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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;beef1020, post: 3111913, member: 24544&quot;]Tooling is different than smoothing.&nbsp; Smoothing generally refers to smoothing corrosion in the fields, and that Trajan has a lot of smoothing on the reverse.&nbsp; It also has tooling, most noticeably on the reverse head of the seated figure, it&#039;s cartoonish and very noticeably not the correct style.&nbsp; If someone tooled that area they likely enhanced other areas as well...</p><p><br /></p><p>The patina on the AP is almost certainly not original, you can see on the reverse it has a lot of odd color combinations going on, and the Vespasian is likely not original although well done.&nbsp; Just from experience I would say over 50% of decent ancient bronze has been repatinaed at some point, it&#039;s just a part of the cleaning process.&nbsp; Generally price is dependent on how nicely it was done.&nbsp; I would consider the re-patina on the Vespasian to be well done and would not ding the coin for it, whereas I would not purchase the AP for any price.</p><p><br /></p><p>A couple years ago there was an exhibit on ancient Greek bronze statues that came through the National Art Gallery in DC.&nbsp; It was a fascinating exhibit on many levels, but part of my interest was being able to see a lot of confirmed ancient bronze patina.&nbsp; It&#039;s very distinct and hard to reproduce chemically.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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