lordmarcovan

“Found in Essex”. That phrase conjures up some fond memories for me. 🙂

I feel your angst there. That’s my dilemma with my metal detecting finds album, which contains all the stuff I dug from the early ‘90s to the early 2000s- in other words, my pre-photography era. I’d love to display that stuff online with my other collections (even though, as you might expect with dug stuff, some of it is wretched). But until I pay someone to photograph all that for me, I lack photos of most of those finds. Some of them are interesting. Lots of them aren’t anything special. Even if and when I do decide to hire a cheap photographer to do the job, merely editing and uploading all the photos and doing short writeups on the finds (even just the interesting ones) will be a daunting task.

PS- where’s that Claudius aureus you mentioned? I’d love to see it if you have a pic.

Remember that your Julius Caesar is a lifetime issue with his portrait, and as such, deserving of respect regardless of its grade or eye appeal (or partial lack thereof). My first JC lifetime portrait denarius (and, as of this writing, still the only JC I’ve owned) was also no beauty contest winner. But the portrait was clear (-ish) and most of Caesar’s name was visible. I got it for slightly less than $500 USD around 2008. (Slabbing it pushed my total investment to just above the $500 mark.) Somebody on Collectors Universe called it a “Bart Simpson coin”. Haha. I guess there is a slight resemblance there. I’ve seen similarly low-end examples priced over $1,000 nowadays. So $200-something for yours in 2010 sounds pretty good. Like you, I’ve long been under a fairly modest budget. Working as a hotel clerk and being a dad and trying to keep a series of older cars on the road… well, I know about budgetary limitations. If it weren’t for a little inheritance money a couple years ago, I’d never have joined the Aureus Club, for example. You allude to those two coins being from the same seller. Judging from the red background in the photos, I’m going to venture a guess that you’re talking about Steve McBride of Incitatus Coins? He was my go-to dealer when I first started collecting Romans. He offers some nice bargains on stuff you don’t see every day.

I was actually tempted to go provincial for Caligula this time around, and bid on this Caesaraugusta piece, but narrowly lost out. (As I recall, I bid €500. It closed for €550.) I also bid on this XF Vesta as in the recent Heritage auction. It closed for $3,120 USD, which is frothingly insane if you ask me! (I had bid in the upper three-figure range.) It was a nice coin, but someone wanted it WAY more than me! I’m content with the above example I just bought, at one-sixth the price of that Heritage example!

Nice. The Tears for Fears song was fun, and brought back memories of younger days.

PS- nice YouTube vid. I should do that more often with my ancients, before I send them off to be entombed in acrylic...

A uraeus, huh? Very cool! I confess I had to look that up, so here's the Wikipedia link for anyone else who was similarly unfamiliar. (I clicked in here thinking that was some rare and obscure Roman usurper. LOL.)

Ooh, nice tet, @expat! You've gotta love that eagle.

Wow, that photo is poster-worthy! Almost makes me regret having all my pieces in sl*bs! (Almost, but not quite.) 😉

Very wholesome looking example, @CPK! Nice portrait, decent centering, and Galba's name is well placed on the flan. I recently added Galba to my Twelve Caesars set, with this middling example from Ritter.

The Northern Lights in Southern Georgia! (We're just a stone's throw from the Florida border.) Ladymarcovan was excited. She’d never seen them before. (I saw them once in Maine.) She said that checks one off her bucket list without even leaving home. This is her pic, from our front yard. She has a newer iPhone. (Mine would’ve just shot a black rectangle.) My friends in Western North Carolina captured some even more dramatic shots:

I was after Caligula for my Twelve Caesars collection. I did battle over some nice ones at auction, but lost badly (the ones I bid on went for crazy prices!) So I dialed back my expectations a little bit, and ended up buying one at fixed price, from Zuzim on VCoins. Now I have ten of the Twelve Caesars (83% complete) as of this post, and lack only Julius Caesar and Vitellius! This Caligula is no showboat, but rather just a middle-of-the-road example with decent-looking surfaces and lightly contrasting patina. Zuzim described it as "VF", but I'm more of the opinion that it will go Fine when I send it off to NGC (we'll see). I'd be OK with that- as long as it achieves that grade with no problem notations. (Fine is my self-imposed minimum grade for my collections.) Zuzim's description: "GAIUS CALIGULA AE AS RIC 38, RSC 27, Very Fine, 27.5mm, 11.22 grams, Struck Circa. 37/38 C.E. Obverse: C CAESAR AVG GERMANICVS PON M TR POT around bare head of Caligula to left Reverse: Vesta seated to left on ornamental throne, holding patera and scepter, VESTA above An above average, problem free example of this popular type with nice eye appeal! Ex: VJM Collection, NJ Purchased from Tom Cederlind, 1982". Having a piece pedigreed to the late Tom Cederlind is kind of nice.

So… here I come, a month later, browsing the back pages, and reading old threads. What did the winners spend their prize loot on, I wonder?

And then here I come, reading the back pages more than a month later…

Fair question. I for one find some of history’s rogues interesting. I guess it’s up to the individual about where they feel queasy and where to draw the line. Perhaps a dark period that is still within living memory (e.g., the Holocaust) can be viewed a little differently than an era from which there are no living survivors. Time may not heal all wounds, but it does bring a modicum of emotional detachment when enough of it has elapsed, I suppose. (Of course I say this as an American. I know folks in places like Europe and the Middle East have much longer cultural memories.)

I have nothing intelligent to add vis-a-vis die characteristics, but I really like that anepigraphic reverse! I was previously unfamiliar with the type. (Apparently I don’t crawl out of my burrow often enough.)

The bullion value of my gold “guitar pick” (Bermuda Triangle) has now caught up to what I paid for it (including the slab). It is .999 fine, with 1.0114 oz. of bullion. Reckon I’ll hang onto it a little longer and then flip it and convert it to some more historical gold or electrum later, maybe. Sure, it’s modern. But it’s fun.

Yes, occasionally. I've done repeat business with both Incitatus and David Connors. Both good. Dunno if I ever thanked ‘em, but they did get my repeat business.

Wow, an impressive array! I love those hippos! Here is my heffalump, which has been posted before in other threads.

Are those pointy bits like foam rubber? I’d be powerless to prevent myself from playing with them and squooshing them every which way and bouncing myself off the walls, and other kidlike behavior they would likely frown upon. (I never fully grew up in some ways.)

Just now: high tide in the Marshes of Glynn, shot from a moving car window at 55 MPH. (*Ladymarcovan is driving. I’m the passenger.)

Just now: Grace the Dachshund tried to escape having her ears cleaned, but Bean held her down.

Wild roses on the back fence.