How much is too much, tooling on a Wolf and Twins RR Sextans

I bought a Wolf and Twins Sextans yesterday at the Bellaire Coin Show and now am having buyer's remorse. I will probably return it today, but thought I'd post it here for comments. I think the price is right. Tooling is the only question.


When I look on acsearch, most of the examples look poor or tooled. I know the pictures are not great, but time is short if I want to make the return. If I keep the coin, better pics will come later.

https://www.acsearch.info/search.ht...s=1&currency=usd&thesaurus=1&order=0&company=

 

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Gene, this is my example:

Depending on your price, (low), the tooling is ok. I captured this one and was $330 Fully Landed Cost from the Naville Auction


Roman Republic
AE Sextans 217-215, Anonymous
Æ 29.5mm., 24.54g.
Obv: She-wolf suckling twins; in exergue, two pellets.
Rev. ROMA Eagle standing r., holding flower in beak; behind, two pellets.
Ref: Sydenham 95. RBW 107. Crawford 39/3.
Comment: Nice brown-green patina. Very Fine.
Ex: From the E.E. Clain-Stefanelli collection.

 

Mine was $300, a good price..... but I think there was tooling that removed some ruff spots in the fields. I am ok with field smoothing. I think the tooling extends to the outline of the wolf and eagle.

 

I am not sure if the tooling is intentional or just the result of heavy-handed cleaning but I would probably pass on this example.

 

I agree with @red_spork that it is aggressive cleaning. I had meant to say that in my earlier post.

 

I say keep it until you find a better one at a price you like. Could be a while...

 

Hi Gene, hope you'll let us know what you decided.

I was at the show today and am sorry I missed you. We'll have to meet sometime. I had a pretty good day - 1 coin from Paul Landsberg at Ephesus Numismatics; 2 from Del Parker, irishcoins.com; and a whopping 7 from Nick at Pegasi. Increased my holdings by one third in 4 hours.

 

I decided to return the coin. A couple of coins I bought are shown below. I will start a new thread for the "biggie" from this show.

Chicken and harp coin for my sisters -


RR semuncia -


ROMAN REPUBLICAN ANONYMUS AE-Semiuncia
Rome; 215-212 BC
Obv.: Head of Mercury right
Rev.: Prow right, above ROMA
4.21 grams; 17.3 X 19.7 mm
Cr. 38/7 (not sure yet)

 

The attribution is correct for the style and backed up by the weight. Nice example!

 

Not sure I would have bought it either at 300 $, mainly because I hardly see the devices on it (especially the eagle), but it may well be my eyes or the picture.

Here's my example, from Naville too, for 103 £ (including fees). Well worn, but still I like it



Q

 

Congrats rrdenarius , love the chicken harp coins , wise decision to return the RR sextans imho.

Here are mine:

 

Sunday is often a slow day for coin shows. That was the case here too. The official stop time was 4PM and half of the folks were gone by 2PM. Surprisingly a large group (maybe 25%) stayed until 3 - 4 PM the posted end time. Some dealers and bargain hunters had to be encouraged to leave. A man walked to the front door with a bag of stuff he wanted to sell at 4:30. One of our members agreed to help him appraise the collection and get back.
My last treasures from the show are to replace my stock of silver six pence.

I gave one to my niece who will be married in September. I like to give them to brides:
Something Olde,
Something New,
Something Borrowed,
Something Blue,
A (silver) Sixpence in your Shoe.