BREAKING NEWS Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend us your ears. Our beloved Emperor Marcus Aurelius Severus Antoninus Augustus announced today that his gift to the people of Rome, a luxurious bathing complex, is now open to the public. Our beloved Emperor visited the facilities and sampled it's many amenities to ensure they were fit for the dignity of our citizens, who demand nothing but the best. Afterwards our beloved Emperor dedicated these baths under the protection of the divine and glorious God Serapis. May Serapis reward our Emperor's piety and grant him a long reign. EMPEROR EXECUTES A DOZEN TRAITORS FROM ALEXANDRIA Our Emperor executed this afternoon a dozen traitors in a deputation from Alexandria that came to apologize for a slanderous play questioning the peaceful disposition of our dear Emperor. May such fate befall anyone else who questions the generosity and civility of our glorious Emperor. ADVERTISING: This gazette is brought to you by the guild of millers. The Guild of millers: Fine Roman bread for fine Romans.
Oh Great! Now we have another poster that likes to draw cartoons. Don't we have enough cartoon characters as members on this forum? (joking of course). Another nice coin.
The lowest grade I ever received in an English or creative writing class was a B. Not bad for someone who spent his first decade of life in Cuba. I learned English watching American TV channels with a bootleg receiver a neighbor rigged up, and with some old English studybooks that another neighbor let my family borrow.
When JA first posted this coin he asked about the reddish copper-like color around some small areas of the coin. I can't say for sure what they may be. JA thinks its some sort of tarnish, I think it could perhaps be hoard deposit from this coin being buried by a copper rich source, or coming into contact with other base metals during burial. Notice the deposits are in the areas hardest to clean, while most of the easier areas to clean of the coin are nice silver. There is no deposit on the high points of the hair, only the recessed areas. Same here in the lettering. The very edges between the coin surface and the start of the lettering has reddish deposit, the higher points of the lettering does not, and neither do other areas which are relatively easy to come into contact with any cleaning instruments, fingers, rags, etc. Lastly, this is the one area that is relatively easy to clean in the coin that has any significant amount of coppery color. I can't say for sure without using a microscope truly capable of seeing cell-sized structures, but again look at the corner of Caracalla's neck and see the deposits are in the areas harder to clean. This little patch below his neck being the exception, and I think it was due to sloppy cleaning. So my hypothesis is that it has to be deposits on top of the silver surface from contamination while the coin was buried, perhaps with copper or other alloy. Either way though, despite the reddish coppery hue, which is also common in other denarii of this era, it is still a beautiful coin.
Well, whatever it is don't worry, I have no intention of cleaning it. Just simply making some observations and pondering what I think it could be.
Thanks, they were taken with a 2mp camera mounted on a microscope. Yeah, imagine if I had used a 5mp camera instead. Oh well, it gets the job done.
In my Dremel tool set I got for Christmas years ago was a tub of red polishing compound. It was waxy and intended for use of projects (not coins) wth their buffing wheels. I would suggest using a toothpick and seeing if you can remove a bit of red waxy material from someplace or wiping with a Q-tip to see if the red comes off. Your excellent macro photos make me think of this possibility. You will be surprised at what you find in the recesses of coins. Of course there is Renaissance Wax but there is also shoe polish and crayons if you look at enough coins. In the top loop of the left S below is a tiny speck of wax. That stuff is hard to get off when you go micro. Who here remembers when TIF shared her purchase of Alexandrian tets with make-up? Maybe this is lipstick???
