What’s wrong with this Agrippina sestertius?

I’m interested in your thoughts on this one. Letters tooled? Smoothing? What do you think?

 

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Weakly struck.

 

Heart Burn?

 

It doesn't look tooled or smoothed to me. Then again, I'm not anywhere near an expert.

 

Looks like a little smoothing was done, which is not terribly unusual with these large bronzes.

I like the portrait!

 

Some smoothing but otherwise looks like a decent coin.

 

Where is the smoothing done? Just for my own knowledge.

 

Thanks team! This is an example of a coin i would have bid on... but it's Lanz's eBay inventory, so i was suspicious. It hammered for EU456 on eBay.

 

I think it was primarily done around the portrait. If you look at the deposits, you can see a certain flattening in the field around Agrippina. On the reverse, around the SC and an area to the upper right which was likely rough and quite thick.

As these things go I don't find the smoothing terribly intrusive. Countless ancient coins have been "improved" one way or another; that's just the nature of these things.

 

Ok I think I see what you mean on the fields. Less of the little bumpy deposits.
Yeah, in this case, I think the coin looks pretty nice. The ones I really hate are the obviously tooled ones. Those can be spotted a mile away.

 

Here is an example that sold @Naumann a few years back:


The obverse appears to be a die match with the OP's.

 

From 12:30 to 2:00 on the reverse and partway inward it may have been "filled" with something like shoe polish (gunk) to fill in corrosion holes. I see gunk elsewhere too.

 

I agree with @Valentinian but I think it has been filled in with Bondo or epoxy, and it was poorly done and obvious as well.

 

I think you're right. That flat area's shade doesn't match the rest of the reverse. A pity - that area should have been left as is. I wonder how bad the corrosion is underneath.

It also looks as if some kind of material might have been applied at the foot of the portrait on the obverse.

 

Hmmm. I wondered whether that black gunk was recently applied or not... knowing Lanz, it was likely applied to mask the coin's shortcomings like pitting etc.

It seemed to have worked, as it fetched a pretty decent price...

 

Yep, i wouldn't have paid that much for it. It's an entry level piece and I don't trust Lanz due to his reputation of enhancing coins and numerous bad experiences I've read about. It highlights that reputation is everything.

 

I agree with @Valentinian.

Don't buy from à dealer known for faking almost everything they put their hands on, it would encourage them

Q