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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lehmansterms, post: 2902138, member: 80804&quot;]Although there&#039;s a lot to be said for coins in &quot;gemmy&quot; condition, it always seems to me that they&#039;re rather like the unfortunate specimens of rare fish, bird or critter, robbed of a full life when they were captured, killed and taxidermied to show in a sterile glass case in a museum.</p><p>Coins are (or at least historically have been) a &quot;living&quot; phenomenon and much of their appeal to me is in the connection they point-up between them, then and us, now - and how familiar the feeling of change in one&#039;s pocket or purse has been to humans around the world for millennia. If coins are in constant use, passing from hand to hand they will accumulate wear. Some will boldly show the effects of millennia of diagenesis - not always &quot;kind&quot;. Some will have other physical damage, including those bent or holed, and those chopped to make change. Some even came from the mint in a somewhat &quot;debilitated&quot; state, artistically speaking. The general experience of coins - both ours and theirs - is subject to the same laws of entropy as the rest of the universe.</p><p>I&#039;m not sure where I&#039;d begin in showing &quot;less-than-perfect&quot; specimens - I have quite a few, a given as a result of a relatively &quot;low-rent&quot; life and lifestyle. This one, however, might stand for many of the others. A $2 pick-box Hadrian sestertius, of which the photo comes near to, but doesn&#039;t quite capture the cameo-like beauty of a coin so profoundly worn as to be unable to be fully cataloged.<img src="http://www.stoa.org/albums/album92/ML06_Hadrian_Cameo_sest_obv.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> </p><p>The photo doesn&#039;t quite capture how much its beauty resembles that of an antique cameo carved from stone or shell.</p><p>Although I own and have owned many Hadrian Æ&#039;s over the years, this remains one of my all-time favorites.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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