So I guess the toolers and smoothers have won?

I've kept coins (and other things) for the same reason before.

As for this coin, it looks good in the pictures. I can see where the portrait might be a little over-cleaned, but I'm wondering if the lighting doesn't exaggerate the effect a bit. Would you have still bought it had the issues been disclosed up front?

 

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As I mentioned recently, there's a dealer whom I'll call Athena Numismatics, because that is their name, who has been smearing his coins with ugly orange artificial "desert" patinas. I'm pleased to say after complaining to Vcoins, he has now amended *some* of his coin descriptions to say "artificial desert patina":
eg, https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/at...60_dido_bulding_carthage_/653484/Default.aspx

Too little, too late. I'm not buying from him again.

 

I remember the thread about your coin, Greg. I'm glad that vCoins has been able to hold these folks *somewhat* accountable for accurately describing what they are selling. Definitely not cool on Athena's part.

 

I've taken to browsing a large selection of a dealer's inventory on VCoins before I think about pulling the trigger. If a lot of their coins have the same "look" (like that awful orange gunk, for instance), I'm immediately wary.

Come to think of it, that's something I look for in any dealer, is a wide range of selection in his or her specialty. For US coins, I want to see certified coins, raw coins, mint state coins, circulated coins, toned, untoned, and everything in between. It's a sign that the dealer a) loves coins, and b) knows enough to handle a variety of stuff. Now, I suppose I'll be adding c) probably doesn't alter coins.

 

Probably my most infamous Toolin'-n-Smoothin' example is this Sauromates coin (ummm, which has already been crucified in another recent coin-thread)



Bosporian Kings, Sauromates IÆ 48 Units
- Implements of Battle –
Date: circa 98-104 AD
Size: 27.94 mm
Weight: 9.49 grams
Obverse: TIBEPIOC IOYΛIOC BACIΛEYC CAYPOMATHC, Sauromates seated right on curule chair, holding sceptre tipped with the head of Trajan
Reverse: TEIMAI BACIΛEωC CAYPOMATOY, Round shield with spear, surrounded by battle axe, horse head, helmet, and sword in scabbard, mark of denomination (MH) below
Attribution: MacDonald 417
Description: A nice example with light tooling and smoothing typical for this issue.

NOTE => 100% kudos to the seller who mentioned that the coin had been altered "lightly" and therefore did his due diligence in warning me that the coin had experienced some cosmetic-surgery ... but man, I sure wish that I'd known then what I know now about coins that have been"altered" ...

=> one of my most valuable coin learning lessons (money well spent!!)

 

I also apply a visual filter to ingnore the mass of yellow and orange coins from VCoins. There are not many dealers on my blacklist but I do keep one. Behaviour as outlined in this thread gets them added as does a range of behaviours to do with shipping e.g. shipping me a "similar" coin to the one I bought but not accepting the return or refund and keeping the coin I want up for sale OR having an empty envelope arrive having been opened in the mailand being told "I have a tracked and signed for delivery - tough". I could go on.

Rant over.

Martin

 

Alteration to coins is not good. Telling the purchaser that the coin has been altered is good.

Here is the "devil's advocate" side and don't hate me for this

Many of these alterations are "old." They have been used for a long time. The one bright side is that "modern" alterations are getting harder to detect. Fake desert "patina" can make an ugly coin more attractive to some. IMO, it is much better than the patina made from brown or black shoe polish smeared into the surface as was done decades ago. And who can argue that a touch of "light" tooling when done by a "master engraver" does not enhance the coin's appearance.

We can fuss but it comes with the territory. IMO, we have not seen anything yet! Our job as dealers/collectors is to be wary, educate the uninformed, and "out" the bad guys.

 

EVERY ancient coin has been cleaned, even gold coins.

For bronze coins, how do you define the difference between "cleaning" and "smoothing?" Is scraping "...away hard surface deposits on a coin whose surface itself is clearly unstable (signs of pitting)..." unacceptable if those hard deposits are dirt or otherwise not part of the metal or patina? And how does anyone know where the hard deposits stop and the patina starts, at least until some of the surface deposit has been removed?

While I generally agree with Doug's definition, even removing non-patina and non-metal surface imperfections (not just patina) is smoothing -- i.e., the surface of the coin becomes smoother after the removal of this material.

I personally find light smoothing acceptable. There's really nothing that can be done about this anyway, since even the highest quality bronzes with a long provenance were cleaned decades or centuries ago, and if a collector restricted his/her collection to "non-smoothed" bronzes you'd be unable to find any.

I think Doug's differentiation (quoted above) is the quasi-industry-standard for distinguishing smoothing from tooling. It also agrees with what my dealer, who has been in the ancient coin business for 40 years, uses to determine smoothing vs. tooling. So I'll defer to the knowledge and experience of these experts on the topic of smoothing vs. tooling -- these two alterations are not one and the same.

 

Keywords here as to why "smoothing" is different: QUASI-INDUSTRY-STANDARD, DEALER, BUSINESS I'll add to that seller, digger, wholesaler, oh and "Coin Doctor."

 

Here is my contribution to this fascinating topic. Prior to coins my collecting focus was fossils and minerals (or as my wife calls them, rocks).

In these categories, "cleaning" even "patching and gluing" is expected since most are embedded in some matrix. Even the T-Rex at the American Museum of Natural History is made from several individuals. It is not the fossilized skeleton of A T-Rex but of several T-Rex.

So Im not that freaked out that my Druses by Tiberius (one of my pricier coins) has had work done. I love this coin and I don't plan on selling it and I have never purchased a coin with the intention to sell it for a profit.

Th reverse shows sign of I-don't-know-what but it looks like tooling to remove something and "patching" to fill in a gouge.

I posted this coin before I purchased it in late 2014 and most of ya'll said it was an acceptable level of "work". Some were more critical but by and large I felt good about the purchase. In truth, my big concern was "is it real?". And I was reassured that it was real with some work.

Any hoo, here it is! Any new thoughts would be appreciated.

View attachment 494413 View attachment 494414

 

about athena..great you found that out, you see all the business vcoins whatever lanze, kunker..all dirty...in a sort of way...hahaahah and we buy there stuff

 

January 26 this year I posted this to the CoinForgeryDiscussionList:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CoinForgeryDiscussionList/conversations/messages

Here is how I think of tooling and smoothing.

Imagine a line drawing, without shading, of the coin type. That drawing will have some areas of white with no lines where there is no design detail. However, the coin may have corrosion in those areas. If that corrosion is evened out that is "smoothing." No detail was added to the coin.

The line drawing will have some lines representing details that will wear off or become weaker with circulation. For example, a well worn sestertius may no longer have the outlines of the leaves on the laurel wreath that you would see in the line drawing of an unworn example. If someone takes a tool and carves leaves where they were, but no longer are, that is tooling.

Some lines in the drawing represent features that are so bold they do not disappear completely even with quite a bit or wear or corrosion. For example, the profile of the bust, the outline of the reverse figure, and the outlines of the lettering. If a coin is very worn, these features can be weak. They can be "strengthened" by carving the field around the profile a bit deeper, outlining the reverse type a bit, and digging around the letters to make them stand out. This is in the "tooling" category.

Sometimes corrosion has encrusted or raised bumps on much of the coin. The bumps can be carved off the edges of the lettering and carved off the designs. The line-drawing lines that are afterwards no longer prominent on the coin can be reengraved. The fields can be made level and smoothed. There are some collecting areas where this is so common it is hard to find a coin without all of these (coins of the Kingdom of the Bosporus come to mind).

In conclusion, here is the meaning of the terminology:

If a line drawing of the original had no line there and the coin surface has been carved or buffed to be flatter there, that is smoothing. If the line drawing had a line there and a cutting tool has been used to recreate or emphasize the line, that is tooling.

 

Also I see this year so many obols / hemibols whatever from Cilicia, I am really wondering is there a factory? in the past I never saw them...or a few only? how is that possible?

 

Paul M.,
Would I have bought the coin if I had known it had been worked on? More than likely not but, it will stay in my collection. What I can say with certainty is that I am learning to be more careful about my purchases and do a little research in advance to get a comfort level on that relationship between quality, desireability and price, which is what I should have done in the first place.

 

They have been around for years and many appear in references like Rosen and SNG Turkey 1 but recently more people have strated paying for them encouraging dealers to have them. Judging from sale catalogs of the 20th century, dekadracms are more common than obols. I used to get the little guys for little prices. Now more seem to be on the market.

My definition of smoothing allows selective removal of corrosion to leave a better looking surface. Cleaning removes what is there (hopefully stopping above the patina layer) but does not try to make the letters or details more prominent by treating them differently than the fields. Smoothing/polishing silver rarely goes well because the layers above the surface are thin to microscopic while bronzes often have enough thickness that you can remove part rather than all to better effect. These are skills I don't have but I can appreciate the abilities of cleaners. Recently this section of CT has attracted a few posters who forget that this is the ancient section and we have no coins with 100% original (as struck) surfaces. Perhaps the closest we have are river coins which I don't always find all that pleasing.

I might even be able to accept dealers who sell correctly marked altered coins if they were acting on their own volition but I'm wondering if the sudden appearance of these labels is more the doing of vCoins than of their own will. Do I own some smoothed coins that I did not realize were that way when I got them years ago. Certainly. Same with tooled coins? Probably but I'm less sure on this. The subject has become more out in the open in the last decade mostly thanks to sellers who were not only selling tooled/smoothed coins but selling poorly done ones.

 

Wow -- very, very, articulately stated.

Not surprisingly, I'm in 100% agreement.

I'm sure there will be non-ancient collectors who will never agree with this observation, but it's worth reiterating: EVERY ancient coin has been cleaned to some degree.

 

Hooray for rock hounds, paleontology and archaeology! Done a little of that myself. Nice coin.

 

How does @Valentinian NOT GET a best answer?

 

Ya, the option isn't even present to vote it. I wonder if this is a software issue?

 

Yes, and this could be the antique pot forum also but that would not change anything posted by this particular member.

I have seen quite a few "as taken out of the ground" ancients, and many groups of "supposedly" fresh batches. So I'll agree that virtually all of them get treated in some way to "clean" them or alter them into "fresh finds." However, IMO, (which I'll agree means nothing here) ANY treatment done with the hand-of-man plus some implement that removes surface debris BECOMES actual "tooling" as soon as the original coin's surface (no matter its state of preservation) becomes marred. That goes for bones too.

I realize that is a high and mostly unattainable standard but I call them as I see them. Most of my ancients have been cleaned but they have luster, no hairlines, nice patina and NO EVIDENCE of any "old" cleaning. None of my ancients are tooled either; however, I don't collect the "high-power" copper stuff posted here.

A professionally tooled/smoothed coin is a beauty to behold and obviously they are sought after from collector to collector through the ages.