Hrefn

The following coin was sold in NBJ e-auction 11, 4/2024,  listed as

ROMAN EMPIRE: AV Gold solidus 474-491 A.D. Zeno, Constantinople 2nd officina. Obverse: D N ZENO PERP AVG; pearl-diademed, helmeted and cuirassed bust facing slightly to right, holding spear and shield decorated with horseman motif. Reverse: VICTORIA AVGGG I, Victory standing facing, head to left, holding long jewelled cross; star in right field, CONOB in exergue. (4.14gm, 21mm) Good Very Fine.

It is clearly not a product of the Constantinople mint, nor is it a product of the second officina, which would be marked AUGGG B.  It is underweight for an imperial solidus, or for an Ostrogothic solidus.  It appeared very similar to coins from a certain aquatic hoard being disbursed by a certain company now having legal problems.  Here is the coin:

The peculiarities of the coin did not strike me as the inaccuracies of a modern forger, so I bid and won it.  

@Rand and @Tejas were very kind to take a look at the coin’s images.  @Rand even found a possible die match in a coin recently sold by Athena, and a very similar coin from one of Roma’s Mare Nostrum sales, back when they were still so identifying these coins.  Given Athena’s tie to Richard Beale and Roma, I suspect this unusual solidus may have been part of the original MN parcel, but of course it is impossible to know for sure.  

My guess is that Roma’s stock was thoroughly and rapidly disbursed via several channels as the firm’s demise approached, which will only complicate a scholarly description of the MN hoard should one ever be attempted.  

I am struck by the similarity of Victory on this solidus with a certain cinematic heroine.

That is amazing.  

My last Roma purchase has arrived, a dinar of al-Mansur circa AD 774.  It came with three tags.  I thought it would be fun to look at the prior Roma sales.   But when I tried to open Roma’s homepage, I had no success.  I do not know if that was a temporary glitch or if Roma’s data has vanished into the oubliette.  

ACSearch to the rescue!  The hammer price for the dinar’s first appearance was $365.  The coin underwent an expert cleaning, and commanded $531 in its second sale.  For the third, the price was $398.  

Anyway, I am delighted that my coin has this extensive provenance dating back 14 months.  And all from the same auction house!

On a more serious note, I am happy with the coin.  Arrivederci, Roma.  Sic transit gloria nummi.  

The title of this post alone made me laugh out loud!!

Never been on FB.   

I believe this forum provides some degree of anonymity, but I have no idea how well that would hold up under the assault of an expert hacker.  I suspect someone who really desired to figure out my identity could do so in many ways, even without compromising this site itself.   Sadly, all discussion which is self-revelatory carries some danger, at least potentially.  One has to weigh the risk against the benefit.  I know I have gained enormously from membership in Numis Forums from the enjoyment of sharing my collection and thoughts with congenial and knowledgeable members, and I have benefitted greatly from the erudition of others.  

One could hack the client list of Roma or any other high-end numismatic firm, and have not only the addresses, but the particulars of specific purchases, and even credit card numbers of clients.   Or a malicious individual insider could sell such information.  Nearly every purchase we make exposes such critical information.  

But, even armed with this data, the thief can have no expectation that a collector keeps his or her collection at home.  I suspect everyone gets a safety deposit box at some point in time.  More affluent collectors may chose other security methods.

I suspect stealing coins is a bit of a high risk low reward activity.  Unless a collector keeps a row of Athenian dekadrachms on the kitchen table, a thief is better advised to just steal the collector’s car.  If it is new, it is probably worth more than the coin collection.  It is a sure thing, rather than breaking into a house to find something which may or may not be there.  The car is more easily disposed of, as opposed to coins which may be individually identifiable, and traceable back to the thief with bad legal consequences.  

The random smash-and-grab junkie looking for a quick score is probably a greater threat than a clever targeted thief combing through Facebook posts.  But I would be eager to hear from anyone with law enforcement or personal experience.

An excellent example of a coin with honest wear, where the loss of the fine detail is compensated by a more sculptural quality in the remaining design. All the essential elements are here, with the wear serving to highlight the passage of time, quite fitting for an ancient coin.  Quite poignant;  would be happy to have in my collection (despite my usual focus on condition.)

@lordmarcovan, It is a beautiful coin in its own right, and in my opinion well worth collecting.  The premium you paid is only about 5% over spot, which is actually surprisingly low.   If you were to buy a single ordinary American Eagle one ounce coin from a typical online dealer, not certified, and paid cash, the premium is (quick calculation) 3.9%.  Plus postage costs, unless you traveled to a dealer and purchased in person.  If you purchase by mail, depending on your state and the location of the seller, you may find yourself also paying your state sales tax.  If I were to buy a similar coin off eBay, my state would tax me an additional $102.  

So you did very well indeed.  

Even if you believe the premium you pay for a gold coin is few percent higher than the best gold bargain on the market right now, in a few years the difference may prove negligible.  Five years ago, the gold price was $1200/troy oz.   ANY gold coin purchased then at a modest premium was a good buy, whether the premium was 5% or 25%.  If you bought any gold 25 years ago, the price is up sixfold.  

All of this supposed profit is just currency debasement, of course.  If you own an ounce of gold, your wealth is the same regardless of the dollar value of your bullion.  But it is a very reasonable form of savings which retains its purchasing power, and is arguably better than putting your money in a bank.  

The other reason gold coins are a good vehicle for savings is psychological.   It is far too easy to transfer $2000 from your savings to your checking account with the click of a mouse.  It is a bit harder to dip into the bullion pile and select $2000 worth of gold coins to sell.   It makes the act of spending your savings very tangible.  

Having a “bullion pile” of varied types of foreign coinage has one disadvantage.  Odd assorted foreign coins with nonstandard weights and finesses are less liquid than Canadian Gold Maple Leafs (leaves?  Doesn’t seem appropriate for the plural designating the gold coins.) or American Gold Eagles.  However, the @lordmarcovan strategy has advantages as well.

First, exactly because they are less liquid, nonstandard gold is less desirable to some potential buyers.  This means the person willing to acquire it can sometimes get the coin at spot, or close to it.  Even modern gold coins with relatively tiny mintages can fall into this category, selling for spot, or for no more of a premium over spot, than one would pay for a standard bullion coin struck in the millions.  

Second, the variety of types available is enormous.  The resulting bullion pile is more of an accumulation than a curated collection, but that is okay because the primary purpose of the bullion pile is to accumulate bullion.  

Third, over time a coin purchased as bullion has the potential to become a collectible coin.  The run of the mill common bullion coin will probably never appreciate any faster than the gold which comprises it.  But the nonstandard oddball coin may eventually command a price much higher than its scrap value, especially if unusually beautiful, historic, or rare.  The coins below were all purchased years ago at close to their bullion value.  The Russian coins, at least, have appreciated more than equivalent common bullion.  

In short, I think selective purchase of unusual gold coins, if done at a price close to spot price, is a reasonable strategy.  You sacrifice a bit of liquidity, but gain the possibility of significant price appreciation.  Buying beautiful coins with low mintages at close to spot probably maximizes this chance.  

Plus, it’s more fun.  

The following is my opinion only.

The 100 pound gold piece is very impressive, and I would love to own one.   The coin is obviously crafted with great care.  The production values and quality control are obviously perfect.  The version of the Mayflower is a successful design, in my opinion, which is lively and suggests the ship is going to sail right out of the coin.  

The Pilgrim half dollar is a much impressive coin.  Governor Bradford with his slightly downcast eyes and oversized Bible appears as an particular individual, and furthermore the artist has successfully suggested this is a reverent individual, a pious man.  The Mayflower on the reverse has sails which look as if they are contending with the wind;  the ship has a deck, spars, ratlines……one gets the sense that if you could “zoom in”  you would see the Pilgrims walking the deck, the sailors working the ship.  You could picture Pilgrim John Howland falling overboard from this ship, and (providentially, the Pilgrims would say,)  catching a line trailing from the back of the ship to be hauled back aboard and saved from drowning.  

The half dollar is a coin which commemorates an actual event, and a real individual, which transpired and who existed in a particular place and time which we are invited to remember.  

The Mayflower on the gold piece is more like a logo.  No one could imagine “zooming in” on it.  However much you magnified it, it would be the same.   It is a generic ship stripped of detail, and has no individuality.  The idea of a crew on it seems unimportant, never mind a specific crew and Pilgrim passengers.  It is as stylized and removed from reality as the waves at the bow.

The British coin also suffers from the necessity of placing Queen Elizabeth on the obverse, who had nothing to do with the events of 1620 thus adding nothing to a coin commemorating them.  But even given this handicap, the coin is an unsuccessful effort.  One could change the dates 1620 - 2020 to 1522 - 2022, and the coin would serve equally well to commemorate Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world.  That seems to me to be a fatal defect.  

Given the broad canvas a large coin affords the designer, the malleability of gold, the freedom a non-circulating coin has from the strictures imposed by striking coins for commerce (stackability, etc,)  the assistance of a modern-day Augustus Saint-Gaudens should have been sought.  But even lacking this, a generic and de-individualized design on a commemorative coin makes no sense.  It is a rejection of the very raison d’être for commemoratives.  

I will conclude my remarks with this image, which I suspect may have inspired the designer.  

I commonly wear a tweed jacket to shows.   That allows me to keep a loop in my right pocket for examining coins, and my checkbook in the inside breast pocket.  The ensemble is completed with blue jeans, glasses, white hair and beard, and a pleasant demeanor.   The only detail lacking is leather patches on the jacket elbows.  The intent is to project the impression of a retired academic, perhaps a Literature or History professor, knowledgeable in numismatics so worth a dealer’s attention, but probably not made of money, so high asking prices will not be a successful sales gambit.  All of this is not far from reality;  I am only semi-retired and I am presently teaching Advanced Pathophysiology.  And for most of my career I was not an academic.  

I bring a small leather backpack with my iPad for quick internet searches, and which also has an almost complete record of my collection.   Paperwork associated with sales goes into it, and if I buy a book or supplies I can conveniently carry them.  The backpack also has snacks and a water bottle, since the food resources available at shows are usually execrable, overpriced, and inconvenient.  

When I was much younger, I believe I may have been subjected to a customer quality check by a dealer.  When I told him I was interested in Byzantine coins, he said he had a gold coin of Basil II.  But he handed me a coin of Constantine VIII.  I examined it, and politely replied, “that’s interesting.  I would have said this was a coin of his brother, Constantine the eighth.”   He made a show of looking at the coin, and said I was right.  From then on, he always had time for me at his table, and I bought many wonderful coins from him.  

Coin collector or numismatist?  If you often spot misattributions and errors in the catalog descriptions of coins at auction by major firms, you are a numismatist.  Collecting is another thing entirely. 

46 minutes ago, Nikodeimos said:

Are those the same dies as mine?

I am no expert in the series.   And the coins being overstrikes doesn’t help.  But I was immediately thinking the same thing when I first viewed your post.  

20 hours ago, Nikodeimos said:

overstrikes are particularly common at Gortyna, who apparently did not care much for producing their own flans during this time.

Amazing provenance on that stater!  Europa, the Phoenician princess!

I have only one Greek coin, but it is this type.  I was attracted to it because of the link to pre-history, the ancient myth describing the origin of Europe.  Scientists are continually revising the description of the process of European development, but some of the outline is commonly accepted.  Most agree that agriculture as well as many typical crops,  domestication of animals, metallurgy, and the vast majority of modern European languages all spring from origins in the Near East which spread to the hunter-gatherer peoples of Europe.  

Europe’s brother Cadmus was believed to have brought the alphabet to Ancient Greece.

The stater of Lyttos on which my coin is overstruck.

This is a very recent eBay find which I purchased for the post-apocalyptic silver bartering pile.  This is where I throw the odd coin or medal purchased for a price approximately equal to the scrap value, as a method of slowly accumulating some tradable bullion for the post-fiat economy.  Sold as an “unknown medal, 1960” for $27 plus shipping.  It weighs 30.1 grams of .925 silver.  As it happens, it is a beautiful medal in perfect condition commemorating the Swiss Numismatic Society’s meeting in Basel in 1960, and I don’t think I will be trading it away in a hurry.  

To continue the exposition of contemporary issues, here is my example of Richard sans Peur which I purchased from Odysseus Numismatique about 4 years ago.

a Grosso of Venice of the Doge Iacopo Tiepolo 1229-1249. Papadapoli-4803.  Prior to being elected Doge, he served as Podestà of Constantinople, newly conquered by the forces of the Fourth Crusade.   Obv:  Christ enthroned.  Rev: Tiepolo and St. Mark.  Purchased from Ed Waddell in 1988 

A plethora of imitative coins followed the issuance of these. 

Looks like a clipped Venetian grosso.   The vertical inscription could be DUX.

6 hours ago, robinjojo said:

just realized that I need to move quickly on making labels for my backlogged Roma purchases.  I use the lot descriptions from Roma when creating them. 

I believe you will be able to recover the same info from acsearch.

Those are superb Byzantine silver coins.  Congratulations.  

@JeandAcre, I am very happy to comply, especially since it was YOU who recommended I purchase Depeyrot about 2 years ago.

Unfortunately, the fourth edition of Depeyrot has minimal information.  Not even a photo or drawing of either #883 or #884.  

And here is #1029:

2 hours ago, Anaximander said:

Wish I could get my hands on Depeyrot (who keeps coming out with new editions, if I'm not mistaken).

Thank you for your kind words, Anaximander.   I have been building this Carolingian sub-collection slowly, being focused on coins in better than usual condition.  Since there are about 40 Class 2 deniers of Louis the Pious alone, and considering their prices, I know I will never have anything approaching a complete collection.  So, I have concentrated on quality.  

I purchased Depeyrot’s fourth edition of his book on Carolingian coins from the MA shop of Paul-Francois Jacquier nearly 2 years ago.  At that time it was priced at 145 euro, and after shipping and bank fees it cost me just over 200.  I would have to say it was money well spent.  The book is almost absurdly comprehensive, and has made me a much more knowledgeable buyer.  Here is the page on your Charles the Bald coin:

The Carolingian collection has had no additions for several months because the coin collecting budget (my conscience is now laughing uproariously at my implying I stick to any sort of budget) was lacerated, eviscerated, decapitated, and exploded in the course of purchasing 3 remarkable Byzantine solidi, two imitative/barbarian solidi, and a beautiful dinar of al-Mansur.  The last was an auction win from Roma’s last e-auction, and I do not yet have the coin in hand.  

Abbasid rulers al-Mansur and Haroun al-Rashid exchanged embassies with the Carolingians, perhaps brought together by a common enemy, the Umayyad Caliphate in Spain.   It is tempting, but I don’t think I can call their dinars Carolingian coins. 

We are all struggling in these conflationary times.  

@robinjojo, I love those BBC documentaries.  

This is quite complex.  Assuming my country has a treaty with CountryX, and the treaty was signed on 1/1/2000;  could coins exported from CountryX before the treaty was signed ever be subject to repatriation?  If yes, the Arthur Evans provenance may not save me, because the terms of the treaty could be altered, assuming both signatories agreed, to include coins exported earlier than the signing date.  
If societal opinion became more hostile to collectors, I could envision an inclination to push the date which renders coins immune to repatriation much further into the past, if this were feasible and the powers-that-be thought they could get away with it.  Perhaps this is an unreasonable concern on my part.   I understand that the Arthur Evans provenance protects me as of now.  
 

Second, suppose United States law forbade export of US silver coins to be melted, which I believe was the law at one time, (since repealed.). If I manage to smuggle my stash of silver quarters to London, I would think it would there be perfectly legal to sell them to a smelter, since US law doesn’t apply in the UK.  Similarly, if the Anatolian peasant smuggles his tetradrachm to Paris in defiance of his own country’s law, why should any collector suffer any qualms of conscience about buying it?  Turkey probably has lots of laws I don’t agree with.  If I am in Turkey I must obey them or face the consequences.  Outside of Turkey, who cares what their laws are?  

Again, this assumes the coin is not stolen in the strict sense of the word. 

1 hour ago, John Conduitt said:

The only time 'losing' provenance helps you is if that provenance was 'smuggled out of Greece in the last few years'. Why would the Mare Nostrum hoard need repatriating? Because it was sold by people who didn't own it? It's those people who have destroyed the knowledge by taking a hoard illegally, and then not publishing the details for fear of being caught, although I agree the governments who repatriate coins are not helping by giving them no route to enrich themselves.

The provenance isn't used against you. If Arthur Evans owned it, that would help you, not hurt you, since no government tries to repatriate coins with provenance over 100 years old. But even if they did, the coin is what it is, as they could repatriate it provenance or not.

There is absolutely no guarantee that will continue to be true.  A foreign government could change its laws to assert ownership of material exported 100 or 200 years ago.  After all, if it is part of the cultural patrimony, the date of its discovery has absolutely no relevance. It either is cultural patrimony, or it is not.  The date of export, and whether that export is legal, is completely arbitrary, and is unrelated to the object itself.  

As to why the Mare Nostrum hoard would need repatriating?  (Aside from the fact that I am unsure which country would get the honor,) do you think the hoard is insufficiently historic to be considered for repatriation?  I think that would be a hard case to make.  

Whether the discoverers of the Mare Nostrum hoard “took” the hoard illegally or not is an interesting question, and I suppose would apply to the laws applying to the location at the time.  For all I know, it was found in international waters.  If laws were subsequently passed to arrogate ownership of such discoveries to the state, I personally would have a difficult time accepting the validity of such an ex post facto dictat.

Not that I am advocating repatriating the Mare Nostrum hoard!  Because I disagree with the notion of repatriation entirely.  If an object is important enough to a nation that they earnestly desire it, they can buy it on the open market just as anyone else would have to do.  (Is this not in practice what the UK system does, albeit the Government does get the right of first refusal.)   

Objects which are stolen are another matter entirely.  If I burgle the British Museum, I agree the Museum has a right to recover its property.  But if an Anatolian peasant stumbles on a lost coin and sells it to a collector in Paris,  I fail to see the crime.  I think taking the coin away from the French collector without any compensation would be a crime.  

The only way repatriation schemes work is if one accepts that every undiscovered treasure in a country is the property of the government, thus its removal is theft.   Which I submit is a completely absurd notion.  By that reasoning, a gold torc excavated in southern Ireland is owned by the government in London in 1915, but in Dublin in 1925.   If the Nazis had succeeded in WWII and taken all of the British Isles (yes, I know the Irish Republic stayed neutral, but work with me here,) then newly discovered treasures would go to Berlin.  Does that not suggest a problem with this whole concept?  

My point is that governments are quite mutable.  National cultural patrimony is an absurd notion on which to assert a moral claim to property.  

What if the desire of the government is to eradicate all traces of the past?  This is not a theoretical consideration; it was actual policy in Communist China during my lifetime, and remains a policy preference amongst some more fundamentalist Islamists.  Assume your country has a cultural treaty with Afghanistan.  Do you think it would be wise to send some Buddhist sculptures illegally exported from Afghanistan back to the Taliban?  Do your notions of what is appropriate now trump the legal right of Afghanis to recover their cultural patrimony, and do with it as they wish?   Or will you return those sculptures to their certain destruction?  

The whole notion of national governments asserting ownership of every undiscovered treasure in their jurisdiction is either a medieval holdover of the rights of kings (apologies, John, but you know this is true,) or an unwarranted overreach of a totalitarian state.  There is no reason to consider the notion just, or indispensable, or even a matter of good intentions.  

If countries wish to prohibit export of certain goods, that is their right.  I would argue they are only fostering the creation of a black market, but governments are allowed to do stupid things.  But once the object has left their jurisdiction, and provided it was not a stolen good in the narrow (British Museum theft) sense, not “the government owns everything” sense, I do not believe cultural patrimony claims have any moral merit at all.  And consent to any treaties to the contrary should be withdrawn.