This is my favourite coin in my collection. Feels great in hand at 28 gr and 34 mm, and I love that yellow "Tiber Patina" :-D
Lovely! I can see why it's a favorite. I don't have one but will share this dupondius of Dad because of its familial look - cracks and yellow 'Tiber patina' .
Like the Tiber patina on your coin as you call it, Julius. Got 2 Sestertii of Domitian , black as the night in hand and much wear.
The OP coin is pleasing overall, but I'm curious what makes that a "Tiber patina". To me it looks like a sestertius that was stripped of all or most of its patina, perhaps by electrolysis.
I'm equally curious to know more about this coin and whether or not it's a true "Tiber patina" which would mean that it spent most of its post-circulation life sitting under protective silt in a riverbed somewhere. Here's an example of a coin described as having a "Superb Tiber tone" sold by NAC a few years ago, for a hammer price of around $800K including buyer's fee:
I think many of these so-called Tiber patinas have more to do with a battery and a glass of brine than they do with a river. I'm not a fan of ancient coins that don't have patinas - they just look naked and wrong, but each to his own. I'm perfectly happy with crusty old lumps.
To me they look right because this is the way the coins were designed to look like by the artists who created them and the way they DID look like when in circulation. In that sense, isn't patina just a type of corrosion/damage that is neither original nor was meant to be there and distracts from the beauty the coin was meant to show? Also I like to look at my coins without artificial light :-D
