I recently looked at my New York Sale auction catalogues. I had my hopes set on a "mint state" Sasanian AV Dinar. It had references to previous auction sales/ CNG was one example. Hence I checked up on its last auction date in Triton VII. To my utter dismay, I found that CNG graded the exact coin as EF/ with "smoothing" I never heard of this term before....but it cannot be good.... John
A smoothed gold coin? That does seem a bit unusual, although from time to time there have been threads and discussions about other gold coins that have been smoothed and/or otherwise altered. Of course, if it has indeed been smoothed then it's clearly not "mint state." It would be interesting to see if you could find before and after examples of this coin.
