Romismatist

Soaking in hot peroxide for several minutes should remove deposits but may remove any patina.

LOL... all gold issues are on my want list but that will always be a fantasy lineup, as gold coins are perennially out of my budget. I'd love an aureus of Hadrian or Vespasian someday...

Thanks for sharing! Great stuff!

There is a Hercules countermark in the first link that @Marsyas Mike provided... it's also on an as of Agrippa. Hercules As of Agrippa: Head of Hercules (Melqart?) 29mm 9.0g, Countermark Martini Pangerl Collection 99

Hello Everyone, Interesting research out from researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam who analyzed early medieval coinage from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. They discovered that Byzantine bullion made up Europe's early adoption of silver coinage in the 3d to 7th centuries AD, but then the Frankish mine in Melle rose to prominence from 750-820 AD, supplying silver coinage in the UK and continental Europe. https://phys.org/news/2024-04-early-medieval-money-mystery.html

Looked at your description. This quinarius has an "ASIA RECEPTA" reverse and was minted at an Italian mint (Rome or Brindisi) not Ephesus. It proclaimed the extension of Augustus' authority to Asia which was previously under Marc Antony.

Fabulous, many thanks for sharing!

Wow, awesome information, very comprehensive as always @DonnaML! Many thanks! Unfortunately, it looks like my hallmark is probably a cornucopia, so the restrike is more modern than I would have liked. Oh well...

Thanks, @DonnaML! I had no idea of this distinction. When I look on the edge, there is indeed a hallmark-type symbol and the word "BRONZE", so I guess it's a restrike. Would these still have been struck around this period, or much more recently? Still a nice medal, in any event...

@Orange Julius, I'm exactly like you in that I don't have a lot of money to spend on coins so for the most part, I'm actively hunting on EBay for bargains and have been doing so for probably several decades now. Sometimes, like you mention, it's coins that are badly photographed or misattributed. Other times, it's coins that require significant cleaning... the gamble here is whether I have the skill to revitalize the lost glory of the coin. An example in the latter category was this antoninianus of Volusian, which I've posted here previously. It was part of a hoard of coins which was found somewhere in Brittany a year or two ago.. something like 30 or so coins were all posted at the same time, all from the same period and with similar surface deposits. Here are the before and after photos... I was really pleased at how this one turned out... the portrait of Volusian is one of the nicest I have seen, and this was an emperor that I was chasing for some time, without success (apologies for my bad "after" bad photos). In earlier times, I would be more zealous in going after badly photographed coins, and remember scoring a nice drachm of Taras for $50 that way which turned out to be quite genuine many years ago. On the misattributed side, my niche specialization of collecting Messapian mints from Magna Grecia sometimes yields surprises, like this Ae of Graxa which would normally hammer at auction for 2-3X the price I paid: Sometimes, it's just items that are posted in the wrong places, like this medallion of Napoleon from 1806, which was in with the true ancients that no one seemed to want. I bought it for $38 all in, which seems low, given that these can go for $150-200 at auctions. Not my area of collecting, but it seemed too good to pass up. Again, the piece appears to be genuine, based on others I have seen... That being said, I have also occasionally been stung by a few fakes (which I now always report and get a refund). Most of the time, I wind up paying at or above the going market rate for most of my purchases as there are always others bidding up the coin (you only need one other person who wants it to snipe it at the very end). Still, given the crazy auction prices these days, combined with rich shipping and hammer fees, I keep coming back to look for those diamonds in the rough on EBay, despite the plethora of fakes and wading through much of the same crappy coins that never seem to find a buyer. It's definitely a marathon rather than a sprint!

Fascinating - thanks for sharing, I had no idea that this was how these coins were struck! Now at least I'm a little bit smarter...

Yes, an As of Hadrian was my guess as well c. 117-138 AD. Based on the profile, I'm leaning more towards Hadrian.

The style of both coins and their edges look ok to me. I think they're authentic but worn specimens.

I would agree with everyone here that it is definitely tooled. They did a good job though, and probably would be convincing to less experienced buyers. Caveat emptor! Thanks for the heads up.

I bought this lot in December 2021 for EUR 165. The Marius is on the bottom right. I probably overpaid as well...