mcwyler

I don't think the sellers were duped. The first and third are proud members of this useful list of fake sellers.- http://augustuscoins.com/ed/fakesellers.html#U

Nice! But to emphasise your point, this is what we get in the real world.. £10, so mustn't grumble.

I'm starting to like little coins. Of course the bigger the better for ptolemaic bronzes etc. Or for that matter bars of gold. But there's something about those tiny coins. The artistry? The cuteness? More likely the price...

Ela126 has the better face of Christ, but I like my example of SB1918 too. It's certainly my most attractive trachy, and it came in the post today! 28mm, 4.1g.

I was interested to read this today, thought I'd share it. (Trabzon is what we know as Trebizond.) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/03/endangered-greek-dialect-living-bridge-ancient-world-romeyka?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Let's have some more...

Campgates? Now you're talking! I'll have to stop there because I could literally post another hundred and I don't want to make this thread unreadable. But yes, I like a good campgate! Don't mind the bad ones come to that..

Just to prove how "good enough" yours are, here are mine. Swap?

Mine is a bit worn and crusty but I like it, 34mm and 32.64g so not a record breaker but nice and chunky anyhow.

What is a good portrait? If I were a lowly diecutter asked to create an image of the most powerfuL (and usually vainest) man in the world I think I would err on the side of handsome rather than ugly. I agree with romancollector, Val baby was probably what we would call in these parts a bit of a minger. Mine was maybe the best the guy in Samosata could do... That said, perhaps in this case he wasn't the most powerfuL, Shapur was?

Zero feedback, what could go wrong? I note that, in the English translation, the "authenticity guaranteed" bit seems to have been omitted... Probably just an oversight.

My Constans II has no pretension to legends at all, but I did like the portrait, so for a 10 euro snack I couldn't resist!

Good points here from many angles. My view is that tooling is not only deceptive, but unnecessary. Unlike collectors of modern coins, we mostly accept that many if not most of our coins will not only show signs of use but sometimes significant wear. I'll go further - some of my favourite coins are really well worn. An orichalcum sestertius, for example, can grow old very gracefully. Why tool it? If there's enough detail to identify it, I'm happy. The only motive for tooling in most cases is profit. Don't make these people richer!

Thank you so much for that, I read this 10 minutes ago and have already successfully used the tool for a purchase from 8 years ago that I lost details of!