I bought the following coin a few years ago, but have not photographed it (or did I, I had a bit of deja vu while editing the photo) and wanted to show it here. I usually have a pretty good coin memory, but I do not recall who I bought it from or what I paid, so I thought it might be a good idea to show it here and try to have it blessed by the priests of ancient numismatics. Does it look genuine? I have it attributed as RIC II 763. RIC lists it as rare and I didn't find it on Wildwinds or CNG past sales either.
I love examples with lots of grunge, colours and personality (I looked for smoothing and tooling, but wasn't turned-off by the amount that "might" be there) ... I think that it has fairly sweet eye-appeal (the obvious question is => what are they asking for it?) *edit* ... sorry, I see that you've already purchased it (well then, congrats => it's pretty)
Let me ask a specific question. Notice the "spikes" above the letters "NVS" in the emperor's name. Are those a cause for concern or just metal flow lines? I also should have mentioned the size and weight of the coin: 31mm 27.5g
I'm sure the coin had a very confusing, thick multicolor patina and it would be hard to know when to stop scraping it away without making the slight smoothing turn into something we would consider inappropriate tooling. Most coins seem to get cleaned one step farther than we might have liked if we had known in advance that the result would look that way. I might not love the look shown here but I'm not sure the coin as it was before they started had the potential to be processed into a real looker. I don't consider this inappropriate as much as unfortunate.
Does it look OK ? well yes and no I'm pretty sure its authentic, but it looks it was treated in the past for Bronze disease , and I believe its in need for another treatment with Verdicare imho. Member okidoki bought the same coin in January 2017 https://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=5696&pos=37 nice coin with an interesting motto, Jupiter protecting the health of Hadrian & Aelius sadly that didn't work for Aelius
@dougsmit I certainly cannot disagree with that assessment. I would love to see what this coin looked like before it had a facelift.
It makes a good first impression. It looks OK to me as far as being genuine out not. It seems to be a fairly scarce type. On-line sources document just a few example. I briefly compared it to examples documented in acsearch. Style and strike seem to be in-line with these other examples.
