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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;John Anthony, post: 2258502, member: 42773&quot;]The OP coin has been cleaned, probably lightly tooled and re-patinated. That&#039;s not meant as a criticism - almost all ancient coins are cleaned, and many of them get &quot;improved&quot; by various means.</p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s up to the individual collector to decide how much improvement is aesthetically acceptable. Certainly most of us would not want uncleaned ancients, or our trays would be full of little clumps of dirt.</p><p><br /></p><p>How much tooling is acceptable? In my opinion, some very light smoothing of the fields is ok, as it makes the devices clearer. Personally I draw the line at enhancing the devices.</p><p><br /></p><p>How much re-patination is acceptable? I think the reverse of the OP coin is reasonably well-done. The obverse is too heavy - the dirt is painted on in thick clumps, which makes me wonder what it&#039;s hiding. Major pitting? Bronze disease? (Restorers of ancient coins use a concoction of fine modeling sand and epoxy resin to paint coins.)</p><p><br /></p><p>All of our night-time personas would do well to study the following page. There&#039;s no reason we can&#039;t make astute buying decisions in the dark as easily as we make them while Sol is running his course...</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.fontanillecoins.com/tooling.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.fontanillecoins.com/tooling.htm" rel="nofollow">About tooled, painted, and fake coins.</a>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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