What happened to this Roman coin?

I think this is a Trajan Sesteritius ..? It is very porous and lightweight (about 31mm & 9.0g.) and the reverse is smooth.

Is it a coin - environmental damage? or something else?

Thank you

 

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Bad cleaning, bronze disease could have done some nasty work to it, soil conditions.

 

Poor thing... thank you! I'm amazed it is even holding together.

 

This is the ugly result of cleaning by electrolysis, which strips off all the dirt, and the patina, getting down to the raw brass, which has been corroding for centuries.

 

Thank you. It is a sad case.

I probably should have included a warning in the title :-/

 

That's a shame for this coin to have survived all this time just to be electrocuted by some idiot (I mean that in a loving way). It should way around 25g.

 

Yeah, but it might have been worse when it first came out of the ground. Sometimes a coin just can't be saved.

Just call it your lunar surface coin.

 

Mmmm, injera sestertius

 

lol

 

Funny one, teff.

 

(For those who don't know Ethiopian cuisine, teff flour is used to make injera )

 

this reminded me of this video i saw a couple of months ago. i was going to post it here but it slipped my mind. anyway, check this out. after the first minute intro, you can skip to the 6 min mark if you are in a hurry, that's when the cleaning begins for these coins. i was surprised by what they did.

 

Wow, such destructive techniques! Didn't you just cringe when they whipped out the Dremel? Not to mention the ultrasound and electrolysis baths...

It looks like the goals of archaeologists and numismatists are somewhat at odds.

 

yeah...wow, i wanted to know if this was a normal procedure for coins for coins found at archaeological sites or are these guys oddballs?

 

Here I thought he gave you a nickname because he had a crush on you.

 

But, MUCH better than...kubet...

 

Oh my DAAAWWWG!!! I am scratching Alexandria off my list for the SECOND TIME! Cripes! And I am still a Newby!!!

 

So this video brings up a point. When we see harshly-cleaned coins, we generally assume they're the work of some hack in his basement, who bought a cheap electrolysis kit on eBay. But it's clear that at least some archaeologists consider harsh cleaning as legitimate restoration.

 

The video suggests that electrolysis is used on coins already cleaned of most encrustations by a scalpel so we don't see the damage on them that we associate with the technique used by amateurs.

 

Still we see that they do not care about the coins as objects themselves but only to date the pieces of broken pottery found with the coins. The exception is, of course - as they say, when the coin is gold. To professional archaeologists gold is still king.