This sestertius of Faustina II is being offered at auction by a major European auction firm without mention of any tooling. However, I can't explain the appearance of the letters on the reverse inscription without postulating tooling has been done to enhance their appearance. I also suspect some smoothing, but I'm less sure about that. Opinions?
You see these depressed areas around letters often enough. There is a theory that this is evidence of punches being used for each letter, versus the inscriptions being engraved.
Even with normal engraving of each letter, the field disturbance from pushing around the metal could change the metal enough to cause wear that looks different from expected. I don't see tooling here. Maybe some smoothing in rx fields.
I agree with Doug, no tooling. I see rough cleaning marks, sandpaper ? The celator run out of space on the reverse by putting the letters too far apart, there was enough room for DIANA LUCIFERA But still a nice coin imho
It's a nice looking coin but I agree with your caution, @Roman Collector , about smoothing/tooling. I read an article (I can't locate the source so until I do, this is just hearsay) that many sestertii have had some light smoothing during the cleaning process. I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems to me as though the line between cleaning and smoothing can be a bit fuzzy.
Klopt! It was an unfortunate miscalculation. I think when he realized it, he was already halfway there!
A couple of comments/observations about this coin. First, my dealer told me that the depressed area around the letters in the legend could be due to die movement or shift during striking, so I don't think this artifact is from tooling. Second, I suspect this coin has been tooled in a number of areas that look sharper or have sharper areas than other parts of the coin: (a) the edge of the nose and forehead on the obverse is much sharper than the edge of the neck, but both these areas would have gotten roughly the same amount of wear; (b) the hair bun on the obverse has much sharper details than the hair; again, they would have been subject to the same wear; (c) the edge of the drape on the obverse seems too sharp relative to the wear; (d) the fine detail in the mouth and braid on the reverse seem WAY too detailed for the overall wear of this coin. I'm not an expert, but I hesitate to conclude that this coin hasn't been tooled.
