I just picked up my first Marc Antony legionary denarius.These are notoriously difficult to find in decent condition as they were poorly struck and made of relatively low grade silver.They were minted by legions loyal to Antony in his war with Octavian and were used as pay for the troops just prior to their defeat at the sea battle of Actium on Sept.2,31 BC.Each legion had it's own number put on their coins and as you can see,this one is legion II.They go up into the XX's and there are collectors who try to get them all.I'm happy with just one. Antony commited suicide afterwards. His girlfriend too....snakebite I think
I thought that it was sinful to "dip" old coins? Somebody talk to me. Should not a 2,000 year-old silver coin be black?
quickdog,The rules are a bit different when it comes to ancient coins.Almost all of them require some cleaning or conservation at one time or another.Toning can vary greatly on these oldies as well.I have some that are older than this that look like they just rolled out of the mint.You can see some black around the designs on this one but it is exactly as I bought it.It might have been rubbed clean in the last 2000 years although probably not dipped,but who can say? To illustrate,here is a page from my album of Roman Emperors exactly as I received them from various dealers from all over the world.
It's safe to say all ancient coins have been cleaned at some point. Any that have been dug up certainly have... and the vast majority of the surviving ones are dug up. This is one side of ancients that really appeals to me. There's a big stigma attached with modern coins (i.e coins minted after 1300 AD), is it cleaned? has it ever been cleaned? The price differences are awful, if you buy a coin thinking it's genuine but then a dealer comes along and says yep that coin was cleaned a few hundred years ago but has since retoned naturally! (This could be said about nearly every coin minted prior to 1800) That's when you feel as if the coin you have is no longer good enough. Because if you do ever have to sell it you know all the dealers are gonna wanna pay price for a cleaned coin (even if it doesn't look like one any more), and that means you get alot less back than what you initially paid out and to make matters worse you can't then get the funds together to buy your next purchase. With ancients there all cleaned, the market is liberal and thus if you buy one that looks naturally toned (even if it's been cleaned twice in the past), then you're not going to lose anything. This i like. I'm not adverse to buying cleaned coins, but i want to do it at cleaned coin prices!
