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Message:: [QUOTE="IdesOfMarch01, post: 2711145, member: 39084"]When I first started collecting bronzes about six years, my dealer who has 30+ years experience in ancients (Greek and Roman) told me that silver and gold was never tooled.  That was true when he told me, but is clearly no longer true. There can be a somewhat fine line between "smoothing" and "tooling," especially when it comes to bronzes.  "Smoothing" generally is defined as the removal of surface encrustations that were not originally part of the coin and do not remove the patina.  "Tooling" is the creation or addition of features that were not present on the coin as found, even if that particular type of coin would have had those features when it was struck. Usually, but not always, a tooled coin is worth less to a serious collector than the original coin would have been, and certainly worth less than a non-tooled coin in condition similar to that of the tooled coin.  One of the apparent exceptions was this Vespasian Judaea Capta sestertius sold by NAC in Nov. 2007, for $81,000 not including buyer's fee, that was described partly as "gently smoothed" but agreed to be tooled among my dealer and other dealers at the auction: [ATTACH=full]612319[/ATTACH] Here's an example of the same coin (not the same dies) that's not tooled (my own coin): [ATTACH=full]612320[/ATTACH] Sorry, but most assuredly, it's not true that tooling matters only if the collector plans to sell it someday.  Yes, it's very difficult to find good-quality bronzes that haven't been tooled, and yes, it's still a 2000-year-old coin, but an untooled coin will always be much more highly sought-after than a tooled one.[/QUOTE]

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