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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gao, post: 637188, member: 19409&quot;]In my collection, I have a few coins that are damaged enough that many collectors wouldn&#039;t touch them with a 10 foot pole, but I love them anyway.&nbsp; I would like to see what coins all of you have in your collections that many others would consider uncollectable due to being broken, holed, pitted, corroded, or some other reason.&nbsp; Feel free to post some of your favorites or perhaps those that are damaged in an interesting way.</p><p><br /></p><p>For my first entry, I present you the following:</p><p><br /></p><p>Philip I &quot;the Arab&quot;</p><p>Roman AE Sestertius</p><p>coin struck 247-249 AD</p><p>RIC 168a</p><p><br /></p><p>O: IMP M IVL PHILIPVS AVG, laureate, draped, &amp; cuirassed bust right</p><p><br /></p><p>R: ANNONA AVGG, Annona standing left with cornucopia and holding corn ears over modius, S C in field</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition to the obvious chunk missing, it&#039;s also over cleaned, and there&#039;s a raised line on the neck that&#039;s from either a die crack or foreign matter inclusions in the alloy.&nbsp; So why do I have this?&nbsp; Mostly, I really like the portrait.&nbsp; Coin quality in the Roman Empire declined during the reign of Philip due to economic problems, with sestertii decreasing in size, flans being more rugged, and portraits becoming more rushed.&nbsp; At the time I got this, I didn&#039;t have any sestertii or any coins of Philip the Arab, and I thought that this portrait was unusually nice for the period.&nbsp; This is probably a pretty unusual opinion for a coin collector, but all else held equal, I would pick a broken coin with a good portrait over a whole coin with a shoddy one.&nbsp; As you might guess, I collect more for the enjoyment than for investment.</p><p><br /></p><p>In addition to that, I found this break rather curious.&nbsp; This is a reasonably thick coin, so it would take quite a bit to break it.&nbsp; I&#039;ve been wondering if it&#039;s the result of a poorly cast flan that either didn&#039;t fill the mold right or somehow was made with a weakness in that part of the flan.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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