"Somewhat" tooled Balbinus Sestertius

What do you think about this Balbinus Sestertius?

https://www.sixbid.com/browse.html?auction=3974&category=100422&lot=3264310

I am tempted to bid on it (I love the detail and general look of it) but wonder if that is a good idea (how many of those details are original? Are the style and the rest of it "genuine enough" to be collectible?

 

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Difficult to say. Isn't it only smoothed? Looks majestic to me.

 

You need to find a good die match and then determine what has been modified. It could be a small amount of work or the detail could almost all be new. I suspect the latter.

 

I think Martin is absolutely correct: you need to make a comparison to better determine the degree of tooling....and whether you still think it's worth that or any other value.

 

First a disclaimer, I have seen plenty of RR coins. Imperial sestertius are not my area.
I agree with you would need a die match to tell how much is a later artist and how much of the details were the original celator. That said the coin is stunning. If "real" it would be the best I have seen on acsearch.info. There are 450 hits for Balbinus Sestertius on acsearch. You can see if any match the outline of this coin and see how much it changed from an earlier version.
The op coin -

A couple that looked close to this one -





I would pass. Of course take what I say with a grain of salt. I recently bought a fake EID MAR hoping it was an "old" fake.

 

I recently asked my dealer about a Hadrian sestertius in this auction and he said it had been egregiously and extensively tooled. It appears many, if not most, of the coins in Bertolami's auctions are highly tooled.

My recommendation is to stay as far away from these coins as possible.

 

I just looked through the stock. The Large bronze are certainly worth staying away from with the majority having been modified though not always declared.

 

The vast majority of Roman Imperial sestertii have been to some level messed with. The vast majority have at least been smoothed. Many others have been tooled as well. One problem is that some of the coins were worked on over a hundred years ago or even earlier so even the smoothing and tooling can have a patina that comes only with age. I like sestertii and do buy them but I have to admit I do a lot more study on them before I buy.

 

This is a pretty accurate observation about Roman bronzes, but there is a qualitative difference between smoothing and tooling. Smoothing (in theory) removes surface encrustations and dirt that were not part of the original coin, and doesn't disturb the wear that the coin experienced in its lifetime. Tooling modifies the surface in a way that misrepresents the coin's wear relative to its condition when found.

While some smoothing can be excessive and affect the coin's condition similarly to tooling, it's usually easy to spot this overly zealous smoothing. Saying the OP coin is "somewhat tooled" is like saying the Pope is "somewhat Catholic."

 

Horribly tooled.

Barry Murphy

 

I would definitely agree that a tooled coin is a problem, and if I can see it, I will not buy the coin. Tooling can create problems as the individual tooling the coin may engrave detail which never existed on the original coin or use a style which is not contemporary to the coin or even destroy detail that had survived.

 

tooled is oke, only makes the prices lower/ thats to me

in this types i am hapy i have a tooled and not a fake one

 

rare but heavly tooled/ it is real/ makes me all happy

who tooled now a fake one

 

tooled is a still fare coin/ only there worked on it

 

I'm curious about this one. Many of the sestertii in the auction look tooled, but the obverse of this one doesn't look tooled to me... possibly a bit on the reverse. Opinions?

https://www.sixbid.com/browse.html?auction=3974&category=100422&lot=3264127

 

It's been smoothed on both sides at least. Possibly tooled as well.

 

I asked my dealer about this one (since I have the same type shown in my Claudius thread) and it is 100% tooled.

 

Exactly.

I would add such a dealer claiming a coin they sell is "somewhat" tooled equals minimizing the obvious, i.e. admitting it's "heavily" tooled

Run away
Q

 

Thank you everybody!

It is too bad that no expert seems to have attempted a die study of Balbinus Sestertii yet (and Pupienus and the two first Gordiani, for that matter), like Woodward has done with Pertinax and Didius Julianus´family and Clay´s study on Macrinus (which have all been very useful for me).

But taking a closer look at this and comparable pieces of Balbinus I noticed that
the obverse is too crisp and detailed to be true (otherwise would be the finest Balbinus bronze coin in existence and cost around 50.000 USD) while the reverse figure´s details (fingers on right hand and shoe strings on left food, for example, and I doubt that the personification is supposed to flash his thigh) are mostly the product of a modern artiste´s fantasy.

So I´ll save for something more original