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Message:: [QUOTE="Curtis, post: 25162190, member: 26430"]I'm curious to know what happened if anyone has won and then used acetone on the coins from Sol. I haven't bought any from them but I've noticed Sol for selling remarkable numbers of rare Roman/Byzantine AE4/nummi types that I collect. (E.g., the Zeno's Victory-dragging-captive, Justinian's VOT XIII & XIIII.) I've seen several of them later slabbed by NGC. None of those specimens mentioned the artificial patina -- which I had wondered about. I think NGC does make a note if they believe the earthen soil is applied. Not sure if they're perfect at detecting it, but I would expect they see it all the time and can usually tell. I wonder if some of their coins are original patina, but others are applied? "Applied desert patina" doesn't bother me much, but I do want to know whether it was added or "as found." The thing that made me question their listings was that it looked too uniform. Even if these are recent metal detector finds from Syria, there should be more variation in the colors, both "externally" (from coin to coin) and "internally" (there tend to be other colors, like green, brown, and blue layers between the orange soil and the black surface). That said, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are pretty much "as found."[/QUOTE]