Please take a look at some of the bronze Roman Imperial coins for sale over on CNG at www.cngcoins.com in their "Electronic Auction". Is it strange that many of the coins are roughly the same shade of green with brownish-red overtones? I will attempt to post some links. Here are some to browse... Link 1 Link 2 Or for a few specifics... Vespasian Vespasian 2 Domitian I am not accussing them of anything at all. However, I am thinking of bidding on some of their items and just want to see what others think of this. It may be nothing at all...just looking for opinions as I'm relatively new to this game. Thanks!
Hello, And you can often find pictures looking similar because of the way they are photographied. I mean, coins from a said seller will all look in a same range of colour or light. If you browse through Vcoins, after a while you will be able to tell from the picture, the seller of a coin. Cucumbor PS : and of course, you can buy from cng in confidence
Yes, this is something I had thought about, that it could have something to do with their lighting. I guess I just saw all of these nice coins with similar looking green patinas and just thought it too good to be true! I have never bought from CNG before. I understand they have a good reputation. Have you all bought from them before and been pleased with the transactions? I also would appreciate any other's comments on the color as well. Thanks!
I don't see anything wrong with those coins. They even mention the smoothing done on the Vespasian (RIC 521). As Cucumbor says, some of the similarity is the lighting in the photography. Like all the big auction houses they are masters at presenting their offerings very well. CNG is generally well respected & gets some very nice coins. They did recently have a lot of Apollonia Pontica Drachm's that were fake, but they were pulled quickly once it was made known.
It means there was some roughness/texturing to the fields & it was smoothed down. Extensive smoothing is often considered just one step away from tooling & generally frowned upon, light smoothing is considered ok by most folks I've talked to. It's often considered an acceptable step in the conservation of some coins.
Well, I really know nothing about ancient coins, but I've dug a few teens and twenties wheat cents that have that same deep green color. I dug an 1908 Indian Head cent and it has the color of a granny smith apple, only more solid. I've also found some coins from the same time frame with no unusual coloring. The soil conditions have a lot to do with that sort of thing, I think. I imagine those coins were dug at some point, so maybe the same effect could have happened with those as with my IHC.
Thanks for your response TheBigH. There's no doubt that the coins have a nice, green patina to them. My question really was that I was concerned because the patinas on many of the coins look so similar. In my somewhat limited experience, it's unusual to find a bunch of bronze/brass/copper coins for sale that have very similar looking patinas. Normally, they all look a bit different. The exception would be if a seller was offering coins that were all found at the same time in the same location. I really wondered if people thought they had been artificially repatinated or not.
It's always a possibility, but I've never heard of CNG doing such a thing without mentioning it. I'm no expert, but I think they're ok although it's sometimes hard with photos. For true expert opinions you'd want Barry Murphy, Curtis Clay or one of the other true experts that make a living in the field and participate at Ancients.info to comment.
Yes, they are lovely coins. I like that second vespasian. I would doubt there is repatination, but from the similarity of tone they might be from the same find/ area.
