rNumis

Very nice. Would love to have a Lipara!

This one's mine - nothing really special, just wanted to have an example in hand. Photo is from the auction house, as that's probably better than anything I can do with my phone 😄

Quite a chunky thing...32.69g

I just noticed these have started to appear at archive. Quite excited about it actually as I don't have much of anything from Baldwins in my own library. If Lara Jacobs is involved, we're going to get a lot of great material. Thanks to ANS and thanks to archive. I'll start adding entries and links at rNumis, but here they are directly:

Baldwins Catalogs at archive

Keep an eye on that link. They'll be posting more for sure.

(first update)

Sep 9, 2023 Ancient Greek Coins: Italy & Sicily Databases.

This week I've extended database coverage to include another 4 sales, bringing the DB size up to 8,725 searchable records.  The newly added sales are shown in the attached picture (red font).

The CNG 2013 (Diez) sale was actually very interesting to me...this was a collection put together over 100 years ago and, as far as I know, these CNG coins hadn't been seen at auction since then. Also, some coins were either not plated and/or weighed for the older catalogs so CNG is providing valuable missing information (thank you!).

The just-added Hirsch XXXIII sale has quite a few coins that were sold to Diez (I have priced/named lot records for that sale - very useful).  For example:

rNumis --> Greek Coins Database Detail (HIRSCH XXXIII 1913)  

An example of a coin from a different sale that went to Diez and ultimately to the CNG sale can be seen here:

rNumis --> Greek Coins Database Detail (Egger XLV 1913)

Many Diez coins came from other Hirsch Sales, notably Hirsch XLV 1906. As I haven't added records from that sale to the databases yet, visual connections at rNumis will have to wait. It's all on my list!

Hi everyone,

As promised in the Vitalini thread, I'm going to use this to report from time to time, what's new over at rNumis ... database content, functionality...that kind of stuff. It won't always be very exciting. For those of you who don't know my site, there's a brief intro thread here.

Please do continue to make suggestions (can't promise anything 😄 ), report any errors/broken links, etc., either here or via pm.  It's much appreciated.

Thanks everyone!

Steve

Thank you for the kind words, everyone.  It's a spare-time labor of love 😊

I'll probably start a different thread here to give periodic updates on what's new on the website, and to discuss any suggestions, errors etc. 

Thanks again!

For the old-auction mavens:
 

Came across the old Italian numismatic house of Ortensio Vitalino today - I wasn't aware of it before.

Their 1891 sale of the Tommaso Capo collection actually has some pretty decent Greek and Roman, and it has plates.
Thankfully, the catalog is at gallica and can be browsed or pdf downloaded ... you can now find the link here:

rNumis » Auctions of Vitalini

Also, for fun, here's the Greek coin that led to it all, and the 3 auctions I have so far where it shows up:

rNumis --> Greek Coins Database Detail
 

2 hours ago, AETHER said:

I did google, no title and and different author = 0 results. 

Thanks for the link.

It's a series, so I googled "the Roman republic yarrow". First result is amazon which has everything. 

1 hour ago, AETHER said:

What was the title of these two books?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DFKW732?binding=paperback&ref=dbs_dp_awt_sb_pc_tpbk

Google

8 hours ago, Ed Snible said:

@rNumis you already know this, but as background there are several very good web-searchable indexes of auction catalogs.

The American Numismatic Society has been cataloging its holdings for more than a century (since 1883!). They have 100,000+ books, periodicals, and catalogs.  Here is an example:

@Ed Snible some great suggestions there! 

Huge fan of donum at ANS. I did add an underlying donum field in my database some time ago - after I got their permission to link to their webpages - but I haven't got very far populating the data yet. So far, those few donum entries I have added only show up in the 'Provenance' parts of rNumis. You can see a donum link on this page, for example:

https://www.rnumis.com/greek_coins_detail.php?dbid=KLN_20211029_27

I think adding donum links in the main catalog tables at rNumis is a great idea and I'm thinking about how to make that happen.

What I wasn't suggesting in my previous post was replicating donum. I should have said a "web-searchable index of the contents of older auction catalogs", I didn't mean a searchable index of the catalogs themselves.  So... more along the lines of your comments on OCR and ruler, location queries. By no means an easy project and I was curious if the provenance-hunters would find that useful. It would avoid a lot of copyright issues. 

Cheers,

Steve

Here's an idea. What if one were to create a web-searchable index of the older auction catalogs. You're not going to reproduce the lot descriptions or plate images, so maybe a way to avoid copyright issues. Maybe. 

Someone could then at least generate a list of older auctions where a certain type/mint/ruler had appeared. Not perfect, but it would point you in the right direction and could save a lot of time-consuming page flipping. 

Just a thought. 

"The only person in the world who can search in the way you suggest is Dr. Jonas Emmanuel Flueck.  He scanned a large library of catalogs and hired a programmer"

Not strictly true, Ed. I know of at least 2 other people who have outstanding searchable digital numismatic libraries but for various reasons don't/can't make them public. I could do it if I had the time. One day.

You have some work to do. This screenshot is on my phone. Same comment...it needs to be responsive. I use bootstrap on my website, but I'm sure there are plenty of other solutions.

Cheers,

Steve

Hi, can you post images of the report? Downloading anything from an unknown google drive out on the internet is in general a very bad idea...I certainly dont do it, though others may not be so cautious.

Cheers,

Steve 

I did wonder if it was you, Al 😄

The only Swedish coin I ever owned - long since sold (2013/Kuenker). The condition wasn't great, but these are quite rare. The photos are from the auction house that I bought it from (Holmasto). More information on these here: 5 Kopecks (Occupied Russia; Ekaterina II imitation) - Sweden – Numista

I know I have at least one of the AK Triton sub-catalogs. With luck it will be 2017, but I suspect it's earlier. I'll see if I can find it.

20 hours ago, DonnaML said:

Whoever A.K. was, a lot of his or her coins were sold by CNG in 2017.  I bought my A.K. Collection coin a couple of years ago from Sphinx Numismatics, which was offering several of them:

Julia Domna, AR Denarius ca. 201 AD, Rome Mint. Obv. Draped bust right, hair waved vertically and fastened in large bun in back, IVLIA AVGVSTA / Rev. Isis, wearing polos on head, draped, standing three-quarters right, head right, holding the nursing infant Horus in left arm against left breast, with her right hand holding a wreath or other ring-shaped object against her chest, her left foot against prow of galley, right, and her left knee bent with Horus resting on it; to left of Isis, rudder rests against altar; SAECVLI FELICITAS.  RIC IV-1 577 (p. 170), RSC III 174 (ill.), Sear RCV II 6606, BMCRE 166. 18x20 mm., 3.35 g., 6 h. Ex CNG Triton XX Auction, Jan. 10, 2017, part of Lot # 614, No. E027; from A.K. Collection.

 

Perhaps the Triton XX catalog, which is probably available online, has more information.

Triton XX had this to say (P204)...

The sale is indeed online here...

CNG Triton XX Sessions 1 and 2 by Classical Numismatic Group, LLC - Issuu

with additional lot information here...

The A.K. Collection (cngcoins.com)

Cheers,

Steve

Some information here:

Hoard Details 2967 (ox.ac.uk)

Cheers,

Steve

Saw this just now on Bored Panda. Made me laugh 

Five deer came by yesterday. Only one was brave enough to leave the woods, but we saw them all moving through.

Looks like Syracuse?

1 minute ago, Phil Davis said:

As it happens, I was discussing this great project with some friends literally just yesterday. For financial reasons, they won't be updating it going forward. They're firmly committed to maintaining the archives intact though, both the online resource and the physical catalogs themselves. The physical archives are available for browsing, should anyone find themselves in Cambridge with a few spare hours to kill. Or spare weeks. (You might even happen upon a few with cryptic annotations by a certain Phil Davis, lol.)

Awesome! That's great to hear it won't be going away. A trip to the physical archives...well, that would be me out of sight for a while 😄 I'll look out for those annotations!

This resource came up in another thread, but I think it should be more generally advertised. 

It's provided by the Fitzwilliam Musuem at the University of Cambridge and has been around for quite some time. Updates seem to have stopped in 2016, but for anything older than that I find it invaluable, especially for sales from more obscure firms. 

https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/library/salescatalogue/

10 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

Thanks so much; I think that must be the right one. I see that the company used fixed price lists rather than auctions. 

I certainly hadn't come across that name before, but now I see on Fitzwilliam that they were around for quite a few years. Mostly lists...a couple of auctions towards the end.

https://fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/dept/coins/library/salescatalogue/SALECA-D.html

I should look into them some more! 😀