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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lehmansterms, post: 2842603, member: 80804&quot;]I have been dismayed in recent years to see what are obviously &quot;improved&quot; large Æs - primarily sestertii - at or above a certain arbitrary level of grade or &quot;eye-appeal&quot; tending to bring as much as, and in some cases <i>more</i> than those which achieve the same eye-appeal without benefit of highly skilled modifications of this type. This seems to be most common mainly in certain European auction houses, but the occasional item will wind up on ebay, etc. The OC here is an example of something that probably wouldn&#039;t quite make that arbitrary standard (so would not be sold at one of those auction houses) &quot;escaped&quot; that market to wind up on catawiki.&nbsp; Who, exactly, has a hefty enough budget to buy these &quot;toolies&quot; while evidently caring more about some artificial standard of aesthetics than authenticity is hard for me to imagine. But I find no shame in admitting to being a &quot;bottom feeder&quot; and getting more of my collecting thrills from finding and acquiring significantly under-priced authentic examples, warts and all, so to speak.&nbsp; </p><p>This trend towards highly sculptural altered coins seems to be becoming an art form unto itself. Although they hold no appeal for me, I wonder if we should not make an exception and recognize as its own separate venue the high level of artistry with which these coins have been created out of authentic, but imperfect specimens. </p><p>Even so, I still can&#039;t see why anyone would pay what many of these will bring when similar money would buy quite decent, un-altered original and authentic specimens.</p><p>What I&#039;m envisioning the existence of is a system which has grown up in certain of the source countries where all the sestertius-sized coins have been, as a matter of course (as is obvious) picked out in the field, at the very beginning of the process of distributing bulk uncleaned coins.</p><p>The ones which are of naturally high quality can go to sales venues without more than typical cleaning, but the majority of them which are worn, corroded and otherwise damaged large pieces go as &quot;raw material&quot; to established workshops in which they are altered by highly skilled jewelers/engravers/sculptors on what probably amounts to an assembly line basis. At least that&#039;s how I imagine such a large number of similarly altered pieces has been created.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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