Bad news on my new JC Coin - update

An informative experience and thanks for sharing. I missed your initial post about it. Sorry that you didn't get the coin you were looking for, but it's good to hear the seller stood by their guarantee and like others have said, now you get to buy more coins! Maybe put aside the refund and add it to the pile for one that meets your collection criteria?

 

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@Ken Dorney if the coin is now listed as tooled, what grounds would you have for removing it from the site? The description is honest.
Does Vcoins have an outright ban on tooled coins?

 

I dont have grounds to remove it. There is a panel of experts on VCoins and it takes a minimum of three to remove a coin. When I first looked at it I thought the tooling was not mentioned, but either way it now is described as such.

I see that as of this moment three have agreed that the tooling was not originally mentioned and the coin has been de-listed. Social media works fast. I am sure you corrected the description after this discussion but it was a little too late. I am sure you can re-list it with a proper description.

 

Fair enough, when I looked at the listing the description was ok.

FYI I'm definitely not the dealer in question here, just a guy procrastinating at work and posting on CT threads.

 

Sorry about that. NVB and NLB are so close it was easy to make the mistake. Just one reason I go by my real name.

 

I am sorry to hear about your coin @Clavdivs .

That is a bummer, but it is better to find out now.

Looking forward to seeing you get a better one soon.

John

 

I'm very sorry to hear that your JC 'forever' coin was tooled and not the piece you expected it to be. As mentioned before I was in a similar situation a couple of months back regarding a Vespasian dynastic sestertius I was over the moon about which turned out to be a 19th century cast. Purchased from a well respected dealer and provenanced from an old German collection I let my guard down and did not do my homework on the piece. Unlike your situation I was not afforded the courtesy of a pm.

The good news, I was able to get a refund and a couple of weeks later was able to replace it with a rarer variant of the type. So, hang in there, sooner or later another forever coin will come your way.

 

That vcoins Julius Caesar coin is not just "tooled," it is very extensively tooled. Every letter has been deeply outlined. The eye (look at it again) has been carved out. The portraits have been deeply outlined. It reminds me of a "hobo nickel."

I find it hard to believe the dealer did not know it has been extensively reworked when he listed it. The ancient-coin dealers I know personally are ethical. Omitting to honestly describe serious defects in order to sell a coin for more money calls into question the ethics of the dealer.

 

Here is my coin of this type, from dies of very similar layout (maybe even the same celator?) to the OP coin, of lesser grade, but (I hope) more original design left (bought this on eBay for 180 USD):



Here is one of the best preserved specimens (to compare hair and other details):

 

I'm no expert, but I would not feel comfortable buying the well preserved example without some assurances from experts. Even then...maybe not. I don't care for the fields and the areas of smoothness by pitted and I don't like the hair.

 

The coin posted above as one of the best preserve has been heavily smoothed in the fields, more so on the Octavian side. I would want to check the dies to see if the hair is original or not. Something about Caesars portrait, the eye in particular, makes me suspect the whole coin has been re-worked.

Barry Murphy

 

Here's another coin from the same Octavian die. Most of the hair looks fairly original except for the hair below the ear that seems to have been dug out a little bit more than it should have been. Also the beard hairs have changed due to the smoothing on Octavian's cheek. The smoothing in the fields is still an issue.

Looking for the Caesar die.

 

another from the same Octavian die.

 

Perhaps this is a time to mention something I observe and ask if this is accurate. It seems that certain types are more likely to have been smoothed/tooled than others. This certainly is one of them. The coin is not rare. Nice ones are. Whenever there is a popular coin that exists in numbers the temptation to turn goods into fines and fines into mint states seems obvious. I have always wanted one of these but finding a smooth but not smoothed has made it an unlikely dream. The same might be said for Cleopatra portraits, Judaea Captas, 193 AD AE (not Septimius) and, for a reason I have never really understood, Bosporous kings.

 

This is true. I bought one of the OP type in 1978 for $350 from a dealer near Cleveland, Ohio. That was a lot of money, by far my most expensive coin at the time, but I had a portrait of Julius Caesar! After a while (I don't recall how long, two years?) I learned enough (learning was much harder in those days with no CT to help) to figure out it was tooled. I grew to dislike it, and finally decided, with some trepidation, that I would contact the dealer and ask for a refund. I did, I returned the coin, and I got the refund. Whew!

Many years later I got a very worn Julius Caesar portrait denarius to finally have a portrait of his again. As Doug noted, the OP sestertius type is often tooled and I never did try to replace my early purchase with another sestertius of that type.