They Get Better Each Year

Yes, I remember those well. My first ISP was compuserve and my first online pirating was with Newsgroups. Same with IRC, if you remember IRC. Now IRC is mainly used by hackers and other dark web stuff.

I liked Compuserve, better than AOL before AOL bought them.

 

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I see the III as being maybe tooled as well. I thought I would not find the reverse, but here it is, no surprise, it is Ebay.

 

Ken,
The L & the F on the OP coin look a bit more robust than the other letters. The extra metal where the F meets the face of the flan does bring cause for concern. However, my big question is; would adding a replacement letter to the coin and then adjusting the patina be worth the time and effort? Will this significantly increase the price?

For comparison, here's mine.

 

I would Pass on the OP coin.

 

Is this a Lipanoff forgery?

 

This question has been posed many times. Why would anyone fake/modify these? Is the effort worth it? The answer is that yes, in many parts of the world it is worth it. Maybe it takes 36 hours (or many more, who knows) to modify and patinate any coin. But, if they have essentially no cost into it (and yes, in parts of the world it is true that one can get genuine coins for essentially nothing), then that genuine unmodified coin might sell for say $50 or perhaps $10. This one is currently at $166.50. What is our time worth? Obviously it is certainly worth the time and reward for either the seller or the wholesaler (whoever is responsible, but the seller may not be aware of what they are selling). Anyway, I waited until the last second to post the auction. Here it is, just closed a few seconds ago:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/AGRIPPA-DOP...eb5f04578:g:hpMAAOSw6n5Xpwts&autorefresh=true

 

Sold for $223.50! I looked at the sellers other items and see no other coins I would question.

 

That's true, however those were no where as valuable as the OP coin which is too cheap in my opinion for a coin with it's detail. I suspect others had doubts as well. The other thing I noticed is the ear had relatively little wear as compared to the hair line.

 

The OP coin is a well known fake. If it were real in this condition I would think it would bring thousands not hundreds.

 

I have a very, very high level of skepticism regarding the authenticity of this coin. Compare the three images below -- the OP coin, and two from ACSEARCH among thousands of Agrippa asses found:




The latter two images were the closest matches I could find to the OP's obverse, based on Agrippa's hair -- (1) the bangs on his forehead and (2) the hair just above the nape of his neck.

Note that I was unable to find an exact match to the OP coin, which in itself is telling.

Anyway, the OP coin appears to be an artful combination of the hairstyle of these latter two coins, but the depth and separation between the individual tufts of hair in both the forehead and the nape-of-the-neck are much more pronounced in the OP coin than on these two genuine coins, and this makes me very doubtful that the OP coin is genuine. It just looks phony.

In addition, the above two genuine coins sold for far more than the OP coin appears to have been sold, and if the OP coin were genuine, I suspect that it would be worth the low-to-mid four figures, and maybe more.

 

I've never seen an ancient coin with this many round raised pimples. What do you think caused it? Corrosion on the die?

 

Frankly, your guess is as good as mine. I NEVER have run across another quite like it. I purchased that coin decades ago (and i believe all it mentioned was harshly cleaned with corrosion) and today I would've suspected a fake, (casting bubbles?) but no seam or other problems. So I think you are probably right.

Any other opinions???

 

I didn't wish to come out and say it.

 

I thought MZ's coin looked off too, but I kept it too myself since it could be corrosion.

 

Corrosion can be raised on a surface but not like this and so much. Virtually the only way to get lumps like this on a surface is from the die. Furthermore, it is extremely rare to have corrosion pits into a die that look like these.

 

BTW: This coin was purchased from a dealer, since retired, that some of you may know from years ago--Wayne Phillips.....Although the pitting still seems strange...so I can't be sure what the actual answer is but I see no other 'evidence' of a fake.

 

This place sucks and we need some rigid rules, right now, right away!! (do "not" let the sheep out of the pen!!)



=> "Quick, somebody wrangle Oki => he is the King-pin!!"

 

They are a bit strict but not draconian. Most stuff that flies here also flies over there. And for me personally, there seems to be fewer rude and attitude-prone people over there than here. Its not as exciting but its more calm and formal there. CT is like a casual party while CCF is a lot like a workplace meeting. So both have their pros and cons.

I'd participate more there but most times I only get a few responses on my threads. And for a while now the tone of the ancients forum has shifted more to eastern coins in general like Persian and Indian, which I don't collect. Ron (Echizento) the mod there is a cool guy so I can't help but feel kinda bad for not being able to participate more.

Apologies to all for digging up a recently-buried thread.

 

They would have much more participation had they not pushed so many of us off the forum. I was banned solely for supporting another member. I had never been censured or corrected once prior to being banned.

I always like Echizento, but, then again, he wasn't a mod when I was a participant.

Other than CT, there is no other forum that I enjoy. Maybe I like a "casual party" atmosphere.

 

Yup, "Ski" is a great guy (I was surprised that he didn't come across when we all migrated, eh?)

=> OMG, that certainly was "not" the case when we left!!

SIDENOTE => wow, I have a hard enough time keeping-up with this coin-site's activity (my sweet wife would not be impressed if I decided to spend "more" time clicking-away at my coin obsession!!) .... you guys are lucky!!