Tiberius Purchase

Interesting coin. The obverse legend looks reversed to me. I believe it might be RIC I #28.

I think it is authentic, oxos, but I wonder at the color for a silver coin. I don't think I've seen silver look like this.

I believe the weird coloration is due to dirt and the lighting of the photo. It looks like it will clean up nice. Nice coin!

I do believe that it's real, just dirty.

I would not be too worried about the colour.

Many years ago I bought an almost unrecognisable silver tetradrachm covered with a heavy brown encrustation / patina. My untrained eye at the time suspected that it was not even silver.

The guy I bought it off was, and still is, a good friend of mine, and a well respected coin dealer, now with over 40 years experience.

He said I could buy it for $7 or twice that, after cleaning. OK I thought, $7 wasn't much to loose.
The coin spent about 2 minutes in a mixture of sulphuric and hydrochloric acid. I do not know what the dilution rate was. He did, and he knew what he was doing.
Both of us knew that the main risk involved was the total loss of the coin.

That didn't happen. The coin turned out to be a silver tetradrachm of Ptolemy 12th, in about VF condition.

Point to be made: Take the Tiberius to a guy who knows what he is doing, and then STILL be prepared to take a risk. That's the way it is when it comes to cleaning ancients.

With your coin I feel that it will clean up very nicely. I have successfully cleaned a few ancients myself, but with this one, I would still not trust myself with the cleaning. Not my coin, and potentially too valuable.

Actually I have seen the equivalent aureus for no more than double the price of a Tribute Penny, and perhaps at only a grade lower.

Both the silver and the gold versions of this design are relatively common. but it is the silver version that has all the fame.

How about one of each? THOSE would be indeed a centre piece in a collection of Roman coins!

Got my Tiberius today. Looks like a bronze denarius.
Has a beautiful patina and you'd think it was really bronze. It needs to be cleaned, especially on the reverse, but looks pretty good otherwise.
I'll post an image when it comes clean. It weighs 3.24 grams and is 18mm so I'm pretty sure it's silver.
They didn't make bronze denarii did they?

That is certainly NOT the first time I have seen good Roman silver present like this!
The iron color I think has come from the burial material that has surrounded the coin.

Not sure how to remove it, but after accepting professional advice, on a 50 dollar coin, I would be fool enough to clean it myself. For me, it would be worth the $50 educational fee.

I have seen a professional dealer use a mixture of hydrochloric and sulphuric acid to at least leave a silver colour with black highlights in the devices to accentuate the design. You need a reasonably high purity silver coin to start with. Coins of the Severan Dynasty have slightly poorer quality silver, at around a purity of perhaps 60%. +- 10 %.

I have seen a large number of Severan Dynasty denarii on the retail market that appear to be blanched. I feel that I can reasonably conclude that they were all acid cleaned after recovery from the ground.

Acid blanching was used on Australian 50% silver pre decimal coin planchets to make them appear whiter and to surface enrich the metal before striking.

I would certainly NOT use the acid approach on a bronze coin of ANY description.

I am NOT advising that other collectors do the same as me!