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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 7832859, member: 19463&quot;]We must regret never really knowing where a tooled coin began its journey into oblivion.&nbsp; Andres2&#039;s coin may be better than the laureate one was before the tooling began.&nbsp; I fear that a much higher percentage of great beauties have had some work done including some that were done well enough that they passed our scrutiny.&nbsp; We often see tooled coins shown here and we laugh at how poorly they were done.&nbsp; The ones we don&#039;t see and don&#039;t find &#039;funny&#039; are the dangerous ones.&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>I have shown many times the star of my Black Museum and my favorite toolie.&nbsp; This &#039;Zenobia tetradrachm of Alexandria&#039; (actually, none of the above) started out as a Flavian as (?).&nbsp; I found it very interesting and was willing to spend the $12.50 price.&nbsp; To me, the way the SC was reshaped into a date LE was worth the price of admission.&nbsp; I would love to know if this coin ever actually sold to someone with more money than sense as what it is &#039;not&#039; for a price that would make us cackle in disbelief.&nbsp; Tooling, along with fakes in general, is a part of the history of numismatics whether you like it or not.&nbsp; Will people continue to patronize big name auctions known for selling these things as fine art?&nbsp; Of course they will.&nbsp; Oil paintings or retouched, repaired and massively reconstructed before being sold for millions.&nbsp; Statues are cobbled together from broken parts hopefully, but not certainly, from the same original.&nbsp; Museums are proud to display dinosaurs that share bones from several specimens or even species held together with artificial filler parts.&nbsp; Coins may be the last place where at least most collectors see such shenanigans as wrong. [ATTACH=full]1346220[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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