Ed Snible

eBay used to have an "Items Wanted" section, for humans to find things requested. They no longer have it. eBay supposedly took it down because they were being cut out of the transactions, but I never got replies for my requests except spam. eBay still has automated searches. Forum has a "Personal Want Lists" section, https://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?board=13.0 . It does not get much traffic. VCoins has a "Want List" feature. I use this a lot! My only complaint is that I can't make it run more frequently than once a day. Often I get an email that something I want has been listed, but it sold 20 hours ago. Several dealers and auction sites have similar features.

@NewStyleKing, I appreciate you writing up your findings (such as "The Odyssey of the Poggio Picenze Hoard IGCH 2056") and publishing them on Academia. I wish more people would do that.

How should dealers and collectors ensure provenance is transmitted to future scholars? How should museums? When I read 19th century numismatic journals, the provenance is usually given as "My Collection", "Commerce". Occasional there is a more serious provenance such as "found in a graveyard in Etruria" or "purchased with four coins of Crete at Smyrna by Major Cunningham in 1888" but this is rare. @NewStyleKing, what steps are you taking to ensure your own collection's provenance is not lost? If I believe the dealer is open, I ask for the provenance. Sometimes I get a provenance such as "This was part of a group lot in Steve Album's auction 100" or "Aaron bought it at Numismata in Munich last year". Sometimes, when I see a large number of coins on the market of a previously rare type, I ask for the nationality of the consigner, but rarely get even this information. I try to hang out on social media in places where such matters are discussed. All of my coins are in flips, and all of my flips have a hidden area where I record the dealer, price, and date of purchase. This keeps the information with the coin. In case the flips are discarded I have a printed inventory of my collection. My hope is that if I get hit by a bus this printed inventory is donated to the ANS archives. However, I haven't taken serious steps like actually writing "please donate this printed archive to the ANS" on that inventory and putting it in a safety deposit box. I remember once seeing a very nice group lot of bronze coins of Amisos in a Triton auction. All of them had provenances, and CNG told me that the consigner insisted that the provenances be part of the lot. I was outbid on this group lot, but acquired one of the coins three months later. The reseller did not have those provenances any longer. Many dealers don't believe such information has economic value. I don't know if it was Mark Salton's responsibility to get the 1961 provenance to you. He worked really hard on his world coin archive manuscript. There aren't enough hours to preserve everything, especially in 1961, before the Internet, and before photocopiers were widely available. What steps do you think Margaret Thompson should have taken? Should she have insisted on publishing the name of the dealer used by the Saltons? Should she have kept that information privately with her research materials? Should she have put that information in "escrow" to be released at a future time? Have you written to the ANS to see if they have any archives about Margaret Thompson? I have no idea what she saved. You might want to come to New York and look through everything they have. It is possible she had notes on New Style hoards she never published. What are you doing to ensure your own unpublished research materials are preserved?

Here is a coin depicting Helios or Medusa: Phrygia, Kibyra, 133-84 BC, AE 15.7 mm, 2.56 g I’ve assigned the coin to the date range 133-84 BC. Other sources date the coinage of Kibyra to 166-84 BC. I suspect “166” is a typo for 133 BC that originated in Barclay Head’s BMC catalog. In his introduction Head says “some of the autonomous bronzes coins are apparently dated from the era of Asia 134-3 BC” (page xlvii) but in the catalog the unexplained year 166 BC is used. Nothing of note happened in Phrygia in 166 BC, did it? The coinage of many cities are arranged by numismatists with 133 BC as the beginning or end of a period based on the Roman takeover at the end of the Pergamene kingdom. Mionnet described the facing head as Helios. The wings suggest a late-style gorgoneion. I think Babelon called it Medusa. There are coins of Kibyra showing a warrior holding a pelta (shield) with the same head, with snake ties around the neck. However there are also coins with side-facing Helios on the obverse, perhaps borrowed from the types of Rhodes. The basket is a punning type for the city. William Henry Waddington suggested the basket was the kibisis where Perseus kept the gorgon's head.

I used a command line program called wget. I will not recommend it, as it does over 1000 things and it is not easy to get it to do what you want! AGENT="user-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Ed Snible; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/106.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" wget --spider -r --no-parent --user-agent=$AGENT https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/

Six internal broken links. The link targets are: https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/banner.gif https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/turtline.jpg https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/virtsest.jpg https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/turtline.gif https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/lemmings.gif https://www.forumancientcoins.com/dougsmith/p2tomis15.jpg Another link to Tom's site is http://grifterrec.org/coins/coins.html . Just replace the "grifterrec.com" with "grifterrec.org"

I agree with @quant.geek but I am unsure if NCIC is the correct venue for reporting, given that their Report Form doesn't have an option for noticing stolen coins in an auction catalog. The ANS might have contacts in the Afghan museum community, or, even better, the Délégation Archéologique française en Afghanistan. I am very impressed that you, @velarfricative, have Le Tresor Monetaire de Qunduz. That book costs $400 used. I wish something could be done to make catalogs of stolen collections more widely available. The most successful recovery of stolen museum coins is probably the large cents recovered by the ANS. Huge amounts of legal effort were required to get them back. You can't merely call the cops in these situations. About 20 years ago there was a major theft of coins from a New York dealer. The thieves were convicted -- some are even still in jail -- but the coins were not recovered. Sometimes these coins show up in auctions. If a coin sells, and is later found too have been stolen, it can be hard to recover it -- expensive civil suits are needed to find out the consigner and buyer, and then more suits are needed to pry the coin from them. Dealers can't afford to recover coins as legal costs can run many times higher than a coin's values. There are other museum thefts that are outstanding. The 1977 Naples Museum theft was 6000 coins. They have not been recovered. Some of us may own those coins. 90% of those coins were never photographed, so we will never know. The best 10% were photographed, but the catalog is extremely rare and expensive and I don't know how to reach out the the copyright holder to get permission to scan and produce PDFs.

Last weekend I tried to XRF an archaic Greek coin in an NGC slab. I got very strange results: LE 97.82%; Ag 2.15% (Silver); Au 0.024% (Gold); Pb 0.010% (Lead) LE stands for “Lighter Elements”. For this machine, this means Mg, Al, Si, P, and S. (The machine has a way to break this down, but it isn’t my machine, and I didn’t figure out how in the time that I had.) I gave up after a single test. According to the blog from a different XRF manufacturer, XRF can be used through slabs. So I decided to take a look at the numbers I got. If I throw away the LE, and normalize the silver, gold, and lead so they add up to 100%, I get: 2.15 ------------------ = 98.4% silver (2.15+0.024+0.010) Using similar calculations, gold is 1.1% and lead 0.5%. Those figures are about right for the 3.9g series of “Parion” (actually Thracian) coins. Perhaps it is possible, with machine settings or calculations like the above, to perform XRF through slabs. Has anyone tried it before and after cracking slabs? Is there a technique that works?

I recommend Thomas Levenson's Newton and the Counterfeiter. https://thomaslevenson.com/newton-counterfitter A 17th century 'police procedural' with the world's greatest scientist, Isaac Newton, abandoning physics and becoming a proto-detective in London's underworld. It is a true story. The book lacks photographs. Pages and pages are spent discussing hammered coins, why they could be clipped, and how they are different from milled coins. I would have appreciated a few photos but at least I know what the coins look like so it wasn't hard to follow the discussion. Levenson also explains the differences between good and poor quality fakes of hammered and milled coins, and discusses fake currency ('malt tickets'). I have never seen a fake English coins from this period and I've never seen a malt ticket, real or fake; photos of these would have been especially welcome.

Pentadrachm: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=9912476 Octodrachm: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=3359609 Dodecadrachm: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=978177 Pentakaidekadrachm: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1486603 Double shekel: https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=823267 UPDATE: Double dekadrachm: http://coinindia.com/galleries-amyntas.html

Die matched fourrees from Apollonia Pontika: 1.99 and 1.97g The lower one with test punches.

Thracian Tribes, perhaps the Asti?, AKA “Parion” 513-480 BC. 3.86g 13mm. ex Dr. Roland Maly, founder of Bank Leu. For many years I believed these were from Olbia. They aren't found in Mysia. To determine their origin I classified all the ancient Greek gorgons by their characteristics -- style of eyes, ears, hair, etc. By this process, the style was closer to Olbia than other Greek gorgons. I gave a talk last month at the INC where I explained the origin of the attribution to Parion, and presented my other evidence. However, in light of recent hoard evidence I now suspect southeastern Thrace. You must wait until I can write up the full details for publication.

Many of these are photographed in Vecchi, Etruscan Coinage (2013). If someone has it, it can be helpful.

For many years I only used a scanner to image coins. I like it. I stopped doing it because I study a lot of really worn coins and found that without being able to control the lighting angle easily it was difficult to bring out weak inscriptions. If you use a scanner, here are three non-obvious things to know. If you want a black background, leave the door open The lighting angle is different in the center vs the edges. Different coins look better at different positions on the bed, and at different rotations. It helps to boost the contrast a bit, to make the coins look as good as they look under intense lights. Here is a strange little coin. I can't attribute it beyond "Pozzi 3359ter". In 20 years I have never seen even the photograph of another one, just this and the one in the Pozzi catalog. Door closedDoor closed and digitally color curved Door open Door open and digitally color curved Euboea, Chalkis (?), 1.28g, AE11 Obv: Female head wearing triangular earring right Rev: Cross or Χ (Chi) upon circular shield Pozzi 3359ter, otherwise perhaps unpublished CNG, Triton VI, January 2003, lot 1563 (part of); David Freedman collection. Described as 'Uncertain, possibly Selge'.

Is this the same Lansky that is located in Estonia? If so, perhaps read page 3 of this CoinTalk thread: https://www.cointalk.com/threads/okay-we-need-to-talk-about-katz.381734/page-3

As a US citizen, when I buy goods I need to follow the rules at https://www.cbp.gov/trade/basic-import-export/internet-purchases to import them legally. It is rare for an undeclared coin to be seized. Some fraction of envelopes are X-rayed. It might be a good idea to fill out the paperwork.

Until you have repeat customers there will be concerns about how your photographs look vs how the coins look in-hand. Take more photos of your coins, maybe from another angle. If any of your coins have previous photos, link to or include those photos.

Chelys: Ionia, Teos. 320-294 BC. 1.0g 9.5mm diobol Obv: Griffin standing right Rev: ΔΙΟΥΧΗ[Σ] (Dioches, magistrate); chelys (a musical instrument) The key feature of the chelys, the tortoise shell, is off the flan on this specimen.

Thanks for trying. Maybe the editors of RPC are merely saying Aiello had one of these? Mine isn't his. I bought this coin from a local coin shop, mislabeled, no old ticket, and was very surprised to find it as an alternate in RPC!

Perhaps if the emperor was visiting they used the good silver and didn't abuse the dies. EGYPT, Faustina Junior (147-175 AD), dated Regnal Year 12 of Antoninus Pius (147/8 AD), billion tetradrachm 22mm 13.61g Obv: ΦΑVС[ΤΙΝΑ] СƐΒΑСΤΗ; Faustina II Rev: L ΔωΔƐΚΑΤΟV; Eusebeia seated left, holding patera over lit altar, holding long scepter RPC vol 4 #13632 (temporary) (this coin pictured, ex Aiello) I was never able to find a provenance for this coin other than the one in RPC, to the collector. John Aiello's collection of Roman Egypt coins sold in Malloy Auction XIV. (1979, "John Aiello Collection of Roman Egyptian Coins"). 788 coins of Roman Egypt! There was a specimen of this type, but it wasn't this coin! Perhaps there was another auction.

Here is one with a Phoenician date: Phoenicia, Marathos, dated Year 26 (233 BC), AE18 5.98g Obv: Tyche bust with palm branch Rev: On right, downwards, 𐤖𐤖𐤖𐤖𐤖𐤖𐤘𐤕𐤔 ('Year 26' in Phoenician; 233/2 BC); on left 𐤔𐤌 upwards; Astarte standing Ref: Lindgren & Kovacs 2304; BMC p. 297, 1 (plate XXXV #7). CNG, Triton VI, January 2002, lot 1563 (part) ex David Freedman When I attempted to decipher the year there were no examples to check on acsearch.info for comparison. Now there are several: year 103 = 157-156 (?). 107 =152/151 v.Chr.? "73"= 187/186 v.Chr This makes me think some of us have misread the date.

Martin Price wrote "The bronzes 3157-62 are certainly of Cypriot provenance [cites 7 things] and the similarity of letters and monograms links them with 3152-6. Newell ['Salamis', p. 315] sought to link the NK monogram ... with King Nikokreon and the M ... with with Nikokreon's successor Menelaus. Attractive though this may be, in the context of several other monograms and letters, this seems unlikely, but in the case of Nikokreon the monogram is the same as his regal coinage." I haven't read Newell on Salamis. I believe 3157 is Ionia, not Salamis, because of a control mark on a specimen sold a few years ago. I haven't written this up, but perhaps the next thing to read is Dinçer Savaş Lenger and Ömer Tatar, "PRICE 3158: Not Salamis but Sardes".

I knew David J Fleischmann, but I can't recall if I saw this coin in person. In the photograph the obverse looks AU. These coins must have circulated for a long time. Usually they are awful. Yours are nice, @Ryro, but Fleischmann's is nicer. Here is one of my favorites: Miletos or Mylasa, 1/4 AE Unit / AE13 (1.81 g) Ref: Price 2065 This coin is one of the nicest I have seen, with a glossy patina and sharp reverse, although but the shield is still not as good as Fleischmann's. @kirispupis No one knows exactly where or when these shield/helmet are from. There is not even a good reason to be sure that B-A means "BASILEOS ALEXANDROU", or that they are all from the same time period. The key work for understanding the shield bronzes is Katerini Liampi's 1986 „Zur Chronologie der sogenannten ‚anonymen’ makedonischen Münzen des späten 4. Jhs . v. Chr.” (= “On the chronology of the so-called ‘anonymous’ Macedonian coins of the late 4th century BCE”). There are English translations of various quality levels floating around the Internet. Martin Price's work catalogs these because the B-A is probably in the name of Alexander, but it is hard to find them in the book as they are not together. Here is a chart I made to help myself. I did my own study of the gorgoneion bosses. I found control marks that aren't in Price's catalog. I also believe that Price #2063 and Price #2068a don't exist (and Price misread the coins.) I don't want to go into these details here but I hope to write this up sometime. I am working on a chart of all of the populations of all of the control mark variations on the gorgoneion boss type. Fleischmann's pretty coin, with ☿ control mark, is the most common control mark variety. The type I am most interested in now is the spearhead type, which I believe is from Ionia, not Salamis.

Colossus on large coin: Rhodes/Rhodos, Caria, 1st Century B.C., AE 19.735g, 35.5mm In 164 BC, Rhodes became a permanent ally of Rome and it was sacked by Cassius in the 40s BC. I believe this was minted between those two events. During this period there was a giant bronze colossus just lying on the ground downtown! The 33 meter tall colossus had snapped at the knees during a 226 BC earthquake. The statue was so massive that after a Muslim army captured Rhodes in 653 AD it took 900 camels to haul the bronze away. I suspect that Rhodes' source of bronze for coinage was the less-interesting mangled chunks of the statue. Recycling was part of their culture; the colossus itself was made from weapons Demetrius Poliorcetes's army left behind. Wikipedia says "Much of the iron and bronze was reforged from the various weapons Demetrius's army left behind, and the abandoned second siege tower may have been used for scaffolding around the lower levels during construction." I am unsure which ancient source documents this. The colossus was 108 feet tall. Think of an 11 story building. About 1/3 as tall as the Statue of Liberty in New York. About the same height as the Las Vegas Statue of Liberty. A hollow 108' statue like the Colossus would have taken more than 900 camels to transport if it was complete. I am confident that the statue wasn't all there by the time it was sold for scrap. I believe that my 36mm facing-head Rhodes bronze not only depicts a Wonder of the Ancient World, but was made from the metal of that wonder.

Good point. https://www.numisbids.com/n.php?p=lot&sid=2090&lot=30096 Unsold at $350,000.