This capture is a gorgeous kickoff to your 2016 season! I am saddened by your loss, and we have you and your family in our prayers. I am looking forward to your coming year's postings and cool coins! Best to You, Brian
Thank you Brian. It's been over a month and time has a way of healing. I'm just having a hard time getting back into posting, but it is getting better.
Awesome coin jw, great details with just a little rub. i almost bought one, they are a bit pricey.love yours. been so busy with our show this weekend, haven't been able to post much lately too!
That's a really nice way to start the year, @Bing I really love those dual faced coins, almost like Ying and Yang. Incidentally, I have a similar one too. I wasn't even looking to get one of these, but the opportunity presented itself and I jumped on it.
Bing, its a great coin, good to see you getting back into the swing of things. It makes it tough and all the rough stuff in life hits you on what its supposed to be a cheerful time of year. I hope this year treats you a little better.
Sallent's coin reminds me of when I got my first Istros years ago. The way they cast the blanks for these seems to result in a ridge on the edge when the coin was struck. This shows clearly on Sallent's coin and on mine. This is NOT a sign of a fake coin. It is a remnant of the way the flans were cast that caused a folding and s part of what we expect from these. I corresponded with a major dealer years ago on this and learned quite a bit in the process perhaps leading me to my interest in technical matters related to coins more than catalog numbers and history. Certainly not all of these will show this feature since it depends on the way things aligned and the force of the strike but don't give a seller a hard time about this based on a fear of edge seams.
If you are talking about why the edges look a little straight and the little v-cut at the top, that's just terrible photoshop of a new background on my part. Here is the original image. Cut me some slack, it was one of my first attempts at replacing the background and using editing tools to correct lighting, etc., so it's a little more amateurish compared to my later work. If you are talking about something else, and not just the edges in my image with the black background, I will say that this coin has passed hands through 2 major auction houses, a well known coin dealer, and another member in this forum before coming to me. No one ever found this to be "tooled", so I am as confident as one could get about the authenticity of this coin.
I'm not sure what makes you think it's tooled but I've handled this coin many times(I owned it for a while) and I never saw anything to make me believe it was tooled or otherwise unoriginal. I purchased it from Agora Auctions but I knew the consignor and know that he bought it at either NYINC or CICF(I'd need to check my notes go be sure) from Pars Coins. There is evidence of a slightly weak strike from 6-7 on the reverse and of slight die breaks or rusty dies around the eyes, all things you'd expect someone tooling a coin to clean up.
I see nothing wrong with your coin Sallent. It looks quite sharp. However, I'm glad they are questioning someone else's coin and not mine (whew).
So it was a die break or rust on a die around the eye area. I was thinking it was a counterstamp. Thanks for letting me know. I was about to spend some time this weekend researching it as I was always a little curious about it, but now I can spend that time doing research on another coin
well I wasn't questioning its authenticity. Just thought the wear was bit less than consistent throughout. While the flan edges seemed worn, the designs and lettering are rather sharp. Maybe the flan isn't as worn as I thought.
Oh, I can explain that, at least why the reverse is so sharp. This coin was struck with a slightly convex reverse die and since it is relatively well-centered on a flan of decent size this protects the devices except some of those right near the edge. All of these I've ever seen exhibit some concavity on the reverse but in most cases the flan is tighter and the reverse devices don't get as much protection. Steve's is another good example of the concavity as is Doug's where even with the wear some of the lettering has remained quite sharp.
It's just the way the thin layer of toning was captured by the camera. The edges are not exessively worn at all. I think it's just the way my camera captured everything. Some coins are a pain to photograph. If you look at my original post after I bought the coin from @red_spork his picture of the coin looks very different from mine, both look different from the auction house's, and all of those look different from the one the previous dealer took. Because of the thin layer of toning, this coin can look very different from one picture to the next. Also, see @red_spork post above for further observations. He knows more about this coin than I do.
