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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;DonnaML, post: 7789134, member: 110350&quot;]Wholly apart from the fake sand patina on bronze coins, Athena is notorious for that artificial bluish tinge on silver coins. Browse through Athena&#039;s stock and you&#039;ll see many examples.&nbsp; See this thread of mine about an example I bought from Athena of the Hadrian Aegyptos denarius, which came with that blue tone -- and was quite unattractive in person, to be honest: <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-mysterious-transformation.360216/" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-mysterious-transformation.360216/">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/a-mysterious-transformation.360216/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>This is the coin as it looked when I bought it:</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/hadrian-egypt-jpg-version-jpg.1118278/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>And this is the coin as it looks now, after the passage of a few months caused most of the blue tone to fade, and a brief treatment described in my thread took care of the rest:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1337008[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>A vast improvement, I think!</p><p><br /></p><p>Speaking of Egypt, he also does something to all the billon tetradrachms from Roman Alexandria that he sells. Not applying a blue tone, but something else, because all the ones he offers look pretty much exactly alike in tone, regardless of their condition, and quite different from those offered by other sellers -- much more like silver than they ordinarily do. Once you&#039;ve seen his Roman Alexandrian tetradrachms, you&#039;ll always recognize them.&nbsp; It&#039;s really too bad he feels the need to jazz them up, because he has one of the largest and most varied stocks of Roman Alexandrian coins of any dealer. And his prices are a bit high, but not outrageous. (There&#039;s only one V-Coins dealer I can think of whose prices are almost always completely outrageous. I won&#039;t name her, hint, hint.)</p><p><br /></p><p>Separately, I too, have noticed that he replies to inquiries either very belatedly or not at all. Not only to offers, but to inquiries about the shipping of coins already purchased.&nbsp; Once, after a very long silence concerning the shipping of a purchased coin, he finally responded and used the &quot;family problems&quot; excuse. Who knows?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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