lordmarcovan

I have never received a star from NGC on anything I submitted.  

(My Claudius sestertius has the star, but I bought it already slabbed.)

I did get a perfect grade and strike/surface ratings when I submitted this little pseudo-Rhodian Perseus drachm.  I really thought it deserved the star, too, but alas, no.  I have seen other Ch MS examples of the type but the style on this one is better than any other I have seen.  (I sold this coin in leaner times.  Really miss it.)

1 hour ago, Ryro said:

Lol. Good thread idea!

In my defense is just such a cool, pivotal and embarrassing time for Rome. Coins of Pertinax, Diddius Julianus and Pescennius N are a must, regardless of what they look like... but mine really look like chewed silver bubble gum

 

Definitely nothing to be ashamed of, with those guys!  All are rulers I have never owned, in any condition.

All that stuff in the Heritage auction likely drew strong money because it was in slabs.  Now, say what you like about slabs- and I know most of you purists despise them- but they do bring in interest from a sector of collectors who might not otherwise buy an ancient coin.

Me, I slab ‘em mostly because the rest of my collection is slabbed.  For consistency’s sake. There are a few other perks to slabs, as well as disadvantages.

Because Ancients in slabs are so often overpriced, I typically buy mine raw (like I did this time), and submit them myself.  That’s been the case for all but my Claudius sestertius and my two aurei, which I did purchase already slabbed.  Everything else I bought raw and sent off to be entombed.  (Ow!  Ow!  Stop throwing that rotten fruit at me, already!)

32 minutes ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

Wow, the Caesaraugusta coin is nice!  You tried, though.  I'm not sure what the appropriate price would be for a nice example.  It has a very similar look (the patina) to the $225 example I mentioned, except this piece was maybe a nice Fine plus. 

I forgot about my 'barbaric' Caligula as, which is muled with an Agrippa reverse.  It was a victim of the Great BD Outbreak of 2000 (which is why I barely handle my coins since then). I didn't have the information I do now, and while I got the bd to stop, it left a small malachite lump.

Yikes, so I’m not the only one to have had a Caligula catch bronze disease.  It happened to me twice.  Never had any other coin (nary a common LRB or anything)- catch BD.  But twice with Caligulas.  I called it “the Curse of Caligula”.

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

12 minutes ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

Like I mentioned, it's a pre-2008 buy and not photographed.  Until such time that macro photography improves to such a point that it's foolproof or I get a pre-made photography stand, there's not much point in cataloging them.

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.

29 minutes ago, Nerosmyfavorite68 said:

I've been collecting for 30 years, and while I have many decrepit coins, there's only a small handful of which I'm truly ashamed of.   I'm fully in the budget collector class, and I only had a small budget for a very long time.  My coin budget is larger than ever before, but with the price inflation of a Caesar portrait denarius, an example would be fairly tough to get; life gets in the way.  The bushes alone cost $1100 to trim.  It's almost impossible to get rid of brush; I had to spend $770 on a junk removal company.

Due to my lack of coin photography skills (which would probably be fixed if I could buy a pre-built stand for a cell phone), my pre-2008 collection (i.e. coins bought which featured a picture) are unphotographed, and given the massive amount of effort it would take to catalog and photograph them, probably never will be.

The Claudius Aureus is the first coin of shame.  Purchased circa 1997, ex-jewelry, it's VG and mushy.  I purchased an Aurelian double sestertius, honestly described as heavily tooled, from the same dealer, yet I don't really have any shame about that one.  It's my only known toolie, and as I don't participate in auctions, it's unlikely that one will ever show up in my price range at vcoins.

The second coin of shame is my only Julius Caesar portrait denarius.  I picked it up for $200-something in 2010 and while I was quite excited about my budget purchase at the time (it got me in the door of JC portraits), alas, it's probably one of the worst known.  The price was certainly not bad.  For the price, it should be one of the worst known.

ULIUS CAESAR AR silver portrait denarius. Lifetime issue, struck Jan-Feb 44 BC. CAESAR DICT PERPETVO, Laureate head of Caesar right. Reverse - SEPVLLIVS MACER, Venus standing right holding Victory and scepter. RSC 41, RCV 1414. 17mm, 3.1g. Very worn, several small surface scratches.

TRAJAN DECIUS AE double sestertius. Rome, 250 AD. IMP C M Q TRAIANVS DECIVS AVG, radiate, cuirassed bust right, drapery on far shoulder. Reverse - FELICITAS SAECVLI, Felicitas standing left with long caduceus & cornucopiae, SC in fields. Cohen 40, RIC 115c, RCV 9395 34.5mm, 21.3g. Reverse slightly double struck.

The Trajan Decius is the only coin I have which actually brings me a small level of distress.  While no one has ever definitively answered this point, it's my theory that the ghastly eye (or lack thereof) was due to corrosion removal.  One can see residual corrosion still left on the face.   I'm told that it was originally from France.  I'm still not sure if the residual hair left on the back of the head is tooled in or not.

A couple of recent coins from this seller are high on my joy list.  It was just coincidence that these two were not.

 

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.

28 minutes ago, Roman Collector said:

I still haven't acquired an imperial issue of Caligula, but only provincials. You know how it is. 

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:
 

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…

On 4/15/2024 at 6:03 PM, JAZ Numismatics said:

So the real question is: how much time is enough to erase the distaste of owning objects associated with evil men? Because if you collect Roman, you've got a cabinet full of coins issued by murderous, torturing, genocidal, megalomaniacal, perverse, misogynistic pedophiles. 

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.

53 minutes ago, akeady said:

I was in an anechoic chamber a while back, testing our MEMS microphone ADC.

Fun day 😄

ATB,
Aidan.

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.)