Ae Drachm - Elymaean, Kamnaskires-Orodes?, Bronze Disease Or Verdigris?

With that coloration, the poor King kinda looks like the grinch.

That's one odd obverse there, Adam. Yes, it does appear to be a drachm of Kamnaskires-Orodes, Van't Haaff type 12.3.

The oddities include the fact that the green - perhaps verdigris - is exclusively confined to the contours of the front-facing bust and the anchor. The fields and interior of the bust are free of it. How would that happen? I've never seen anything like that, where the verdigris slides up and around the edges of interior shapes. It's worth noting that there were no raised contour lines used by the die engravers on these issues - in other words, it's not as though there was a raised line or ridge that the green could have formed on.

The green "lines" also seem to have little tendrils, sort of like foliage spreading outward. Curious.

Also odd - although this may just be my perception based on the photo - is that the head and hair tufts of the king appear intaglio (as if scooped out) rather than in relief. There's a lot of missing imagery there.

And, as if that's not enough, the obverse appears slightly cupped/concave, although again that could be a result of the lighting/photography. I don't think I have ever seen an Elymaean drachm with a cupped obverse.

I'm going to have to use the head scratching guy here:

Museums often have to deal with verdigris on bronze coins.
I would go Googling in a search on how to remove it.

A problem arises:
You get rid of the green stuff, and you loose color contrast, and the coin would then be seen as much less attractive.

Another problem:
If you leave the green stuff there, bronze disease can spread to other coins in your collection.

So, you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

My inclination would be to give it a miss, unless you see it as a very necessary addition to your collection.
In which case, you go down the museum path.

I share some of Bob L's 's, and the implications attached there to.

Agreed. I wonder if someone made an experiment with this one, perhaps dremel'ing out the obverse devices to create a crude seal matrix. The green, rather than being verdigris, could be residue from whatever gunk they then pressed it into. Just speculating.

I actually ended up getting it for a king-size bid of $3. Which was really $0 since I had $18.94 in ebay bucks I forgot about.

I was thinking an optical illusion.

I can appreciate seeing the green in the high areas,
but I naturally assumed the green is in the more protected low areas.

The short thick lines on the reverse appear to be obviously raised to me.