XTREME COIN MAKEOVER - Horribly Misidentified Trajan

So I got this silver coin from eBay for like $11.
Let me preface this by saying that this coin was actually purchased from a known fake seller, 'holdingancienthistory.' This is the same seller that I purchased the fake Vespasian NEP RED coin from.

However, for the price I was willing to chance it. If it turned out fake, I could always return it, so there I went.

The flip was atrocious. This seller appears to know little to nothing about ancient coins; that or he was faced with a box of coins and a box of flips, and just mixed them together.


There are several problems:
1. coin is not Rome mint. Find me a Rome mint coin that uses Greek letters.
2. Pax standing with.....cat? gato (spanish for cat)? what? I really don't think cats feature prominently on any ancient coins.
3. Where's the attribution? How do you get R-4 without knowing what is it?
4. $100? How can you price a coin with no attribution?

On the bright side, the diam, weight, and composition are correct.

Anyways, coin showed up encrusted to death which is why I thought it was more likely than not authentic.


The surfaces had obviously been worked on, with the excessive scratches. I believe that it was first entirely encrusted, then someone ground down the outer layer to see what it was.

There were green, black, brown, and red-orange mineral encrustations.

I knew this could either be a great success or a miserable failure.

I subjected it to a veritable gauntlet of chemicals:
sodium hydroxide, acetic acid, citric acid, sodium thiosulfate, and at one point I even splashed some gosh-darn Tarn-X on it.

Anyways, after over a week of abuse, I end up with this rather more attractive, and most importantly, genuine drachm of Caesaria/Bostra/Cappadocia, with Arabia, not Pax with a camel, not a cat.

Trajan AR Drachm
19mm, 3.1g
AYTOKΡ KAIC NEΡ TΡAIANO CEB ΓEΡM ΔAK
ΔHMAΡX EΞIH UΠAT IZ
Syd 185 (may be a different one due to different regnal year, but closest I'll get)

Although I don't think the coin is the $100 coin it says on the flip, it sure as heck is worth more than $11 now, IMO.

 

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Nice Bostra issue. Of course, wildly misattributed. Fairly common coin, its a wonder the person was not familiar with it.

 

I see these selling for around $40-50 on eBay, which is a far cry from $100 but also a far cry from $11. I'll take it.

 

You did a great job. Congratulations! I scrolled through your message and I was expecting a disastrous result. Certainly not the case.
The revealed details are simply surprising.
...I need to learn how to clean coins when needed as my result is, usually, a big mess.

 

I didn't have my hopes up, but I figured for the price of a fast food combo I could do worse with my money.

I actually did go too far - the stubborn bit of horn silver on the left side of the obv would not come off.
The rest of the coin was a uniform, bright white, but I wanted to get rid of that small spot.
A few days later, I started to realize a large grayish patch was forming on the obv which was resistant to any and all treatments.
Not willing to give up, I used Tarn-X, which did nothing but provide it an (artificial) golden toning.

It's not the worst, but I could have ended up with a nice bright white coin with uniform surfaces...

 

You did better than Dr. Pimple Popper in your cleaning (yuck) - admittedly I watched that show once and never will again. For $11 it was a bargain.

 

Oh my gosh that is disgusting. I mean it would be physically satisfying for the patient, but god awful to watch. blech

 

Pretty good price. These aren't as common as imperial denarii. I find them very interesting.

 

I was watching that on eBay and was tempted - I felt it was genuine. I had no idea it would clean up that well - I am very impressed!

 

With the same size and weight and I assume fineness, I assume they circulated interchangeably with denarii?

 

Thanks! I am impressed too. However my experience shows that silver is less likely to be horrendously degraded underneath the crust as bronze; therefore I figured it was worth a shot. Paid off

 

Wow - great job in cleaning that drachm - it actually turned out really well. And yes, that would be worth more than the $11 you paid for it. Definitely authentic as well, from the looks of it. Well done!

 

Thank you! It was certainly a fun, frustrating, but ultimately satisfying experience.

 

...what a great deal & great cleaning job Earl!....i believe that one might be one of the 1st, from the dies, used to hammer over those coins of Rabbel ll....maybe @John Anthony could ring in and give his opinion...