Message:

<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robinjojo, post: 26273632, member: 110226&quot;]Thank you for the comments.</p><p><br /></p><p>Yes, the photos are blurry, and I apologize for the lack of sharpness.&nbsp; That&#039;s the way the photos were when the seller sent them to me.&nbsp; I tried to make them sharper, but there are limits to what I can do.</p><p><br /></p><p>The coins in the photos are the ones that the seller selected from a larger group.&nbsp; It seems that many of the coins were just too encrusted and corroded to consider.&nbsp; So, I don&#039;t how large the group was.&nbsp; I don&#039;t even know if Iran was the find location.&nbsp; The coins could have come from elsewhere and assembled as a group by a collector or middleman.</p><p><br /></p><p>The die matches are very interesting, but since I am not very knowledgeable about hoards in general I cannot comment on how unusual the die matches in this group are.&nbsp; I know that die matches were made with the owls of the 1989 Syria Hoard, and they are grouped by type. Die matches abound with the Athenian standardized classical owls.&nbsp; It will be very interesting to see what develops with these and other imitative owls.</p><p><br /></p><p>I guess there is always a chance that the hoard is comprised of fakes, but I can say this: The horn silver that encrusts areas of my two owls from this group is very dense and dark, very wax-like in places and quite thick in spots.&nbsp; I have seen this type of horn silver on other ancient coins.&nbsp; I think that it would be difficult to achieve artificial horn silver deposits quickly.&nbsp; These deposits built up over thousands of years of exposure to climatic and environmental elements, and they are the product of a chemical alteration of the coin&#039;s surfaces.&nbsp; Taken to an extreme the alteration results in a leaching of the copper, creating a brittle coin, what a lattice crystalized surface that can be easily shattered, especially for smaller and thinner silver ancient coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>It is possible to buy &quot;horn silver&quot; on the market, in powder form, but it does not lend itself to achieving the dense nature of horn silver deposits encountered on hoard coins. I have a packet, and I have experimented with creating a solution comprised of horn silver.&nbsp; It is not easy. The powder is not easily soluble, and powder itself is too granular and of a dark brown shade, not the dense black deposits that we see on ancient coins.</p><p><br /></p><p>There is one owl with thick green deposits and corrosion on the obverse.&nbsp; The green deposits are probably due to the coin&#039;s contact with an object or soil conditions with high copper content, such as bronze.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

Your name or email address:

Do you already have an account?

• No, create an account now.
• Yes, my password is:
• Forgot your password?

Stay logged in