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 Replies: 19 / Views: 3,939 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1812 Posts |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4963 Posts |
^ I think you may have found a buyer.
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21788 Posts |
You don't want to loose the parts.
There is no loss in value in this case, if you stick it back together with Super Glue; the loss in value has already been sustained.
This coin is almost certainly a victim of silver crystallization, which often cannot be detected with a simple visual inspection.
Silver crystallization is most often found with ancient coins, because it can take centuries for the crystallization to come about.
Occasionally, silver crystallization can be recognized by tiny parallel ridging on the surface of the coin.
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Same applies with Roman glassware.
It MUST be handled with great care. Glass is a supercooled liquid, where the liquid freezes on cooling, before crystals of glass have a chance to form. However, over centuries, like silver, glass can very slowly crystallize, thus greatly weakening the material.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4963 Posts |
Quote:
There is no loss in value in this case I'm familiar with ancients, and this doesn't exactly make sense to me. Are people really willing to pay just as much for a coin held together with superglue? |
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21788 Posts |
You are not paying just as much for an unbroken coin,
you are paying just as much as for a broken coin.
Repairing a coin in no way improves it's value.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4963 Posts |
Quote:
the loss in value has already been sustained. I guess I missed that part. |
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Moderator
 United States
23731 Posts |
The loss of value occurred when the coin broke, repairing the coin as Sel states does not improves it's value. It only preservers it to before it was broken. If the coin was to be resold the restoration should be told to the buyer.
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Bedrock of the Community
Australia
21788 Posts |
I have never repaired a crystallized coin but
I would think such a repair would be very easily seen under a 10 x loupe.
Nevertheless with such a coin, especially if eBayed, it should be noted that it has been repaired.
Arael: I guess that this story should teach us all,
that when handling ancient silver coins,
it follows that they all should be handled with care.
You never know for sure which ancient silver coin has suffered, or has not suffered, from from silver crystallization.
Edited by sel_69l
10/26/2015 07:24 am
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Pillar of the Community
 United States
567 Posts |
Yes it's certainly been a valuable lesson. I think that I will leave it in it's broken state as a reminder and lesson to myself. We can't change the past, that coin has broken and that's how it shall remain, and I can just hope to not do it again.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1812 Posts |
#1) The only reason I do not collect Ancient Coins is because I focused my education the last 20 years on error coins & currency and not educated enough to know the difference between real and fake Ancients.. And with ebay allowing fakes of darn near everything being sold so they get their piece of the sale, I find it easier to just avoid them. Lord knows how many fake cutting errors made from sheets currently on ebay is disgusting, and when I send the seller a message, along with uncut currency sheet verification, they ignore the message. #2) In my opinion I would place all three pieces in a Eagle or Silver Dollar cardboard holder.. I would think that glueing it together would lose eye appeal and value, then again, I do not know the coins history or value, and as a error collector that posted a double strike Ancient that NGC body bagged as unknown on this forum a couple years back, was ID'ed almost instantly here by the experts & surprised that NGC did not holder the coin. #3) my user name Broken-Coin is what my granddaughter called multi-struck error coins when she was about 3 or 4 years old... |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4963 Posts |
Quote:Lord knows how many fake cutting errors made from sheets currently on ebay is disgusting You can tell based on serial numbers, can't you? |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
567 Posts |
I agree with you Broken Coin that I'm going to keep the pieces. I intend on constructing a cabinet to hold my coins very soon, and in that coins place the pieces will also be held. The one thing I would say to point number one is that you can simply buy your ancients on Vcoins! A reliable and trustworthy site, on which all the dealers are held to a strict code of ethics and you can buy with confidence.
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Moderator
Australia
16849 Posts |
I too have broken a coin I owned. Mine, too, was a silver hemiobol, though mine was from Selinus. I'd taken it out of the flip it came in, to put in a coin club display. I even took a pic of it while it was out, and posted it in this old archived thread at the time. Here's the pic snitched from that thread:  But when I went to put it away again, it broke, more or less where you can see a "hole" already starting to form, over on the left side. So in my case, I suspect the "damage" had mostly been done, and I'd simply put one more straw on the overloaded camel. And yes, the culprit is silver crystallization, making the coins much more brittle than they "should" be. It's also the reason why you usually can't simply "unbend" a mediaeval silver coin that comes out of the ground all folded and bent. It has to be done slowly and gently, and perhaps with mild heat applied as well, lest the coin snap in two rather than bend. I don't have an "after" pic; I haven't had the heart to take it out of its flip since the accident. But I did keep all the pieces. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
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Pillar of the Community
Russian Federation
5177 Posts |
I've seen a really tiny ancient posted somewhere on one of these "post your tiny ancients" thread that was in two pieces.
From the scale, the smaller piece was perhaps 2 millimeters long, so the member who posted it was asked "how does one even find that stuff". They proceeded to reply that they bought it that way; presumably originally the story was similar.
I've heard of someone receiving an 1940s zinc coin that broke during shipping; so that doesn't only happen with ancients (though presumably the underlying causes are very different).
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Pillar of the Community
United States
949 Posts |
Harlan Berk (dealer in Chicago) once warned me about shipping coins in winter. Too sudden a temperature change can cause them to pop in the flip. Suffice it to say that while a coin is adjusting to an indoor temperature after sitting overnight in a UPS truck outside in February, it is particularly fragile. Best not to touch them for a few hours as they warm up. Winter shipping requires special padded protection, especially for silver, if the coin will be travelling through cold country.
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First Page
A genuine Broken Coin 
Posted 10/25/2015 10:53 pm
