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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;AncientJoe, post: 4986225, member: 44357&quot;]Thanks! I use them for a third party, impartial opinion and for a multitude of additional context. Depending on the dealer, they will comment on the previous sale of a coin, market conditions, and other ancillary factors which are important to understanding what to bid: an auction house only has a few words of space to describe a coin.</p><p><br /></p><p>If my dealer said he thought it was tooled and the auction house didn&#039;t, I would skip bidding on the coin. NGC provides a similar third party viewpoint: they don&#039;t guarantee authenticity but they certainly won&#039;t slab something they don&#039;t have confidence in.</p><p><br /></p><p>Some auction houses under-describe problems on coins either because of volume or just because that&#039;s their methodology. I bought this coin from CNG and they&#039;re above reproach but they&#039;re still human and tooling can sometimes be an opinion.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is the (very lightly edited) email I received from my dealer to show just how deep some dealers will go:</p><p><br /></p><p><i>&quot;I grade the coin good VF/about VF with some light overall corrosion as you can see. It is reasonably close to the photo in the interior of the catalog. The light concentric circles that you see on the obverse are raised and part of the flan manufacture which I have seen on other coins with the indentation in the center of the coin. There has been some overall light cleaning, especially in the central reverse field, but nothing excessive and no tooling. I suspect&nbsp; that the grayish-brown patina may have been augmented a bit&nbsp; in the cleaning process. I actually had one with a nice green patina many years ago, although not significantly better in sharpness. There may only be one better example in the British Museum. Overall this is a very rare issue and of course desirable. I noted that it failed to sell in Triton IV back in 2000, but would expect a different situation today. It should be quite competitive. I think $15k would be a strong, sensible bid on the Amastris and hopefully will be buyable for less. The fact that it is on the catalog cover doesn’t help—ugh.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>Regarding the other Zodiac coin in the sale, lot 494, this coin has considerably more condition issues than the Amastris.&nbsp; I think it was likely stripped of its patina, fairly aggressively cleaned, and then re-colored with the current dark brown-black color. It of course also has a light overall corrosion. The fact that there is no pedigree is also a cause for concern for a number of collectors from a cultural property standpoint. It does still have reasonable detail on the Zodiac however and other examples have been horrible. I think this type is slightly more common than the Amastris, but both should have some competitive bidding.&quot;</i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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