P III COS II PP SC, Fortune seated left. Reference RIC (Roman Imperial Coinage) 168a, struck 211 AD. Geta is shown bearded, like his father. The next year Geta got the chop from his older brother Caracalla, so these bearded portrait pieces weren't struck for very long.

Geta Æ Sestertius. 211 AD. P SEPTIMIVS GETA PIVS AVG BRIT, laureate head right / FORT RED TR P III COS II P P, SC below, Fortuna seated left, holding rudder & cornucopiae, wheel under seat. Cohen 52.

So this coin was 1000 years old when Magna Carta was signed.

 

It's the wonder of the history that makes coin collectors. There are not many coin dealers who do not feel a little or even a lot of that and it's the lack of the magic that makes pretty well every 'collectable' coin made in the last 50 years a commodity with less soul than a bucket of coal. At least the coal has the wonder of its hundreds of millions years in formation to think about.

I'd rather have that beaten up old Roman coin than a bucket of modern stuff, if it's for keeping, not trading. The same goes for a handful of any reasonably old, reasonably common coins. None of them are free from some connection with history.
Spirit's original Belgian coin and that Ancient Roman example are two of a kind, history in your hand.