Picked a dirt-encrusted Celtic coin over a clean Roman one at a local show last weekend and the dealer thought I was crazy

The Roman piece was perfect and shiny but paying $60 for something that looked like it was dug up yesterday felt wrong, so I went with the crusty Celtic one and now I am spending my evenings carefully cleaning it with distilled water and a soft brush.

4 comments

4 Comments

williamhenderson22d ago

I read somewhere that the patina on old coins actually holds microscopic details about ancient minting techniques that get lost when people clean them too aggressively. Sounds like you got the better deal if you ask me.

green.iris18d ago

Actually happened to a friend of mine who collects Roman coins. He bought this grimy-looking denarius cheap because nobody wanted it, but when a museum conservator looked at it under a microscope, they found tool marks from the die that matched a known forgery operation from the 2nd century. The patina had preserved those tiny details that would have been completely scrubbed away if the previous owner had tried to shine it up. So I'm with you on this one, sometimes the dirt is the part with the real history.

iris_schmidt21d ago

But would those microscopic details actually tell us anything we don't already know from historical texts and other surviving examples... I mean, aren't we mostly just guessing at what the minting process looked like anyway? Seems like the patina might just be hiding more than it's revealing.

walker.julia21d ago

Hold on, let's not act like every speck of dirt on a coin is gonna rewrite history books. Most of the time that patina is just oxidation from sitting in the ground for centuries. Even if there are some minting details in there, we already have plenty of coins and historical records that tell us the basics of how they were stamped out.