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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;nerosmyfavorite68, post: 24856319, member: 134416&quot;]That&#039;s partly why I collect ancients.&nbsp; I&#039;m interested in the history.&nbsp; Take Heraclius and his nemesis, King Khrusru, for example.&nbsp;&nbsp; Both the Byzantines and Persians were locked into a life-or-death struggle which directly led to the rise of Islam.&nbsp; It&#039;s probably Heraclian propaganda, but Khrusru allegedly addressed Heraclius as his &#039;vile, imbecile&#039; slave in a letter. Khrusru was eventually overthrown and shunted off to the awesomely-named Castle of Oblivion, after his defeat.&nbsp; That&#039;s some heavy stuff!</p><p><br /></p><p>You might like some of the abandoned mine videos I&#039;ve been watching on youtube.&nbsp; Gly of Abandoned and Forgotten Places explores some of those mines which may have supplied some of that metal.</p><p><br /></p><p>The discussion has been very interesting, with many great points.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, Mike Nottelman brings that point up in the podcast.</p><p><br /></p><p>I haven&#039;t freed my slabs, mainly because I&#039;m klutzy enough to accidentally damage the coins in the jailbreaking process.&nbsp; I have perhaps a dozen. </p><p><br /></p><p>With ancients, there&#039;s also the possible problem of how the holders might react with metals, especially AE&#039;s over time.&nbsp; Perhaps nothing will happen, we just don&#039;t know.&nbsp; The sample size has been relatively small, about 20 years.</p><p><br /></p><p>I do have one big thing in common with U.S. collectors, having the appreciation of good toning on silver issues.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1593420[/ATTACH]</p><p>And back to how it&#039;s hard to grade ancients, let&#039;s take this example of Heraclius.&nbsp; Many Byzantine AE&#039;s were overstruck on earlier issues, like this one.&nbsp; The patina has unfortunately been stripped (yuck), but it was an inexpensive placeholder until I can find another example. It&#039;s from the scarce Isaura mint, when Heraclius was training his troops for the counter-offensive.&nbsp; While coins of both Seleucia and Isaura are usually much less worn than other issues, it&#039;s still tough to put a grade on it. There&#039;s many Heraclian coins far messier than this.&nbsp; When one&#039;s locked in a life-or-death struggle, pretty coins aren&#039;t really a priority, though fascinatingly, Constantine IV brought back the large, Justinianic folles in the face of Muslim expansion, although die work was less than stellar.</p><p><br /></p><p>Just for fun, if I didn&#039;t have to sign up for an account, I would have tried some messy Byzantines on that AI another member set up to test grading coins.&nbsp; Would it have been like the 1970&#039;s Daleks?, &quot;Does not compute! Out of control!&nbsp; Out of control!&quot; *Poof*&nbsp; We&#039;ll never know.&nbsp; Most of Constans II&#039;s AE&#039;s are more miserable than this.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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