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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 3196514, member: 19463&quot;]The difference here is the definition of &#039;decent&#039;.&nbsp; The old fashioned idea of a pocket piece is not a coin in a slab or specially protected but a coin that can be fingered nervously and worn away with years of loving manipulation.&nbsp; You don&#039;t want a decent coin that belongs in a &#039;proper&#039; collection but one that can sacrifice its being for your needs.&nbsp; To me, the best choice would be a large bronze uncleaned but with detail lurking beneath encrustations. After carrying it for a while, one might uncover core metal under the surface deposits and after a few years of finger contact, perhaps there will be nothing left but polished metal lacking patina.&nbsp; I have always suspected my Galba sestertius served some Victorian gentleman as a pocket piece for some period of its existence.&nbsp; Who can prove it did not?&nbsp; There is no patina.&nbsp; I wonder if it was Mint State in 1850 and put in a drawer when the man died in 1900?&nbsp;&nbsp; That, too, will remain a mystery.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]826325[/ATTACH]</p><p>When I first started carrying keys in the 1960&#039;s, I holed a bronze with no visible detail and put it on my key ring.&nbsp; After about ten years, I saw emerge a profile that I thought was probably Septimius Severus and possibly Provincial but another ten years took away that apparition and left a combination of pits and polished high places.&nbsp; I stopped carrying it when my keys grew in number and I did not want the extra weight.&nbsp; The concept of a pocket piece is the exact opposite of our role as curator of coins entrusted to us by the ages.&nbsp; We expect to use it until there is no more of it to be used.&nbsp; Don&#039;t use a decent coin.&nbsp; Use one that needs love.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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