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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gao, post: 783079, member: 19409&quot;]The links were showing unusually good examples.&nbsp; Not only are most more poorly preserved, but they were often oblong and struck off center.&nbsp; For example, take a look at this <a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2864&amp;pos=28" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2864&amp;pos=28" rel="nofollow">Roman Dupondius</a> from my collection.&nbsp; It&#039;s newer than your coin by a few centuries, but you&#039;ll notice that it&#039;s similarly oblong and rather crude by modern standards.&nbsp; The quality of your coin is quite consistent with known ancient coinage.</p><p><br /></p><p>As for the &quot;mineral,&quot; what you&#039;re talking about is the patina.&nbsp; Quite simply, over the centuries and millenia, the outer layer of coins oxidizes and merges with the surrounding minerals.&nbsp; You&#039;ll see that the coin I linked above is also rather greenish, and I have a few Byzantine coins from my collection that have green, gem like patinas like your coin, but I haven&#039;t scanned them yet.&nbsp; You can in fact find coins that come in all sorts of weird colors and textures due to patination.&nbsp; If you want to convince us that this coin is entirely mineral based, you&#039;re going to have to show that it does not have a metal core and that it&#039;s even possible to strike a mineral like you can a metal.</p><p>&nbsp;They don&#039;t really show any more advanced knowledge than I can see.&nbsp; Your coin is just more worn.&nbsp; And if they are more circular, then it&#039;s just because these are unusually good examples, and yours is more run of the mill.&nbsp; Ancient coins were more often shaped like yours than the ones linked earlier.</p><p>&nbsp;Yes, they have different patinas.&nbsp; If you removed the patina (NOT recommended, as it will destroy the value of the coin, both monetarily and aesthetically), you will find that what&#039;s underneath is copper, brass, or something like that.&nbsp; It really looks like a rather standard, low grade Ptolemaic coin.</p><p>&nbsp;I&#039;m not sure what you&#039;re talking about here.</p><p>&nbsp;No, Ptolemaic bronze coins were often huge in all dimensions.&nbsp; This is pretty normal.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;Carbon dating isn&#039;t going to help, since that can only date things that were once alive, and nothing in this coin was.&nbsp; You would need a different radiometric dating method, and you would need to go to the metal core.&nbsp; I recommend against doing this, as it&#039;s going to be very expensive, and your coin really appears to be a rather run of the mill, low grade Ptolemaic coin worth maybe $20.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;Why?&nbsp; It looks very Ptolemaic, particularly the style fo the eagle on the back.&nbsp; You haven&#039;t given us anything that indicates that it&#039;s anything unusual.</p><p>&nbsp;Which were pretty common back then, and if anything, this means that it would be a later coin, as Ptolemaic coinage quality deteriorated over time.</p><p>&nbsp;Yes, and I have some Roman and Byzantine coins that are the same (like <a href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2865&amp;pos=5" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.forumancientcoins.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=2865&amp;pos=5" rel="nofollow">this one</a>), but they are in fact just bronze coins that have attained a rather nice patina due to the conditions of their preservation.&nbsp; This is in fact quite normal for known ancient coinage, and it&#039;s actually an indication that it&#039;s copper based.</p><p>&nbsp;I&#039;m not sure what conditions lead to what sort of patina, but this is perfectly consistent with how known coins patinate.</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;Except everything indicates that it&#039;s a rather run of the mill Ptolemaic coin.</p><p>&nbsp;I&#039;ll look later to find some more worn Ptolemaic coins.&nbsp; What&#039;s on that coin is quite clearly a rather standard eagle.&nbsp; The eagle was the symbol of Alexandria, and they often depicted the feathers so that they looked like fur when the coin was worn.&nbsp; I can even see the eagle&#039;s beak.</p><p>&nbsp;Except that it&#039;s an eagle.&nbsp; I attatched an image below showing something closer to what is actually there (I did this with a touchpad, and it&#039;s hard to make out a lot of what&#039;s on your worn coin, but the eagle head and beak should be pretty easy to see once I point them out).[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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