Nerosmyfavorite68

ID help insofar as mints and years, if possible. That's the downside of that particular dealer. There's good deals, but the descriptions are barebones. I've been listening to the So You Think You Can rule Persia? podcast. Coin 1: AH mint?? Coin 2 A? Coin 3 LAM?

Due to my chronic incompetence at reading squiggles, I must beg the indulgence of members and humbly ask for ID help for said coins. (my favorite of the bunch) May I present Khrusru II, King of Kings of Iran and Non-Iran (what a great title for a king, people don't have style like that,anymore)... Khrusru II - 591-628 - AR Drachm - 33mm, 4.10g Khrusru II - 591-628 - AR Drachm - 32mm, 4.06 Khrusru II - 591-628 - AR Drachm - 34mm, 3.67g, bend Vologases I - 58-77 - 18mm, 3.63g

Nice victoriatus! I suppose my Hostilian sestertius can be considered uncleaned. Perhaps the barest brush-off. I always envisioned uncleaneds to be more like this. In the glory days of uncleaneds, around 2004, coins that I got from dirtyoldcoins would actually be dirt-covered. I was dumb enough to actually try to clean them (what a pain and a gooey disaster - olive oil). With my second 2023 chance, I just bought a few to leave as-is.

It sounds about as legit as the Visa gift cards sold at local supermarkets (good luck using one, as I found out). The dead body comment had me on the floor. Sounds like something youtuber Dan Bell would say, lol!

While it's not done of nefarious reasons, dealers seem to love to misattribute Byzantine S810. I haven't even handled many of them, but the feet are such a dead giveaway (as is the weight). I don't know how they're confused with Constans II.

Most interesting! I think I'm going to return to the Parthian/Sasanian well. It's a shame that the Heraclius hexagrams were ineptly cleaned, leaving them scratched up. I plan to leave any of the uncleaneds as such, as I went to a lot of trouble to find them before they were no longer available. Cleaning them would only yield another common coin. Given that I'm a total klutz at cleaning, it will be quite easy to leave them as-is. I haven't been able to find an uncleaned sestertius, this one being the closest: This one was sold, 'as found', but I'm not sure if it's faux dirt.

Was that made by the Hound of the Baskervilles?

This Hostilian sestertius could have been cleaned a bit more, but I liked the coin as it is. I'm not sure if the patina is real or not, it's powdery, but no smoothing goin on there.

Last year, I compiled a set of uncleaned, or as uncleaned as one can find in 2023, coins. Zurqieh was the main route. Do most silver coins, like the Sasanians below, have horn silver and have to be cleaned before entering the retail market? I have some Heraclius hexagrams with ugly horn silver as well. One hardly ever sees it in vcoins listings of the same denominations. The bottom one has an attractive golden tone. Tetradrachms, silver or otherwise, are tough to find in uncleaned condition. It doesn't show so much in the picture, but the white stuff on the obverse is glossy in person. It reminds me very much of flowstone, which Gly sometimes encounters in wet mines. Is this common? Large silver coins are almost impossible to find in uncleaned state. This shekel was as close as I could find to a tetradrachm. Is this more like most uncleaned (although it is a little bit cleaned) silver coins come out of the pot? And, how does a silver coin manage to get encrusted like this. Zurqieh has quite a few Sasanians with large (different than this), brighter green adhesions. It doesn't look like classic bronze disease. It's not fuzzy and looks pretty solid/thick. I'm not sure what happened, like if an AEcoin had gotten stuck to it, and didn't come off all the way.

We have some nice entries so far! Assuming there's a third entry, I think there will be a third prize, and depending on how I'm feeling, I might bump up the prizes. It's wonderful how creative people are! I'm liking all the entries.

The Commodus entry stands, that's fine. I should have introduced some ground rules; Let's say this thing was buried during Severus' time or later, if that even comes into play. It could be a story from any point leaving the mint to burial, or even a time lapse.

Yes, like the legionary denarii or the sestertius flans used by Postumus. It's also possible that it just kept on going. Most double sestertii of Postumus are worn, some very so. That couldn't have happened within 9 years.

No worries!

That's pretty cool, but the Trajan sestertius is the subject of the fictional scenario. We often forget that most of our coins come to us through the bad luck of the owner. They die or are unable to recover the coin. Did this coin see a historical event, or was it spent for some dastardly deed? Or, something good and fun? Was it used in gambling, or a Roman dinner party? I decided to do a first second and third prize, assuming there are enough entrants. I'm fine with teh Commodus entry, but with this amount of wear, I'd say it was deposited after 240. If there's only one entry, I'll just combine the prize money. The prize isn't much, but we don't often have cash prizes here. I'm not expecting Carlton E. Morse (famous for his blood and thunder radio shows) level writing, but whatever tickles my fancy the most will win.

I voted 'yes', with the same caveats as CPK. I'm generally not cool with overcleaning. This one could have used some smoothing.

I bet it was the episode featuring the elephant Drachm cleaned by the Israeli dealer. Unfortunately, I can't find it.

Very good! I think I'll do the $20/10 thing, so there will be a second prize.

Oh, and post the entry here, not in a PM.

We mostly don't focus too much on what our coins may have been used for, or what adventures that it might have been part of. I thought it'd be a fun game to make up an anecdote or short story about something this coin went through, whether it be how it was deposited, or something significant that it paid for, etc. The prize is fairly modest; I'll paypal you $30 towards a numismatic purchase, preferably something pre-1700. The closing time: let's say noon eastern time on Saturday. It'll be the story, anecdote, what-not that I like best. It will take a little time to read through them, and I might be doing something Saturday, so I'll try to announce it Saturday. When I say short, I mean short. We don't want a novel here. Maybe what a lengthy write-up would be, max. Heck, if the scenario is clever enough, it could be something very, very short. This coin obviously saw a lot of circulation, and let's say it was deposited by the time of Postumus. Let's have 269 to be the cutoff date for any scenario. It might be a dumb idea, but I thought it would be kind of fun. There's bound to be several good stories. Or, do you think I should do $20 for 1st and $10 for 2nd? Trajan sestertius.

Nor I. It was two or three ago, I believe. It wasn't the Harlan Berk episode.

I remember that. He said, "Who cares?" He also mentioned that he was not referring to the egregious type of smoothing. There's also the rabbit hole of where removing the dirt and smoothing begins. I prefer none, but as long as it's not that rosy, worked-over look, I can live with a little. Here's an example of too much on the reverse. This one appears to my untrained eye to have some, but not egregious. Unless I'm mistaken, this one has little or none.

Yes, I realized they were auction coins. Your coins are beautiful :)

Then there's my dreadful Decius. However, I *think* this one was due more to a botched encrustation removal.

It's a pretty neat consolation prize. Well done!

And how come a lot of auction coins have that same, greenish look, like the ones DonnaML posted? I've noticed that on acsearch listings.