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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 1768610, member: 19463&quot;]When I sold most of my coins in 1974, one that I hated to let go was a Caligula sestertius with the wreath reverse.&nbsp; Mine was worn but smoother than many we see and had the style portrait I prefer for Caligula.&nbsp; Many of his portrait cons have a skinny, pinch-faced style portrait but some have a heavier, more pleasant look that I prefer.&nbsp; An example points out a real problem with Julio-Claudian bronzes:</p><p><a href="http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=630478" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=630478" rel="nofollow">http://www.acsearch.info/record.html?id=630478</a></p><p>This coin has been tooled to restore the first few letters of the obverse legend.&nbsp; The sales description suggests that this was to correct the name of the emperor being removed (we call that a damnatio memoriae).&nbsp; To me a real damnatio is better than a perfect coin but I&#039;m not willing to accept this as one.&nbsp; Caligula damnatios should be missing the first C and could even have a gash on the throat but these things are easily added to &#039;upgrade&#039; a coin to a special interest item.&nbsp; This one has a rather large tooled/smoothed region extending up from the recut CCA making me suspect that the tooling was to fix corrosion rather than intentional defacement by a political hater.&nbsp; </p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>This is the problem:&nbsp;&nbsp; Many, many early sestertii have been tooled.&nbsp; I don&#039;t like tooled coins at least most of the time.&nbsp; I can accept a certain amount of &quot;smoothing&quot; of roughness defined as glossing over texture in the patina.&nbsp; &quot;Tooling&quot; goes deeper into the metal below the patina.&nbsp; In the case of our example, the tooling just replaces what was originally there so it is not as evil as an attempt to make a Manlia Scantilla out of a Julia Domna (I&#039;ve seen one of these but don&#039;t have a photo).&nbsp; Tooling is so common on Julio-Claudian bronzes that it is one of the areas that I would only feel comfortable buying from a dealer I both trusted and believed knew significantly more about the subject than I.&nbsp; I suggest keeping this in mind as you go shopping for your Caligula portraits.&nbsp; I believe my Vesta as has been smoothed but not tooled.&nbsp; The market now is such that it is even profitable to tool these coins beneath the notice of some members of this group.&nbsp; It, truthfully, is time to consider buying any sestertius with a bit of care.&nbsp; Skilled toolists can make money on those of us who do not.&nbsp; High on my want list is the coin in this photo sent to me 40 years ago.&nbsp; A tooled as reading Pescennius Niger (who had no Roman bronzes) falls into the &quot;bad enough to be good&quot; category.&nbsp; I wonder what ever happened to it.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><img src="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/gpesc.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" />[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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