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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2657296, member: 19463&quot;]My wife and I enjoy a TV art series called <i>Raiders of the Lost Art</i>.&nbsp; The series focuses on paintings that have been lost or stolen and recovered or things discovered that may not have ever been known to exist.&nbsp; Often we hear tales of restorations, excessive cleanings and various thing I might not think appropriate for something expected to sell for a few million.&nbsp; One I liked was a Vermeer that had been removed from its original stretcher and placed on a larger one with the newly exposed canvas painted in by the owners best Vermeer style hand.&nbsp; This would be a bit like me setting a sestertius in a brass ring and carving it into a medallion.&nbsp; Another case talked about a forger who had been painting &#039;lost&#039; replicas and &#039;original&#039; Vermeers fooling experts and high level Nazis (Hermann Goering!).&nbsp; He was discovered when he testified against himself and even demonstrated his ability to paint a lost work because a conviction of forgery was a lesser charge than consorting with Goering in post WWII Europe.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>All this shows that the rules for paintings and the rules for coins differ.&nbsp; What is the same is that there are more people with money to buy $10k coins or $10million paintings than there are pieces that will satisfy their requirements.&nbsp; We fans of the ancient world would love to have Roman paintings with not so much as a chip in the paint but most of us know better than to accept such things as possible.&nbsp; 300 year old paintings are now at a point that they require &#039;services&#039; but there are not as many of them without rips and tears as required by the market.&nbsp; Will we be in that place with coins soon?&nbsp; The obsession with collecting only MS grade coins is leading us in that direction as more and more people demand coins that look like they were made yesterday.&nbsp; I only wish there were a magic fluid dip that could wash away the modifications to coins like the OP.&nbsp; I know I would like it better that way.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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