I think the coin is unquestionably authentic, though on the
obverse the
head hair above the ear and the beard hair in front of the ear have been re-engraved.
One can judge the extent of the tooling by comparing other
sestertii of Divus
Severus with the Pyre
reverse, struck from the same
obverse die:
BMC pl. 66.7 (overcleaned itself); Stack's Knobloch Sale, May 1980, 904 = Auctiones, June 1978, 789.
This Emperor on
Eagle rev. type is far rarer than the Pyre
type that usually appears on the
scarce sestertii of Divus Septimius. The
Gorny specimen, despite the tooling, must be the best preserved of the half dozen or so specimens that I have record of.
Without having compared it to other specimens from the same
reverse die, I see no obviously
tooled and re-engraved details on the
reverse of the coin, though I am suspicious of the folds of the emperor's
toga and the diagonal lines on the left half of the
thunderbolt.
By a misprint in
Cohen 83, which was already present in Cohen's first edition, this very
rare sestertius was erroneously valued at a mere 10 francs, while the much commoner Pyre piece,
Cohen 90, got 80 francs!
RIC 490A-B obliviously compounded Cohen's misprint by rating the Pyre
type R3, but Emperor on
Eagle type merely R! Obviously the intended
price for
Cohen 83 must have been 100 francs, or maybe 120 or 150!