Smoothing: Yay or Nay?

That is a pretty nice Caligula. 2000-year old copper often has some surface corrosion and this one may have had some "smoothed," but it came out very well. I'd be happy with it.

 

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That was my opinion judging just from the photo. Photos lie.

 

I think you have to judge on a coin-by-coin basis. Sometimes, removing a nasty encrustation in the field that has truly merged with the coin is a no-brainer (I think), but other times it is too much and unnecessary.

 

Disqualify is a hard word. Smoothing certainly lessens the appeal.
I own some smoothed coins of which I am aware and, I am sure, others that I missed. I would rather have a coin with no faults of any kind and smoothing is one thing I call a fault. There are worse faults like tooling which I really try to avoid.

Exactly. The rules need to be a little flexible. Not everything is absolute.

There even are tooled coins I would love to own. About 50 years ago, I was shown an as of Pescennius Niger which I then believed started life as another emperor. I would love to have it because any coin you remember after 50 years should be on your want list.

My only toolie I love having is this Zenobia not-a- tetradrachm which I believe started as an as of Vespasian or Titus. I admire the thought put into making this ridiculous fake. Who would think of changing SC into the date LE? I wonder what else this person made (and when). It was worth my money ($12.50, I believe?).

 

Although I could only give a final judgment if I saw the coin. I think that smoothing does not necessarily have to be problematic. A slightly smoothed surface will not detract from the fact that it is an Ancient coin. However, if it is strongly smoothed, I would doubt, because in my eyes this type of smoothing makes the coin lose its old character. I think it is especially important whether the coin is very difficult to get. If that is not the case, I would look for a different example. If it is very rare then I would buy it, assuming it is lightly smoothed.

 

I think I would prefer it had the same type of fields on the obverse that it has on the reverse, but it would really depend on how the coin looks to me in my hand.

As I said in the other thread, I would gladly give this coin a home. I don’t think any possible smoothing on it detracts from the appeal at all.

 

The reason that there are so many different answers and opinions in this thread is due to the differing definitions each collector has about what, exactly, is "tooling."

This topic has been discussed before on this site and my own personal definition that I posted in another thread is the one by which I still judge ancient coins:

At some point the ancient coin ceased circulating. When it did, it had some circulation wear, scratches, etc., and this is the true condition of the coin. Lying undiscovered for centuries or millennia resulted in deposits, detritus, etc. coming into contact and adhering to the coin's surface. Removal of this additional material is what I consider smoothing, since it does not alter the coin's condition after it fell out of circulation. This is why, in general, smoothing is generally regarded as benign, and not as tooling.

Another very succinct definition, pretty much the same as mine, was posted by lrbguy:

Smoothing is the removal of accretions, including substances which may have chemically bonded with coin material at the surface. Patina is the metallic salt that forms at the surface of the coin, and consists partly of coin material and partly of outside chemicals. But accretions are added deposits and adhere to the surface from outside the coin itself. Clearing those off is what smoothing is about, whether in the fields or in the devices.

Of course, these are theoretical definitions -- it's not possible to know the condition of the coin when it ceased circulating millennia ago ("Hey, Macrinus, does this coin look tooled?" "Uh, hmm, Cassius, my 2,000 year old eyes are a little too weak to see if it is."). That's why I personally rely on the opinion of my dealer who will have inspected the coin in hand prior to providing his opinion about its condition.

For me, smoothing according to my definition is acceptable in an ancient coin.

 

The strict and I believe correct definition of smoothing is: removal of actual metal from the surface of a coin in order to make it more attractive by eliminating pitting, scratches, or other defects.

Removal of deposits on the surface of a coin without cutting into the metal is just cleaning in my view, not smoothing.

Yet if such cleaning is clumsy or uneven, often because the distinction between deposits/patina on the surface and actual coin metal is hard to draw, then it will usually be called smoothing these days, inaccurately in my opinion.

 

All of the SS-Central America hoard coins/ mostly 1857-S Double Eagles have been brought up in different salvage operations. All of these where freshly struck, San Francisco Mint examples. But, after lying at the bottom of the Atlantic for 150+ years, they needed professional cleaning. So experts in the field removed sand/ rust/ salt deposits. In the end, coin surfaces where not damaged/ altered and coins all where graded as MS-60-68 with no details. However, I have seen many coins with UNC details/cleaned. This ex. still has some rust stains.

 

For me smoothing is a definite maybe. Many ae coins especially Roman sestertii have been smoothed. It depends on the degree that the coin has been smoothed as well as whether or not the coin has lost some detail because of over enthusiastic smoothing. "Er shouldn't there be an S. C. in the field somewhere there?" Not good. As noted in other posts some coins have been smoothed hundreds of years ago so even the smoothing has age patina. Tooling is another issue all together. That is simply bad news.

 

This definition of smoothing raises a lot of interesting issues, especially since the process of cleaning a coin may inadvertently or unintentionally remove original metal from the surface in addition to removing encrustations and other deposits. In this instance, I personally wouldn't be concerned about a coin that exhibited such smoothing.

However, the process of eliminating pitting is a bit trickier. At the time the coin ceased circulating, it's unlikely that its surface exhibited any pitting other than scratches and gouges, since the striking process on a smooth flan would have resulted in smooth surfaces and circulation would have worn the surfaces and devices even smoother. So pitting on coins is most likely due to chemical processes that resulted from contact with soil and other coins/contaminants that etched the coin's surface and devices as it lay untouched for centuries. Since these pits weren't present when the coin ceased circulating, I don't necessarily think that smoothing such pitting disqualifies a coin from being collectible, although I will not collect overly smoothed coins even if done solely to remove pitting.

It's a bit more of an issue if scratches have been smoothed since most scratches will have been created while the coin circulated and thus were present on its surface when it ceased circulating. Removing these scratches during the cleaning process might render the coin uncollectible for me, if it's apparent that's what was done to the coin.

Overall, using Curtis's definition of smoothing, my opinion is that the collectibility of a smoothed (but not tooled) coin would depend on in-hand inspection of the actual coin.

 

My personal opinion is that smoothing is little different than tooling. Both are done to improve the appearance of the coin. Tooling nearly always reduces the value of the coin, but in some cases, smoothing is probably necessary and justifiable in order to recover a corroded coin. Smoothing that displays directional tooling/cleaning marks is a significant deterrent for me. The biggest problem in today's market is that smoothing is so common on AE, that many auction cataloguers do not mention it even when it is obvious from the photograph. I've noticed CNG is the exception here - If there is any trace of smoothing it is mentioned. These coins routinely sell at their auctions for low hammer prices, even if they appear to be wonderful examples.

Interestingly, I recently bid on a late Roman bronze listed by a German auction house. The image had no indication of smoothing. After bidding, I noticed the description as auto-translated to English was that the coin was "smoked". I thought this was a description of the color, but to be sure, I emailed the auction company. Their response was that "smoked" = "smoothed". They agreed to remove my bid.

 

It quite possibly improved the visual aesthetics of the coin, artificially. It might even have increased the value of the coin if the smoothing removed unsightly corrosion. But on a smoothed coin, the original surface has been removed, and it should always be described.