On 5/21/2010 7:37 PM, Eric Babula wrote:
Anyway I found a bunch of RCC tokens in my desk draw the other
day. From 2002 through 2004
I can find very little info on the net about their popularity. Are

I don't think these have much market value, and you don't see them for
sale at all on eBay, or hardly at all. I followed only the first such
token. The process of choosing it was fairly schizoid. I have one of
these as a curiosity, and here's what I have at my site about it (long):

RCC 2002 bronze token (32.1g, 40mm).

This odd-looking token, consisting of bronze with an antique brass
finish, was made for rec.collecting.coins (RCC), a Usenet discussion
group about coins, with this being the group's first such token. It was
made by Quality Challenge Coins, which produced 121 pieces of this type,
and the project was spearheaded by George V. Huse Jr., a participant in
the discussion group. The circumstances behind the minting of this
token, which I witnessed firsthand, present an interesting example of
the issue of Internet misinformation.

Unlike the vast majority of other medals and tokens inspired by ancient
Athenian Owl coins, this piece isn't based on the famous Classical Owls
of the fifth century BC but the less important New Style Owls of the
second and first centuries BC. However, as opposed to the actual ancient
coins, Athena is facing left on this token rather than right because
Huse was led to believe that if this copy had been made with a
right-facing Athena it might be regarded as a forgery or might be
modified and sold as an authentic ancient coin. This is despite the fact
that this token is considerably larger and heavier than ancient coins of
this type, that it's made of a copper alloy whereas the ancient
tetradrachms were made of silver (ancient bronzes of this type exist but
they're even smaller and are seen far less), that it was manufactured
with a modern press and has a perfectly round shape, flat fields, and
uniform rims and other design elements as opposed to the irregularity of
ancient hand-struck coins, and that it features modern Latin lettering
and Arabic numbering, which no ancient Greek coins had because such
lettering and numbering hadn't yet come into existence.

What's more, the model used for this token wasn't a genuine New Style
Owl because some RCC participants convinced Huse that using a photo from
a coin book for design guidance could result in a copyright violation.
For some reason no genuine specimens of this common coin type were
available for a scan or photo and no attempt was made to ask for the use
of anyone's existing photo. So instead a Slavey replica of a New Style
Owl tetradrachm was purchased and a scan of it was made and sent to the
minter even though Slavey replicas have a reputation at least among
those who know ancient coins for their flamboyant exaggeration.

Unlike with genuine New Style Owls, which feature Athena with a pleasant
smile or neutral expression, Athena on this piece has an unpleasant
scowl. Another anomaly is the obverse legend "Pallas Athene," which
never appeared on ancient coins of this type and which misdescribes the
Athena that's illustrated. Pallas is one of the many epithets sometimes
used as part of Athena's name, in this case signifying an opponent she
killed in battle whose name she took. But the epithet used with Athena
on New Style Owls in coin books and coin catalogs is Parthenos, not
Pallas, as in Athena Parthenos, since the image used on these coins is
thought to have been based on the sculpture of Athena by Phidias that
stood in the Parthenon. What's more, Athena is much more commonly
spelled with an "a" at the end, "Athena" instead of "Athene," in books
on numismatics as well as mythology, not to mention being better known
this way in the popular culture. Two further anomalies are an owl that's
smaller than on authentic New Style Owls and a wreath around the coin's
edge that's larger, with the wreath taking up far more space even though
the owl by far is the more important design element.

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Consumer: http://rg.ancients.info/guide
Connoisseur: http://rg.ancients.info/glom
Counterfeit: http://rg.ancients.info/bogos