How Much Tooling Can You Tolerate?

In the last CNG auction there was a coin I desperately wanted:


Postumus. Romano-Gallic Emperor, AD 260-269. Æ Double Sestertius (33mm, 20.54 g, 6h). Treveri (Trier) mint. 3rd bronze emission, AD 261. Radiate, draped, and cuirassed bust right / Postumus standing facing, head left, holding globe and spear. RIC V 106; Mairat 185; Bastien 63; Banti 44-5. VF, brown and tan surfaces, light tooling and smoothing, flan crack. Struck on a broad flan.

But in the end I did not bid. It went for a strong price of $525 (strong to me as it is tooled). I can tolerate smoothing. I have no issues with that (well, few, anyway). But I just have a problem with tooling (only one coin in my collection is tooled, and only because I didn't notice before I bid). Without tooling I would have bid up to $1,000 but I just cant pull the trigger for coins altered in that way. I really wish people didn't tool coins, but they do as they know many dont care, dont notice, or dont know what it is.

So the question is, how much can one tolerate? I have to be honest, if I could have gotten this coin cheaply, say for $250, I might have bought it anyway.

 

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i would rather not have one tooled. i think it takes away originality on coins.

 

I'd buy a smoothed coin but will no longer bid on any coins I know were tooled, with the understanding that "tooled" means to deliberately alter the devices to make the coin appear rare or in a higher grade.

 

I am not a fan of tooling and have not bought (bid on) coins I knew were tooled. I would not have recognized the tooling on this one without prompting. I have recognized tooling on RR coins and not bid.

 

I can tolerate gentle smoothing of fields, as on old collection bronzes, which was considered part of the cleaning process in the old days. I have no tolerance for tooling of devices or alteration of devices.

 

I agree with you Ken, zero tolerance. For me, it removes any value at all from the coin. In almost all cases the primary motive for tooling is to deceive. If the coin collecting community as a whole took a similar view, then the practice would almost completely cease.

 

I am not a fan of tooling at all. I've learned to spend some time trying to find die matches and looking very closely at coins before buying them, especially bronzes. I would generally rather have a worse coin or a corroded coin than one that's been tooled, though I can accept some light smoothing as long as I'm thoroughly convinced that it's only smoothing. For me my collection is also a research tool and IMHO a tooled coin becomes largely useless because its weight, style and fabric are all suspect at that point.

In an effort to both avoid tooled coins and to avoid those who sell them I've also begun completely blacklisting certain sellers who have a higher proportion of tooled coins, marked as such or otherwise. Lanz is one of these - his apologists always bring up that it's his eBay auctions which are run by less experienced staff or whatever but he himself has said tooling makes coins better and I simply can't support any dealer who feels that way. Any coin that comes from such a seller is suspect in my opinion.

 

Hi

Part of that solution is having a well educated collecting community that recognizes tooling. Many do not recognize a tooled coin. I've seen tooled coins posted on CT with great pride, where the posters clearly have no idea. I'll not say anything in those circumstances, because I don't want to offend or insult. It is incumbent on us to learn what an EF coin of a particular series should look like, in it's natural state, before buying one for ourselves. Look at books, websites and catalogues. Compare before buying. Ask yourself, "Does the hair look correct? Should the eyes look this way?" and compare to actual, die-matched examples in answering those questions before you buy.

 

I feel like tooled coins shouldn't cost more that a nice replica coin.

 

I have purchased tooled coins, unknowingly and once knowingly (or strongly suspectingly ).

I'd rather not have a tooled coin and would like to say I'd never knowingly buy one again, but in the right circumstances I might consider a subtly tooled coin. Not sure what those circumstances would be, but never say never

 

if someone is okay with smoothing, does this also mean they would be okay with the application of fake patinas? Seems to me if a coin has been smoothed then the patina must also have to be "re-applied" to make the coin look halfway decent.

 

Repatination of restored or conserved bronze coins is, from my understanding, routine.

Personally, I don't have a problem with it as long as the restorer's patination formula does not cause accelerated decomposition of the fabric. I do have a problem with surface coatings or "painted on" junk meant to mimic patina and hide problems. In addition to those coatings filling defects and making the fields look smooth (see Zurqieh's and Athena's inventory on Vcoins), I don't know what that applied substance might be doing to the now-obscured fabric. I've seen instances of topical patinas causing accelerated breakdown of the underlying bronze.

 

Yes and no. Fake patina can range from thick paint like compounds to simple sulphur darkening which is essentially just accelerating the natural process that darkens coins. I don't particularly mind the latter, especially knowing how prevalent it is, but I am usually not a fan of the former.

 

Sometimes we are faced with a choice of a smoothed coin or no coin. You can be a purist and insist on no coin but that is hard to do when you face the fact that what exists is what exists. I have a coin that one expert suggested was tooled but another thought was doublestruck making it just a bit different in one area from the only other coin we knew from that die. Either way, I want the coin. I have coins that have been cleaned excessively by what we might call misguided coin improvers. In one case, I have an old auction catalog photo of the coin before it was spiffied up. Until someone comes up with another example, I'll be happy to have that one. I have coins with extensive tooling removing bronze disease. Sometimes we get a body part cut off to avoid the 'other' choice. There are just too many maybes in life to be too dogmatic but, in general, I'd rather not pay good money for a bad coin. Tooling is bad.

Unless.... it could be funny. I like my tooled Zenobia. It came with a little paper insert from a slab "Extensively tooled to change ID". Understatement.

 

This is an otherwise very attractive bronze but the fairly egregious tooling on the obverse portrait renders it uncollectible (in my opinion) for any serious collector.

I'd like to know what the buyer thinks about the coin, especially if the buyer is aware of the tooling...

 

I am ok with smoothing to remove deposits that were never part of the original coin.

I do not buy tooled coins.

I don't think we should create a market for tooled coins because it will encourage further tooling. If I got a tooled coin from a dealer I would return it to send a message.

John

 

That's certainly true. I would have no financial ability to afford an untouched EID MAR denarius, but maybe I could afford a tooled example. Untouched it would cost $200,000. Should I pay $10,000 for a tooled EID MAR (assuming I could afford the 10k)? My extreme example is just to highlight that there can be very real financial consequences to these decisions, and you will not learn the full impact until you later try to sell your tooled "place holder." In my extreme example, the tooled EID MAR would probably go unsold in a second rate auction. To each his/her own, just beware the consequences.

 

HA! (cat whisperer><)

 

I'd prefer none.

I want to believe that the last hand that carved or stamped the coin in my collection was the hand of a person 2000 years ago.

Also

I want the coins in my care to last another 2000 years! I'm privileged to be the trusted guardian of these beautiful artifacts for a short period time. I most certainly will do them no harm.

 

ahh D Ray, i was thinking of you and your "toss in the ocean" coin when i saw this thread