Is this really how low our hobby has sunk?

A well-known and respected auction house listing.

Read the bottom line.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Hmmm, tooled and $10K?

 

Sadly, I don't think too many of these high end Judaea Capta bronzes escape without some 'enhancements'. Recently I was on the lookout for an example and settled on one with honest wear rather than spend a small fortune on a possibly tooled or smoothed piece in EF condition.

Caveat emptor indeed.

 

David Atherton is right, nearly all the Judaea Capta bronze coins have been messed with. An all natural coin like the one pictured pictured in this thread would sell for upwards of $50,000.

 

I'm not sure I can know how I feel about this coin since I don't know what it looked like before it was tooled. I do know that it is nowhere close to $10,000 but I just hope it was a complete trasher before they started working.

 

Someone with more time and patience than me can probably dig up a photo of that coin in its original form. I’d love to see that too.

 

One seriously wonders who the target customers for such coins might be. Most ancient coin enthusiasts neither appreciate tooling nor have that kind of money to spend on a coin, and I would assume that the few collectors who are able and willing to pay $10.000 for a sestertius will most likely avoid a tooled specimen...

 

If the auction house hadn't been honest and disclosed the 'improvements', how many would've noticed them?

 

If it was smoothed and tooled then the attractive patina was applied as well. It’s more a sculpture than a coin at this point, but a beautiful one done by a talented artist nonetheless.

 

I owned 4 XF 1909D Barber dimes. I sold 1 to a dealer and got a fair price. I expected him to mark it up some and put it in his display case, which he did after sitting down with a dental tool and sharpening hair and ' LIBERTY' he added several points to its condition. If he shared that with the buyer, fair enough, but why would one do that in the 1st place ? At least the auctioneer was honest.

 

The problem as I see it is that the desire for "MS 65+" coins has trickled into our branch of numismatics from the modern "I'll crack this out and resubmit it and maybe it'll go from MS 66 to MS 67" craze. People are used to seeing high-grade, detailed coins and there's a demand for enhancement, unfortunately.

Time was that the emphasis was on a coin's eye-appeal and historical value and wear was to be expected. Even the greatest ancient coin collection ever amassed -- the British Museum collection -- contains examples such as this one, BMCRE 543:



This example is stunning! Its legend is weakly struck from 5:00 to 7:00 but mostly complete. It's well-centered and has a patina to die for despite the encrustation on the portrait of Vespasian. The coin has seen honest circulation. This is about as fine as can be expected for a truly genuine example.

Examples like this are more the rule than the exception:

 

Completely agree. I think some wear greatly enhances the appeal of an ancient coin. The British Museum specimen is about perfect to my eye. I’d prefer the second coin to the OP one as well. The OP example reminds me of old Hot Wheels cars in their original packaging. Instead of some kid playing with it and having a good time, the darn thing sat unopened in a safe deposit box somewhere while life passed it by. The OP coin has that same lifeless coldness about it.

 

Even with an unlimited budget, I'd still rather have that one than the OP coin...

 

The re-engraver is clearly talented but this much tooling should be considered a fantasy at this point. Perhaps it was a genuine Judea Capta beneath all of those edits but it doesn't matter now. And the $10K price tag is ludicrous.

 

I didn't pay any where close to $10K for mine and I am very happy with it.

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/common-but-iconic-judaea-capta.328428/

And I would rather have it than the aEF toolie that started this thread.

 

That hobo-sestertius looks more like a Paduan now to me.

 

With that much tooling it may as well be labeled a fake. It's ruined.

 

...Hopefully the one who buys it will not "forget" mentionning tooling, smoothing and repatination, when they come to resell

Q

 

That's how I think. It it lived in grandpas sock drawer after some years of circulating and was never used as a screwdriver, that's the coin I really want.

 

I see part of this problem traceable to influence of people with a lot of money coming to the hobby with previous experience in other art forms like oil paintings and sculptures. An oil painting with a tear and layers of grime is considered 'conserved' when it is rebacked, repaired and repainted to fill in blank places. Sculpture are glued back together, sometimes like it was originally and sometimes not, to make something that can stand as ancient beauty rather than rubble. This is more than acceptable to most and some now want to paint statues with colors that may represent the original look of the work. In coins, we have always expected untouched originals. Tooling is definitely out and we argue amongst ourselves where acceptable cleaning stops and smoothing (evil) or tooling (major evil) begin. I can see how someone who has been accustomed to buying these other art formats in the $10,000 to $10,000,000 bracket might look at this tooled coin as normal and beautiful when applying the standards of their past experience.

I am not saying that fine art of any format should not be repaired when damaged. We keep hearing of damage by vandals to great works.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism_of_art
The difference here is that we coin minded people do not accept the idea of taking a $1000 coin and 'improving' it with $5000 worth of skilled labor to produce a $10,000 masterpiece. A painting by Rembrandt with a giant slash across the face would be accepted as 'healed' given this repair. Many of us have had surgery leaving scars that do not prevent us from being considered human beings. The fact that it was done would be praised as a miracle and the restoration artist/doctor would be thanked for such fine work. Most of us here would be happy to see those responsible for tooling coins locked up for the rest of their lives with a restraining order that they never again be within a hundred feet of a coin. I applaud the seller of this coin for proper labeling. I doubt that the next sale of the item will be so well handled.