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ORIGIN STORY: WHERE THAT UFO COIN CAME FROMThere are several reasons why Mike Markowitz is my favorite ancient coin columnist, and one is that he always does his homework. Kudos for his excellent CoinWeek article
(published April 24, 2017) about the origin of that "alien" coin that made the rounds of the internet last year. Now I wish I'd goaded my readers into checking it out (or *gasp*
researching it myself in my copious free time). Here's an excerpt, but be sure to read the full article on line (as well as the references he links to). Kudos also to the CoinWeek team for
the great graphics. -Editor
 In October 2016, several British tabloids published a photograph of a silver coin of uncertain size with a Greek inscription. The coin portrait depicts a gaunt draped bust resembling a so-called “Grey alien”. Grey aliens are extraterrestrial humanoids associated with contemporary UFO mythology. The source of the image is credited to the UFO web site mysteriousearth.net, where discovery of the coin is ascribed to a “group of people who worked on the renovation of a house in southern Egypt”. It is clearly a hoax. The lack of any attribution (weight, dimensions, date, image of the reverse, etc.) raises the level of suspicion to an astronomical level. My first impression is that this was a real coin or medallion extensively tooled in order to turn the portrait of a ruler or deity into the likeness of an alien - like an elaborate “hobo nickel” A little research revealed that it's not even a real artifact, but a heavily retouched (“photoshopped”) image of an actual Roman medallion in the famous collection of the Cabinet de Médailles in Paris. The hoax was uncovered by computer scientist Ralf Bülow, as credited by author Jason Colavito on his web site. The very rare original medallion depicts Dionysus, god of wine and abandon. The other side (technically the obverse) bears an idealized portrait of Antinous, the beloved young companion of the Roman emperor Hadrian.  To read the complete article, see:
The digital trail led to a Brazilian UFO site, where I learned (thanks to good Portuguese translation on my web browser) that the hoax image came from DesignCrowd, an Australian graphic design crowdsource web site. Mike also addresses the "UFO" copper jetons that also made the rounds. Those at least are real items, and Mike makes a case for the original intent of one of the designs. But Ken Bessett, who has written about these before, wasn't as convinced. -Editor Ken Bressett writes: One is left wondering why all those ‘shields’ came down from high above for divine intervention. To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
But for those who Want to Believe, see this item from the Delancey Place blog. Is alien technology causing Boyajian's star to dim mysteriously? Alternative explanations
are hard to come by. -Editor
Could this fading star be the first evidence that other cosmic cultures were more than science fiction? That outreì idea was a hypothesis of last resort, but for the time being, we could not dismiss it. "The star that stumped Boyajian -- now officially known as Boyajian's star and colloquially called Tabby's star -- has captivated astronomers and the general public alike. Like all great enigmas, it has generated a seemingly infinite number of possible solutions -- none of which wholly explain the curious observations. Whatever is responsible may lie outside the realm of known astronomical phenomena. To read the complete article, see:
Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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