Hadrian Denarius - Additional Photos Posted

The portrait doesn't look like Hadrian at first glance. Obviously it is from the inscription, but he must have done a bit of reconstructive surgery to his nose and cheeks

I see several things which make me unsure

Possible casting pearls in the hair above the ear and several on the torso of PIETAS
I see metal flow lines but both sides appear rather 'soft' on the detail
The top area Obv and bottom Rv has a porosity. Castings will often show some porosity near a sprue which in the casting process corresponds to the high point (impurities tend to float). The corresponding edge happens to be relativey flat, which might happen if it were snapped or cut off a sprue.

Lastly I just don't like the portrait ....... something about the eye makes me doubt.

That being said I could be completely wrong !

But when in doubt .......

This opinion is not intended to offend ! I rarely if ever buy silver anymore because I am sceptical. Possibly too sceptical ! But I am old and grouchy.

Well, I purchased it from a (supposedly) reputable specialist dealer from the Netherlands.

The eye detail does seems atypical, the pupil/iris being represented by a convex rather than concave dot, and placed well forward which is realistic for a depiction in profile.

I've examined this coin closely, and there's no doubt in my mind but that it's struck. There're some, if not many, edge cracks, but those'd be hard to fake, and I see nothing anyplace on the edge that'd indicate it was cast. What look sort of like "casting pearls" in my original photos simply aren't there in hand, and there are minuscule flow lines between the tops of many letters and the edge that just scream "struck". There is some surface degradation that has resulted in delamination and porosity on a small scale, but nothing that says "cast" as opposed to environmental causes. I'm posting some more shots utilizing less casual lighting in hopes of giving everybody a better look at this specimen.







That all said, I went over a list of Hadrian issues, and while I found more bareheaded types than I expected, I certainly havn't come up with an exact match for it. I'd avoided ancients for years on the basis that I thought they'd be too easy to fake. Getting taken in by a counterfeit would greatly diminish, if not permanently negate, my current enthusiasm for this genre.

It is so very hard viewing coins from afar !

I will say the new pics do seem to show a much more natural looking denarius.
But as we know without the coin in hand ......

I am still 50/50 but moving in the right direction !