I strongly subscribe to this point of view. Once a coin crosses the (admittedly somewhat fuzzy) line of "smoothing" into "tooling," I begin to wonder what's the point of collecting the coin at all. Why not just buy a good-looking, well struck "replica" if you're willing to accept known tooling in a coin? Really, why bother to care about the authenticity of the coin if tooling becomes acceptable? Roman bronzes are extremely hard to evaluate for minor tooling unless you have decades of experience and real expertise. While many bronzes have obvious tooling, some are so subtle that even experts disagree about where smoothing ends and tooling begins. But once you start down that slippery slope of accepting some tooling, you've discarded the notion of authenticity and might as well not consider yourself a true collector at all.
I strongly agree with both Doug and you Ides. However, I am even more leery since I have been seeing tooled AS's lately pop up fairly frequently, as well as some denari. It seems its becoming a cancer, and if an idiot like me who doesn't even collect Romans can see this tooling, its scary to think how much good tooling is now out there.
Some heirs will be thrilled to receive a $1 million 'bonus'. Others will obsess over whether dear ol' dad spent $2 million on all that junk. That is what is termed 'Their Problem'.
Interesting coin. Always liking seeing (and obtaining, of course) Roman Spanish provincial stuff. My only Caligula is just a Vesta also.
Lol. Something just struck me as funny. Here we are bemoaning we "only" own a vesta example of an authentic Caligula coin. A coin that probably 99 percent of the world believes is unownable, since surely they must all reside in prestigious museums around the world. Oh, to have our woes, huh? Sometimes its good to step back and remember how incredibly fortunate us ancient collectors really are.
Whats sad is a non ancient collector would sell a Vesta caligula in a heartbeat for a boring 1909 s vdb or 1916 d merc. Thats why I am still on the fence with parting more of my u.s. coins. Otho & Vitellius are calling me badly....
Lol I hope my comment wasn't taken the wrong way. I am happy to have a nearly 2000 year old coin like my Caligula in my collection, no matter how common it may be. I too used to be of the belief that only museums and rich people are the only ones who can own ancient coins.
So did I until I started posting here and asking questions and so on. My first ancient was bought on here & I still own it. Wasnt junk either. Its the veteran ancient collectors here who corrupted me
No sir not at all. I was bemoaning i only own a vesta reverse earlier. I simply came back to this thread, was reading it, and for some reason was thinking how others might be reading it, "oh those poor spoiled little rich guys, only having some incredibly cool antiquities in their collection and not all they want...." Just struck me overall as funny, no offense meant to anyone since I was involved as much as anyone here.
Uh...no. I don't collect ancients per se, but Wind Child and some others have gave me a great appreciation for many of them. Oh yeah, I'd take a caligula in a heart beat if you offered me one. Free of course.
Can't believe with all this talk about Caligula and his Vesta coins, I forget to post mine! Silly me...