Just ran into this interesting story on the interwebs: https://www.livescience.com/rare-charlemagne-coin-found
The purplish-black bits may be hornsilver rather than evidence of a base core. Hard to tell from this single low res photo.
Just. Hang on, for One Minute. Kind of amazing. @dltsrq, I'm intuitively thinking you're right about the possibility of horn silver, rather than @Victor_Clark's no less resonantly informed guess that it's a fouree. Bad as the pics are, it's looking as if the purply black bits are on the surface, rather than being spots of wear. ...And, as a detector find, it's already got provenance! Of the kind that does a summary end-run around anyone's collection. Given which, the level of restraint involved in the cleaning is truly admirable. I'm really liking this.
It's nice to know that the family that owned the coin didn't get completely snookered by the coin selling for 25 Euros or anything like that. Still, what would a coin like that sell for if put up for auction by a major house after authentication? Probably a lot more than EUR 6,150.00.
An example with an eroded portrait but intact sold for EUR 20,000 at Elsen against an estimate of EUR 5,000. The eBay auction opened at EUR 1. https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=1543&lot=332
The coin was bought by a museum in Aachen (Germany) and that is where it belongs https://www.nationalgeographic.de/g...uenze-aus-der-zeit-karls-des-grossen-gefunden regards Klaus
