Speaker
Description
It was suspected that a surprising number of originally holed or otherwise damaged aurei have been “repaired” over the last century and have subsequently entered the market undisclosed. A survey of the Coin Archives digital database of auction results of the last ~20 years was performed identifying 453 damaged aurei (scratches, nicks, or holes). Eight were subsequently “repaired” and re-entered the market free of defects and without description of the intervening “repairs”. Because of the short time interval of the preliminary survey, between one to twenty years for any one coin, a much larger study has commenced using pre-digital sources (auction catalogues and the ANS card file with auction results up to 100 years old). It is hypothesized that a much longer time period for potential repair will result in a larger percentage of “repaired” coins than was identified in our pilot study, perhaps revealing a pervasive problem.
