I saw this Pyrrhos litra some time ago for sale, I liked it but I had no hurry buying it and I waited for next time. This is the coin: Now I was browsing through some auctions on biddr and I noticed that the same coin is put on auction (by another auction house) but the color completely changed: What happened with the coin and why did they do this? I liked it before much more. Details are lost as well, before the pupil in the eye was visible, and now after it is pretty much gone. Did they treat it with chemicals to remove the patina or add artificial patina? What do you guys think about this?
And cleaned, I think. There are areas which had thick patina (chin and neck, for instance) in which that thick layer is now missing or thinned.
Looks like they acid-dipped it and then applied an artificial patina using something like the "Swellegant" line of products used by unscrupulous dealers of fakes and altered items. Gross!
If by cleaned you mean completely stripped of the nice Carbonate patina by soaking in acid, then yes. It would have come out shiny so they then applied chemical darkening agents and possibly a rub of RenWax. I see it all the time in the realm of artifacts.
The color may just be a difference in photography, but what concerns me more is that some of the features on the second pic are much sharper than the first, particularly Herakles' hair. The second image looks like a tooled coin to me, but I can't make a call from a pic - I would have to look at it in hand from several angles.
