Every topic old is new again

[basemetal]

I'm sure this has been covered.
But I see in the for sale on ...name the auction site...reports of not "tooled coins" but of "smoothed".
I also see a tolerance for same.
I see: No! That coin has not been tooled....only "smoothed" a bit."
So, smoothing is ok?
By that I mean taking a modern steel tool to a coin and, yes "improving" it a bit"?
Of course the "smoother" is only bringing out the details that were there originally.
"Why all I did was smooth out areas with an engravers's tool that weren't inscribed anyway"
The "tooler" commits a blasphemy that we all condemn.
There is a problem here for those who think this is the same as 'cleaning" a coin.
Wow! Look at this Aelius.  It's got fine detail and is completely original.
Well, it has been "smoothed" a bit. But it's an original Aelius!
What is wrong with this picture.

[Steve Minnoch]

Well, essentially the difference is that smoothing doesn't corrupt the important details, and we still see the work done by the original engraver.  So it's a whole different order of magnitude than tooling.

Steve

[moonmoth]

Hmm.  Who decides which details are important?

[Robert_Brenchley]

We don't regard stripped coins as a species of fake, though we may regret the stripping. So why should a coin with patina thinned down and smoothed, which is less drastic than stripping it, be seen as less than genuine? Patina can be downright ugly, and many of the smoothed coins we see have red patches which may well once have been hideous lumps. It certainly wan't put there by the original engraver, so as long as we realise it's there, I wouldn't see it as something which condemns the coin. Tooling, though, would.

[*Alex]

For me, a tooled coin is a fake coin. It boils down to simply being a modern engraving on an ancient flan. The coin has not been "improved". The pre-tooled coin had character, the tooled coin has nothing.

Alex.

[slokind]

Privately I have been discussing, outslide of Forvm, a really heartbreaking tooling job.  I think is is a real specimen (or it WAS a real and really worn specimen) of the rare legionary sestertius of AD 193 RIC 652 and BMCRE 471 (there pl. 20), and the alternative would be that it was made on a nearly effaced other sestertius and carved, tooled, gouged from scratch.  (I think the lower-lying facial features are beyond the fool's capability and resemble the BM specimens).
[Broken link removed]
I bring this up here because to ruin what remained of a rare sestertius like that one is infinitely wickeder, IMO, than starting from a blank.  A fake from scratch, and I don't mean Slavey but less talented engravers and the ones that do NOT take pride in doing their own work, vying with the ancients (yes, certainly inconvenient for unknowing shoppers, and yet...), does not destroy an ancient coin that could be studied if cleaned, even if stripped (!), and let be as it survived.  But a "Mr Toolie" does destroy irrevocably a real surviving coin.  All that kind of tooled coin is good for, provided it can be identified, is metallurgical analysis.
Pat L.

[curtislclay]

Pat,

As you thought, based on a real coin.  My obv. die o10, the only one with legend break SEV - PERT; rev. die r27.  I record this die combination in two other specimens, Oxford and Baldwin's.

Two comments on the rest of the topic.  First, "smoothing" in my definition means removal of actual METAL, not just patina, to flatten out an unattractive, pitted surface.  As long as you remove just deposits and patina, you're merely cleaning, not smoothing. 

Both tooling and smoothing therefore involve damage to the metal, the difference being that smoothing flattens out rough surfaces, while tooling enhances or invents elements of the actual type or legend.

Secondly, a large number of ancient bronzes, especially in old collections, have been lightly smoothed and/or tooled, yet remain mostly original and often quite attractive.  It would certainly not be advisable to relegate all such coins to your forgery cabinet!

Yours,

Curtis

[slokind]

I perfectly agree with Curtis, but I didn't mean the highly skillful conservation work proverbially done in Switzerland (not confined to Switzerland of course) which with respect, intelligence, high skill, and taste makes a nice big coin presentable.  Such work is expensive, and so the coin necessarily costs more and is more exhibitible (for my personal taste, some of them make the field flatter than I'd like, but they don't ruin the coin).  The 'toolies' we've been seeing, however, are crude and stupid and careless and uninformed, and the coins usually are utterly ruined.  They are like the folk art of wooden cookie presses or abalone shell religious objects.  When it happens to a rare coin (and one that, being very fond of sestertii and of early Septimius and of the legionaries, I'd love to own, even if worn to F or aF), I am really angry.  Anyone who is actually fooled by that eagle deserves to pay through the nose for it, but the engravers and even the malleoli and the miners and the alloyers and good old Septimius himself deserve not to be disrespected and despoiled.
Yes, of course conservators use tools.  How shall I put it?  The guys producing the recent 'toolies' are abusing their tools, too.  It's like using your camera and computer to send abroad crude porn.  That is why I hate them worse than fakes from scratch.
Pat L.

[4to2CentBCphilia]

Then you must also admire the sellers other offerings 

Even my uneducated eye can see they have been heavily worked.

They look like the product of a bottle of bordeaux and a pick axe.

M

[basemetal]

I think much of "modern" tooling and smoothing is the result of several things.  One scenario is in any language or culture:
"Hey, I know a guy who engraves jewelery and the backs of watches.  It should be a cinch for him to "clean up some of this stuff so we can sell it. A little "improvement" and we can get triple for it"
or:
"Hey, tooling and smoothing is done all the time.  Don't worry I know a coin dealer who knows a guy that's been doing this for years. When he's done you can't tell it from a VF coin.  Really."
or finally and so sadly:
"Mmmm.....I used to do woodburning when I was in the Boyscouts.  I saw some engraving tools on an....auction site. And I know a guy who can teach me how to do it.  He works in a metal shop and they put monograms on all kinds of stuff.  How hard can it be?"