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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Factor, post: 5143427, member: 96413&quot;]Recently a reputable dealer I know for over 20 years have offered me a coin I could not pass on. It is a large bronze of Otacilia Severa from Ptolemais, Kdman 210. The coins is extremely rare, Kadman only knew of one example, in Studium Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem, and no other specimens have surfaced in trade or museum collections. I immediately jumped at the opportunity, but after more careful examination of the seller&#039;s pictures (see below) I started to hesitate. </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1207324[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1207325[/ATTACH] </p><p>While Otacilia coin is unique, and Kadman&#039;s illustration is of poor quality, there are few published specimens of coins of the same type (and struck with the same reverse die) of Philip I and II. Here is a Philip II coin from Sofaer collection:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1207326[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>One can see that left and bottom parts of the coin look identical to my specimen, however top right part is strikingly different. It looks like Nemesis crown in my coin was worked on and converted to letter O, and part of Nike to L, while the original OL was off flan. Overall it looked like the coin was tooled to get it &#039;complete legend&#039; impression and make it more valuable. Well, the effect was quite an opposite and I was able to get it at reasonable price when I pointed this to the seller. </p><p>When the coin arrived I took a very careful look, and didn&#039;t see any obvious sign of alteration. Right shape, uniform color, edge looked nice. And then I poked the &#039;tooled&#039; part with finger (literally) and to my surprise a small piece of the coin just fell off revealing something white underneath. It was some kind of plaster or cement filling, and it took me just a minute or two to remove it completely, again just with my fingers, no tools:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1207334[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1207335[/ATTACH] </p><p>Now I am pretty sure I know what happened to this coin. It was heavily affected by corrosion, probably bronze disease, and somebody decided to &#039;restore&#039; it. The craftsmanship was amazing, I have handled thousands of different coins from area, and I thought I knew something about alterations, which are actually very often seen on Judaean coins. If the legend was restored correctly, I would have not even consider this coin problematic in any way. The coin, from the surface, color, shape and edge perspective did not look suspicious at all! Of course I knew the patina is artificial, but I did not expect anything like that. Again, all the flakes you see on the pictures are some kind of plaster and have nothing to do with the original material of the coin. </p><p>Overall I am actually quite happy that after all the coin was not tooled and all the details that are there now are original. However, it raises a question - how many other totally normally looking coins on the marking are actually modified in a similar way? I now suspect there are many...[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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