Fourrée

A fourrée (also spelt without the accent, with one r, and with one e) is a coin, usually counterfeit, that is made from a base metal core that has been plated with a precious metal to look like its solid metal counterpart; the term is derived from the French word meaning "stuffed". Most fourrées were made from plated silver and gold, but were also made from alloys such as electrum.

Production of fourrées began since coinage first began in Lydia in the 7th century BC, which were made from plated electrum. But when Greece and Rome started producing their own coinage, silver and gold fourrées became more common. Today fourrées are still made, although they're generally not made to deceive people.

The earliest known way of detecting fourrées was through making "test cuts", but later "banker marks" and serrated edges became more common. Cicero mentions that M. Marius Gratidianus, a praetor during the 80s BC, was widely praised for developing tests for detecting false coins and removing them from circulation. Gratidianus was killed under Sulla, who introduced his own anti-forgery law (lex Cornelia de falsis) that reintroduced serrated edges on precious metal coins, an anti-counterfeiting measure that had been tried earlier. Serrated denarii, or serrati, feature about 20 notched chisel marks on the edge of the coin, and were produced to demonstrate the integrity of the coin. But the effort was in vain, as examples of fourrée serrati attest.

The Latin term for a silver-plated copper coin is subaeratus and the Greek term is ὑποχάλκος (hypochalkos), both meaning "copper below".