I have just spotted some horribly tooled bronzes and thought that I would bring them to the attention of the board as examples of the type of destruction that is done by these people. This individual has destroyed dozens of coins in this manner. Severus Alexander Sestertius Hadrian Sestertius Vespasian Sestertius
Wow. I agree with Mr. Atherton, that the Vespasian takes the cake. Is the perpetrator an Ebay person?
When this tooling started and got really bad, I asked a famous dealer and more-than-top ebay seller from Munich, why he sold such coins on ebay. It was definitely not ethical for a renowned dealer Very simple answer: As long as he gets more money for these tooled coins on ebay than for normal coins in his regular auctions, he sees no reasons, not to sell. Anyway, they were described as "tooled"
Personally I believe that the Dremel tooler is an artist, a master. His works on those coins definitely improved the appearance of the pieces. In my opinion it gave them more value. It even made me think of Picasso's artwork, like this painting sold yesterday in New-York : Pablo Picasso's painting "Woman Sitting Near a Window (Marie-Thérèse)" sold for $ 103.4 million at auction at Christie's in New York on Thursday. The 1.46m by 1.14m canvas, painted in 1932, sold for $ 90 million, raised to 103.4 when added fees and commissions, after a more than 19-minute battle between collectors. I'm calling the coins in the OP Picasso's coins...
Ruined forever, no other words to explain what has been done to these coins. We can consider this as a crime against the humanity. We need laws against them and not laws against who collect.
I don’t see what the fuss is about. These are just the Roman equivalent of Hobo nickels. They are a legitimate art form and express the artistic sensibilities of the dremelmeister.
it is obviously an exaggeration but consider that it was a piece of history and will never come back as it was.
I regret the use of 'Dremel' here unless you can show some magnifications showing rotary tool artifacts. Some of these strike me as more likely done with a sewing machine needle ('Singered') or a nail (Who is the most famous person associated with nails?). Who here recalls a certain group of fakes that showed microscopic rotary marks from the die cutting process? Are these Dremel or Dental? Anything that makes you money is good? Got it! When does a real coin turn into a fake or are fakes OK, too, as long as they bring in the cash? Thank you for clearing that up. Perhaps we should point out that famous paintings are regularly cleaned and painted over to fix 'problems'. Statues are broken and parts reassembled to correct ham fisted restorations of past centuries. Dinosaurs are assembled from parts of multiple individuals with varying degrees of attention to matching the species. We hold coins to a higher standard --- so far, anyway. There are people who are happy to have these coins in their collections and willing to pay good money for what most of us call bad coins. In the 'old days' we put substandard coins in a box and sold them to kids (like me in 1960) for fifty cents. Now we send them to artists who apply $50 worth of their time and produce something the astute businessman can sell to someone with too much money for $5000. This is progress? Not really.
As soon as I saw them, I thought Ebay. I do not even go on there anymore really, but know of the quality of the coins being sold there now.
Difference being, Picasso was intentional in what he was trying to accomplish, and didn't paint over Matisse to "improve it". I hate much modern art, like colored lines selling for millions, but Picasso was a master. He was attempting to evolve art away from still lifes, (since photography was now being used instead), and imbue movement, 3 dimensions, and real emotions into a 2d medium. The "weird looking" parts of his painting were those attempts.
Hi All, Reminds me of the many "Botched Restoration" stories one hears about. Here's a recent one from Smithsonian Magazine: Botched Art Restoration in Spain Renders Smiling Statue Unrecognizable - Broucheion