Hi,
I came across these zodiac medals at a car boot sale. They were 5€, so I suspected immediately that they were fake but figured they look interesting enough and bought them anyway.
The Mandarin reads «Chinese zodiac medals. Shenyang Mint,» which is a real mint.
What confuses me about these medals is that (1) I can find almost no or absolutely no information on the majority of them, but I can find some information and pictures on a few (notably the dragon (top right) and horse (middle right)) (2) the back of the coins feature various designs, many of which are inconsistent with each other and inconsistent with pictures of the medals I can find online. Notice that the dragon medal I have has a back inconsistent with the linked eBay listing, but the horse one has the correct back (3) I cannot find a single image online (even when reverse image searching) of the specific case I have with the way the medals are arranged.
So, I'm obviously 99% sure these are fake, but what I am interested in is what are the medals are based on? Are there real variations for all of these medals that I just can't find? Are these fakes known or did I come across some fakes someone uniquely packaged?
Thank you very much,
mbs
