Roman Republican Denarius 46: Desultor

Just a quick word on the Henzen/repatination thing: it is indeed done chemically (as in it is not painted on) and is a 'speed-up' of a 'natural' process, but can look horrid and artificial in my opinion. He mostly does it on coins that have had a previous not-so-successful cleaning, but has gotten less selective over the years it seems. A couple of coins that were sold on auctions and subsequently reappeared in his stock (some quite quickly):










A shame really. All were nice coins, despite minor faults. But I wouldnt touch them now. Some don't look too bad, but I personally would be weary of what defects the 'cleaning' might have hidden. Take a look at that planchet fault on the reverse of that lion thaler for example that seems to have decreased in size significantly (at least optically, might I add). It's especially prevalent on his medieval coinage.

 

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Thank you for the information and examples. From your viewpoint, do you also think my coin looks horrid and artificial, and that you wouldn't touch it?

 

I think that is completely subjective! While I don’t think I would personally buy it, simply because knowing the toning is artificial would make me love the coin less, I do think the case is different for ancients vs. moderns. It can be an appealing patina, but after browsing through his stock for a while I find that all coins start to look the same. Coins from all eras and parts of the world, all with the same colours and ultra-clean fields. I think it is an appealing type and example, even with the less-than natural toning! All have their preferences and I'm certainly not under the illusion that none of my coins has had a touch-up and things like cleaning, repatination in a cabinet or other specific storage conditions don't really bother me. I do think Henzen goes a little too far sometimes, repatinating half his stock! And once you know what his cleanings look like, you instantly recognise them. Another thing I find less-than-stellar is that he will sometimes put 'nice colourful patina' in the description of coins he has repatinated. I guess not false advertising, but someone could definitely be under the impression that they are getting a gorgeous 'original' patination. I avoid him because of this.

When I said horrid I was mostly referring to jobs like this, which I think most can agree on, went a little too far:

 

Thanks; I get what you're saying, and I agree with you that I wouldn't want a whole lot of coins with this particular look. But I think one is OK, and I'm still very happy with mine!

 

@DonnaML - an interesting thread. I have a different varient to you :


CR. 346/1d

 

Beautiful! Do you know what the control-symbol is supposed to represent?

 

@Scipio, English is just that weird....

 

@Nerno, thanks for, yep, a cool coin, and your really important distinction between ('re-')toning on silver and full-blown repatination on AEs. ...But if a dealer does it, purposively and on a large scale, @DonnaML's point still has a significant measure of validity. ...Hmm...from here, the jury's out!

 

Hmmm... Desultory approx cixelsyd ... i know what that is!

 

Great writeup! Whatever Henzen is doing to re-tone coins (if anything), yours looks fine and doesn't look troubling to me. It's nothing like Athena. There is a spectrum of ways this can happen, of course. I recently noticed a bunch of my silver coins in the same envelopes and box had unintentionally toned quite noticeably over a few months, and have had others do so over years in different cabinets. I don't prefer anyone to do it, and I wouldn't do the "crushed egg" method, but if it's not excessive or grotesque, and they're not doing it destructively, I don't worry about it too much.

Here's my favorite Desultor type Republican denarius (though it's a favorite for Hercules -- and especially the rat!). I had two, I think this might be the one I sold, though:


And here's my CENSORI -- the horse is free. I like to imagine he (I think?) bucked the desultor off and went running off the field and into the distance (and perhaps some kindly person will take off the bridle once he's reached safety):

 

@AnYangMan, thank you for your incisive, but no less nuanced observations, and the examples to demonstrate them.
The unevenness of the toning that you get from rushing the 'natural' process(-es) is fine for a couple of examples, even by my necessarily relaxed standards. But after seeing enough of them in one place, the esthetics start to get really tiresome.
...Making @Nemo's response only that much more resonant, by contrast.
When I have the option of worrying about esthetics in the first place (right, you're talking to a (mostly-) medievals guy), I'm a big fan of too things: even wear, and correspondingly even toning. Either quality, across metals and chronology, can enhance the net esthetic effect. --But the opposite? hmm, not so much.

 

Crawford does give a table for these control marks (RPC I page358) but none of them seems quite right. Palm branch is closest, but most palm branches seem to have a straighter stem. I would welcome suggestions !

 

I just bought a Lucius Marcius Censorinus coin, inspired by older posts.
I am not a specialist (at all) in RR coins but I liked the symbolism on this coin so I decided to get one.
Here is my example:


Some questions for RR specialists, please
- I attributed it as RRC 363
http://numismatics.org/crro/results?q=363
But what are the differences between 1a,b,c,d ? On the website only the D variant is described as Marsyas naked, but I think he's depicted naked on all?

- any suspicion of modern fake? I saw some examples of modern forgeries for this coin but I can't tell the difference ... Also, any tooling? I hope I'm paranoid here but some details seem way too sharp

- what is the meaning of the sign where L and C should be in "L CENSOR" - is it a countermark or something similar?

Many thanks.

 

Nice coin! There's no difference among the designs for 363/1a-1d. They differ only in the existence and/or placement of the control-symbols. 1a has control-symbols on both sides. 1b has a control-symbol only on the obverse. 1c has a control-symbol only on the reverse. 1d has no control-symbol on either side. My own example of 363 is 1d because there are no visible control marks on either side, although there's a faint indication on the obverse of what might be a worn-off control-symbol, which would make mine 1b. I see no control marks on either side of yours, so it's probably 1d.

I suspect that the marks where the beginning of the reverse legend should be are indeed countermarks, bankers' marks, etc.

The coin looks genuine to me. I'm no expert on tooling, but the outlines of the designs don't look unusually sharp to me, despite the wear on the high points of the design. Besides, tooling is, if I understand correctly, not nearly as common on silver coins as it is on bronze coins.

 

Thank you @DonnaML. Do you know what is the explanation for the.... Countermark (?) on the reverse legend, L CENSOR? Not sure if you meant my coin when you wrote about banker marks.

 

I'm afraid not; some countermarks can be specifically identified but many are a mystery, and I'm far from knowledgeable on the subject.

 

Much appreciated. RR coins are out of my league (for now) but the design of this coin made it a must have for me.

 

It is not a countermark, the Roman bankers (the so-called nummularii or argentarii) used to test the silver coins by punches with different signs; that is one of them

 

Not bad. They could have found a better spot but I am not bothered that much.