SteveJBrinkman

Yes, for some years, I've focussed on the early denarii and fractions, fully anonymous and the early coins with symbols and moneyer's monograms, generally pre-140 BC. However, I am not exclusively collecting these early coins. At some point all of the easy ones are acquired and the scarcer issues don't come up but once every few years. So I have become somewhat more of a generalist and have smaller groups of other collecting areas.

I almost always use Wise. The invoice I got from Leu this morning had 3 methods of payment. Bank transfer, Credit Card, and Paypal, all had an extra charge but the bank transfer had an additional charge of 12 CHF. I think Leu is the only firm I've dealt with that charges extra for bank transfer. My winning lot was less than 200 CHF. The credit card option of 2.8% was the least expensive, so I used that for this instead of Wise.

I watched a small handful of lots in the Leu sale, and was successful only with my first choice which was a Crawford 44/6 anonymous quinarius. Cr. 44/6 is among the earliest, if not the earliest quinarius. It is generally very common and plentiful but as a specialist in early Roman silver, this variety, which is pictured in Crawford plate IX.21 (group 4 in my classification) is the scarcest of the major varieties, and the only Cr. 44/6 quinarius variety missing from my collection of these fractions. It's not a thing of great beauty with some deposits and fine surface granularity, but this variety is rarely found very nice so I'm happy.

Aha! So it was you, Phil. Going into this Roma sale I thought the prawn denarius was mine at just about any reasonable cost but you braved it out longer than I could. Congratulations on a coin deserving of the finest collection (yours). Sorry I drove your price up a bit. In the sale, I did win this later anonymous denarius RRC 278/1 that I am pleased with, so my tears were short lived:

ACSearch is one of the best values as a subscription site for me. For years I used ACSearch to find coins at auctions, then searched other sites to get the hammer prices, but after trying the paid subscription a few years ago, it has become an essential resource for me so I re-up every year. I use it for estimating market value, relative scarcity of issues, and help with attribution. My only complaint is although they catalog a large number of auction houses, There are several major auction firms that they do not cover.

I'll add my example. Victory is a little weak, but I chose this primarily for the obverse style which was appealing to me. The toning was an unexpected plus -the auction photograph did not display the iridescence.

Phil, A stunning group. I almost didn't notice the extremely rare VB half victoriatus (RRC 95/2) hiding next to the very scarce pentagram victoriatus.

Warren, As usual, an excellent example from the Cyzicus mint. Well centered on a large flan. Here is my most recent acquisition, A Nummus of Severus from the London mint: Obverse: SEVERVS NOBILIS C; Laureate, draped and cuirassed bust of Severus II to right.Reverse: GENIO POPV-LI ROMANI The Genius of the Roman people standing front, head to left, holding patera in his right hand and cornucopiae in his left Mint: London Weight: 9.45 g., 29mm Reference: RIC 63a (London), C&T 4.02.019 Provenance: Leu Auction 12 Lot 1541. May 15, 2022

The high end auction houses in Spain started getting serious about the export licenses a couple of years ago. The requirement has been in place for several years. Not sure what occurred that caused nearly all of them to start requesting export licenses suddenly. I won a lot in Vico 161 and had a similar experience. They sent me an email requesting an ID, either a passport or a drivers license ID. The coin arrived about 4 1/2 weeks after the auction. Just a note on Vico. In my nearly 50 years of active collecting, I've lost 2 coins in the mail. One was from Vico in a 2013 auction. They gave me a full refund when the postal trace failed. They are an old and well established auction house.

Fabulous. I was totally unaware of this obscure linkage between the two moneyers. I don't have an example of the SAR issue but I do have a C.Scribonius RRC201.

This is my only coin of Lucius Verus. A common reverse type but the cuirassed bust obverse is unusual, not listed in RIC.