I have no idea, just asking. Is it normal for there to be a spot of corrosion on a NGC slabbed silver ancient? Look near the bottom left, near the "tong".
Yes it is normal. What would be abnormal would be to not find some signs corrosion on an ancient coin.
Corrosion? The little dark mark? Dang, if that bothers you like Doug said maybe ancients aren't for you. The only thing like that that would be troublesome would be verdigras. That is a pretty clean reverse. Lol, you would run away screaming from the little pieces of garbage I am placing snipes on right now. Problem is, they physically do not exist in better shape than what I am bidding on, though most would never take one if given it.
It looks more like a small spot of encrustation. Whoever cleaned it either missed a spot, or determined that removing it would be harmful to the coin.
Ok man, glad to see you taking an interest in ancients. You will find dark marks fairly common on ancient silver. No harm at all, unless it makes the coin unattractive to you. You will find ancients are more about what YOU like versus what anyone else thinks.
Trying to dig up some more info. I need to establish the RIC number for it. The wildwinds site says it's 249 AD ONLY, but this says 249-251. I would think NGC would be correct, but they have been wrong before. I'm also trying to find out the purity of the silver used. I THINK it's 40% but IDK for sure. I knew recent countries debased their silver low like Canada and England, but I didn't realize ancient countries did as well. I thought they were making big states out of gold and thought it wasn't worth much. You would of thought the ancient silver would be high purity but it looks like it's not the case. Although NGC calls it a double denarius, it's actual name is a[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Antoninianus. [/FONT]
249-251 was how long he was emperor. I think that (length of rule) is what NGC puts on ancients. Wiki has a decent article you may find helpful "The antoninianus was a coin used during the Roman Empire thought to have been valued at 2 denarii. It was initially silver, but was slowly debased to bronze. The coin was introduced by Caracalla in early 215 and was a silver coin similar to the denarius except that it was slightly larger and featured the emperor wearing a radiate crown, indicating that it was valued at twice as much. Antoniniani depicting females (usually the emperor's wife), featured the bust resting upon a crescent moon.[1] But even at its introduction its silver content was only equal to 1.5 denarii. This helped create inflation - people rapidly hoarded the denarii, while both buyers and sellers recognised the new coin had a lower intrinsic value and elevated their prices to compensate. Silver bullion supplies were running short since the Roman Empire was no longer conquering new territory, and because a series of soldier emperors and rebels needed coin to pay their troops to buy loyalty. So each new issue of the antoninianus had less silver in it than the last, and each contributed to inflation. By the late third century the coins were almost entirely made of bronze from melted down old coins like the sestertius. Vast quantities were being produced, with a large proportion of the stocks being contemporary forgeries, often with blundered legends and designs. Individual coins were by then practically worthless and were lost or discarded by the millions. Today the coins are extremely common finds. The situation was not unlike the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic in 1920s Germany when paper money was printed in reckless abundance. The coin ceased to be used by the end of the third century when a series of coinage reforms attempted to arrest the decline by issuing new types. Modern numismatists use this name for the coin because it is not known what it was called in antiquity. The name was given to it because an ancient Roman document called the Historia Augusta (of generally low reliability) refers to silver coins named after an Antoninus on several occasions (several Roman emperors in the late second and early third centuries bore this name among others). Because Caracalla's silver coin was a new issue, and he had taken Antoninus as part of his imperial name, an association was made with it, and although the association is certainly false, the name has stuck"
