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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 2581805, member: 74282&quot;]As most will recall from my previous posts, I&#039;ve been focusing entirely on the Roman Republic, but I&#039;ve been focusing on two areas a little more than the others: the silver victoriati and the &quot;staff and club&quot; series struck at a Second Punic War-era military mint thought to have been in Etruria. The intersection of these two interests is the victoriatus of the staff series, an extremely rare type known from only 3 die pairs and a type that, until very recently I had resigned myself to not being able to acquire for a very long time as the <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102322" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1102322" rel="nofollow">two</a> <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1743724" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1743724" rel="nofollow">examples </a>on ACSearch at the time both sold for over $1,000 USD after fees, and even a <a href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3363992" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3363992" rel="nofollow">third</a> example that recently came up for auction went well above what my modest budget currently allows me to spend on a single coin. As you might imagine, when an example of the type showed up on eBay at a price I could afford, unidentified and mostly uncleaned nonetheless, I was both shocked and extremely apprehensive. After comparison with other examples in my photo file and my library, it was obvious that the style was right and the coin was a die match to another I knew of that I believed to be authentic, so I went ahead and bought it and anxiously waited for it to arrive.</p><p><br /></p><p>A week or so later I had the coin in-hand and there was no question, the coin was absolutely authentic and struck and looked to have excellent detail below the patina, but I&#039;d never successfully cleaned a coin before, much less one so important to my collection that I couldn&#039;t risk destroying it. I wrestled with whether or not to clean it for a short time and sought out advice from a few more experienced collectors and a good friend who is a professional coin cleaner. I got some really good advice from each of these people, but the best advice I got was that there was probably a reason that some previous owner had started cleaning it and given up(see near the center of the obverse on the &quot;before&quot; pic) and I decided to suck it up and pay to have a professional clean it, so less than 24 hours after receiving the coin I was back at the post office sending it on its way to be cleaned.</p><p><br /></p><p>After a few days I got a message saying the cleaner had received the coin and would start on it and let me know how it&#039;s going shortly. A week or so later, I was told that whatever the encrustation was, it wasn&#039;t coming off easily and to preserve the underlying metal it would require a very slow process with a lot of physical cleaning. I received a few more progress updates over the next couple of months mentioning that it was going well but that still more time was needed to carefully clean this coin. Finally, a few days ago, I finally got the message I had been waiting for: the coin was done and would be on its way back to me shortly. Today I opened up the package and was greeted by the coin in the second picture. The coin has some underlying metal issues and porosity, as I expected because every example in my file has similar issues(maybe due to the specific alloy used?) but the important detail is all there and I&#039;m extremely pleased with the result, which is in many ways better than I expected, and probably miles ahead of what would&#039;ve been produced had I cleaned it myself. More than anything, I&#039;m just excited to finally have the coin back and to have been able to add a type to my collection that I wasn&#039;t sure if I&#039;d ever be able to add.</p><p><br /></p><p>The coin as I purchased it, with much of the reverse still completely gunked up:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]560484[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The coin I received in the mail today:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]561154[/ATTACH] </p><p>Roman Republic AR Victoriatus(3.13g, 18mm). Anonymous(&quot;Staff and club&quot; series), 209-208 B.C., Etrurian mint. Laureate head of Jupiter right. Border of dots / Victory standing right, crowning trophy with wreath; Staff between. ROMA in exergue. Line border. Crawford 106/1; Sydenham 209; RSC 24n.</p><p><br /></p><p>Please share anything relevant and let me know if you think I made the right decision.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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