Dilemma. I have a few coins with sandy deposits on them and I am in two minds as to whether I should 'clean' them (distilled water and toothbrush brushing) or to leave them alone and 'file' them as they are. I would welcome your thoughts? Example 1/- (believed to be) Constantine II (as Caesar) Ae Follis 317-337 A.D. Obv: CONSTANTINVS IVN NOB C; Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust left, Rev; PROVIDEN_TIAE CAESS; campgate with 7 rows and no doors, two turrets and star, In ex. MNr, RIC VII. Nicomedia 123r Example 2/- (believed to be) Diocletian, Ae Antoninianus 284 A.D. Obv; IMP C C VAL DIOCLETIANVS PF AVG; Radiate, draped and cuirassed bust right, Rev; IOVI CONSERVATORI AVG; Diocletian standing right receiving Victory from Jupiter standing left, holding long sceptre. In ex. XXI RIC V. Antioch 324
They look great as-is! Leave them alone Plus, that looks like very hard "dirt" and I doubt soaking in water would do much.
For sure the first looks great. I have mixed feeling weather or not to do anything to the 2nd. It looks great but could be improved too (or ruined if not careful).
Sweet OP-additions, Topcat ... those are cool desert patina examples (congrats) I haven't bought too many desert patina examples since our crowd kinda turned critical whether some of the desert patinas were real or manufactured (yah, that kinda took the fun out of it for me) ... However, I like the looks of your sweet OP-examples ... the desert patina certainly highlights the exposed surfaces (very sweet looking coins)
Go with what I have, and save myself some work. Thank-you all, very much, (all who proffered an opinion). (Magic pencil?)
that is the question.. I believe it ends with, " be all my sins remembered." so if you clean those people will remember that it was cleaned....leave them alone.
A "magic pencil" is a cleaning tool that looks like a normal wooden pencil but instead of graphite has fiberglass which supposedly makes it harder to damage the patina. You can find them for sale on EBay and VCoins. For what it's worth (which is very little as I only own coins I've cleaned myself) as long as you can read the coin, I wouldn't risk more cleaning. They're pretty as is.
@ T 7. Tour first coin is rated scarce, and the officinae is Gamma and not r. Besides,it has 6 and not seven rows. Thus the attribution becomes AE3.. RIC VII Nicomedia 93. Please check it up.
Hmm, I'm not sure where you are getting your information but I checked Helvetica's spreadsheet for campgates (see this page; scroll down; click to download the spreadsheet) and Topcat has the first coin's attribution correct except for the number of rows, which did not affect the RIC number. It matches RIC VII Nicomedia 123, rarity rating R1. The mintmark is MNΓ (M N gamma), The number of rows in the campgate ranges from 5 to 9 for this RIC entry RIC VII Nicomedia 93 has a different mintmark (SMNΓ). Boy, those Ms sure look like Ns. Not being fluent with these LRBs I fruitlessly looked for mintmarks "NNgamma" at first
Clean the second definitely. Magic pencil..... yes. Just gently work over the detail leaving the fields alone. It will look 100 percent better.
what everyone else said TC! my first thought was "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" when i saw that first coin, i think it looks great.
Being relatively new to 'Ancients', my initial reaction was "If the moneyer didn't put it there, get it off.", but as time has gone by I have noticed that some 'additions' to ancient coins are not only acceptable but in some cases 'desirable', (such as patina, countermarks, chemical reactions, and 'dirt' to name a few). When I was an 'ankle-biter' (back in the original Flash Gordon days), I came across the word "chronosynclasticinfundibulum" which I was informed (at the time) meant the state that would exist if a person who knew everything about everything met someone else who knew everything about everything. I am a long way from entering that state.
M, N, H and A can get confusing due to handwriting differences between places and times. To me the worst is when H and N confuse Heraclea and Nicomedea. Here the M is just a bit thicker on the right than the N so I guess it is the though that counts.
