In the course of researching a forthcoming installment of Faustina Friday, I came across this coin, Pegasi Buy or Bid Sale 154, lot 373, 21 August 2018. The coin is ostensibly a middle bronze, RIC 1177, of Faustina I, with the Juno(?) standing left, raising right hand and holding scepter reverse type. But look at the bust. It clearly shows the empress wearing a crown of laurel leaves. Could this be a rare and previously unknown bust type? This coin has been tooled. Egregiously. This is what it's supposed to look like. From the British Museum collection: It's a real shame that coin has been tooled. The coin is very scarce, with perhaps as few as a dozen known specimens.* It didn't have to be tooled to make it rare; it already was one of the few outside of museum collections and now it's ruined. Your comments and thoughts are encouraged. Do you know of other examples of rare coins ruined by tooling? *I have catalogued the following: Strack cites specimens in Vienna, Munich, Rome, and the Vatican. The British Museum has two specimens. OCRE cites one specimen in Freiburg. RIC cites A.S.F.N. 1885, p. 206. An acsearchinfo search yields only the Pegasi coin depicted above. And then there's one in the @Roman Collector collection. (I think the Wildwinds specimen is incorrectly attributed).
Sorry RC but the OP coin haven't been tooled at all. It's a rare fantastic new rare bust with a rare stylish laureate; I suspect you're just jealous of not having it in your collection. And by the way, it's obvious the BM example was heavily tooled to hide the double chin of Faustina (even the interior of the ear was painted in white to divert attention). What a shame. It's my opinion and I respect it.
In a thousand years, will dumbbell tooling be part of the art history/numismatic/ archaeological record? This showed up on eBay (Germany) a couple years ago - I was going to bid on it for fun, but I quit watching after it went to $50 bucks or so. Once you start adding "pearls" to a Faustina AE, it is hard to stop, apparently:
This is a perfect example of why I can't stand folks that can stand tooling and smoothing that can deal with "some". Some, of course, implies that there is a too much. Where is the line? Because this wasn't too much for somebody. ...They came for my coins but there was no one left to speak up and stop them.... Couldn't have said it better buddy. Here's one that really needs a good smoothing and tooling. Maybe make her look like Marilyn Monroe, Pam Anderson or somebody that she's not:banghead:
My Hadrianus Diana sestertius is 100% tooled , rare coin, forever ruined, picked it up on a local dutch site for a song
We must regret never really knowing where a tooled coin began its journey into oblivion. Andres2's coin may be better than the laureate one was before the tooling began. I fear that a much higher percentage of great beauties have had some work done including some that were done well enough that they passed our scrutiny. We often see tooled coins shown here and we laugh at how poorly they were done. The ones we don't see and don't find 'funny' are the dangerous ones. I have shown many times the star of my Black Museum and my favorite toolie. This 'Zenobia tetradrachm of Alexandria' (actually, none of the above) started out as a Flavian as (?). I found it very interesting and was willing to spend the $12.50 price. To me, the way the SC was reshaped into a date LE was worth the price of admission. I would love to know if this coin ever actually sold to someone with more money than sense as what it is 'not' for a price that would make us cackle in disbelief. Tooling, along with fakes in general, is a part of the history of numismatics whether you like it or not. Will people continue to patronize big name auctions known for selling these things as fine art? Of course they will. Oil paintings or retouched, repaired and massively reconstructed before being sold for millions. Statues are cobbled together from broken parts hopefully, but not certainly, from the same original. Museums are proud to display dinosaurs that share bones from several specimens or even species held together with artificial filler parts. Coins may be the last place where at least most collectors see such shenanigans as wrong.
I'm wondering if yours is RIC 1132, BMCRE 1572-1573 (shown below) with Ceres standing l., holding short torch and scepter. It's hard to tell; the right arm of the goddess on your coin seems to be very long and to end in something other than an open hand.
That's about as slick as my SALVTI AVGVSTAE with the stephaned bust! Maybe we can take them to get tooled together -- yours into Marilyn Monroe and mine into Pam Anderson!
