Ouch! Plotina Sestertius

I just saw this on reddit and was wondering what, if anything, you all thought about this. This coin is and forever will be out of my price range, but I couldn't imagine if I had this type of money to spend on a coin - what I'd think about losing $76,000.

Here is the coin (image from biddr)

https://www.biddr.com/auctions/numismatiknaumann/browse?a=1053&l=1118650

 

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It says 16,000 Euros was the price realized, not $76,000. Of course, I can't imagine ever spending even 16,000 dollars -- or Euros -- on a coin, and will never be in a position to do so. No matter how gentle the smoothing!

 

Very rare and would be worth a fortune if unaltered. It has been "gently smoothed," according to the auction description, but I wonder if it hasn't been tooled as well. The hair detail seems too good to be true and different from genuine examples.

Here are the examples from the British Museum collection:

 

It was a loss of 76,000 USD. Sorry if I didn’t make that clear...trying to bounce a baby who won’t go to sleep and posting is not advised lol.

 

My Plotinas are provincials. My favorite is this one:


Plotina, c. AD 105-122.
Roman provincial Æ 20.0 mm, 5.43 g, 6 h.
Caria, Tabae, AD 105-122.
Obv: ΠΛΩΤЄΙΝ CЄΒΑCΤΗ, diademed and draped bust, right, hair in plait behind
Rev: ΤΑΒΗ-ΝΩΝ, stag standing right.
Refs: RPC III 2292; BMC 18. 170, 79; SNG von Aulock 2720; SNG München 455-6; Robert 143.
Notes: Reverse die match to SNG von Aulock 2720. "Plate" coin at Austin College's Virtual Catalog of Roman Coins.

 

I'm with RC on this one - it looks tooled or otherwise molested.

Furthermore, how do you smooth something and not damage the patina? Which is to say the flashy lime-green patina looks a lot like the Bulgarian spray-on-tan coin auctions on eBay.

But my experience with high-end bronzes is nil, so this is the opposite of an expert opinion.

Speaking of "hair detail," here's some awesome sestertius tooling/smoothing from eBay a while back - I was going to bid on it if it stayed in the ten dollar range, but it kept going up, up, up. Strand of pearls or spotted cobra? I thought of it more as "folk art" like a hobo nickel rather than an ancient.

 

If it did not have that dark place on the face, it might be a $100k coin but, in this bracket, coins need to be a bit more perfect. It makes no difference since people who spend that kind of money on a coin can spend 2-3x more just as well as we could drop an extra $10 on a coin we like.

 

Not only the smoothing, which is not terribly distracting, but a good chip in the patina on the reverse, but, as my granddad used to say "somebody must like it".

 

well... this is odd! This is the exact same coin that was sold in 2011 (for €53.313) and 2013 (for €72.324), and remained unsold in 2016 at estimate 46.417 €



First, the coin of the OP:

Current coin (Numismatik Nauman, sold 16.000)


NAC 2011, sold 53.000€

NAC 2013, sold 72.000€

NAC 2016, remained unsold at €46.000

So someone removed the "V"in AVG on the reverse and lost ~55.000€
Can someone explain what happened here?!

 

It is a very peculiar coin, the one shown in the OP. Also note the damage at the reverse 'I'. And the obverse, above the N. It looks like the same coin sold by NAC for a larger amount. But without the damages. Was it dropped, afterwards?

 

If I had spent that much money on a coin, I might actually have had it graded and slabbed just to protect against that kind of damage. Despite my general aesthetic dislike for the appearance of slabbed coins!

 

I'll never feel financially secure enough to spend that kind of money. So as an amateur numismatist, I do not like smoothing but accept it on certain levels. As a collector, I'm ambivalent about smoothing on coins I'll never own.

 

I can't imagine the entire V just flaking off like that... makes me wonder if it was originally absent and then added back on? Emporium Hamburg was shown to have manufactured extremely rare late monogram coins with fake patina over a genuine slug - perhaps the same principle here?

I'll stick to my sub-$100 Plotina, thank you very much

 

Also, looks like something happened to the "A" on the reverse!

 

Yeah, and also the ‘I’ of FIDES, a tiny flake above the T on the reverse, and the N of TRAIANI on the obverse. Almost looks like bronze disease beneath?
Could an expert weigh in? (Eg @AncientJoe or @Barry Murphy ?) I’m really curious what happened (or is happening) to this coin.

 

This coin was submitted to NGC 2 years ago. It was returned to the submitter as tooled or altered surfaces (I don’t recall which). I think I wrote a report on it but I’d have to check at work tomorrow.

I had definitive proof it was not original.

Barry Murphy

 

Thanks @Barry Murphy it'd be cool to learn more.

 

Also to learn whether those letters had already been damaged by that time.

 

The V had fallen off already when I saw the coin in 2018, but that’s not why it was returned.

Barry Murphy

 

Much of the detail does appear to be unoriginal. I suspect this coin has had detail built up from acrylic or enamel, along with some tooling of the metal itself. Look at the uniform rich green color of the letters and how the most detailed areas of the bust and the reverse figure are all that same uniform color. That should give you serious pause when evaluating a coin, especially where the fields have such a variety of colors. The fields have been seriously smoothed and repatinated in areas as well but some spots have some color from the original patina. This coin has had some serious work done. I am not at all surprised that the letter fell off as it was probably not original and may well have had bronze disease underneath, which is not unheard of with coins covered in acrylic like this.