JeandAcre

@Andrew McCabe, in express compliance with your wishes, I'm ignoring you.  You get the honor of being #1 on the list.

Some of us have reasons to maintain our anonymity.  Often enough surprisingly (?) prosaic, never mind legitimate.  Right, Forget self-incriminating, in any imaginable (or imagined) way.  ...Thanks to @Restitutor, we have a work-around, via messaging.  But, nope, never mind.

Just most emphatically to @Alegandron's point, there's also been a reliable consensus, for decades, that among the English population of consistently indigenous descent, half of them are descended from Edward I --an only slightly later contemporary of Ghengis Khan.  Somewhere in the mid-20th century, C. S. Lewis made the prescient observation that the difference between commoners and the aristocracy was that the latter had the (arbitrary) luxury of knowing who they were descended from.

Methodologically, this is about nothing any scarier than merging known genealogical information with statistics.  This is really not rocket science.  ...I have to think that people tend to be terrified of genealogy because, as a discipline, it's so radically alien to anything that was allowed to be a normal part of their frame of reference.  ...Yes, substantive documentation, one generation at a time.  Cf. Anne Lamott: 'Bird By Bird.' 

8 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

I've never been seriously tempted to collect U.S. coins, but I do have to say that if I ever were, some of the series of commemorative half-dollars issued from 1892-1954 would probably appeal to me the most. I certainly never saw any of them in circulation, even as a child in the 1960s. It was an unusual event to find a half-dollar of any kind. Almost as unusual as ever seeing a 2-dollar bill!

Sorry, Donna, that you never had those opportunities.  It's looking like we're of similar age (Nope, I'm showing it more than you are); but in my small town, my brother got one Franklin half dollar, c. 1951, with some sweet toning.  That was another issue that had some solid engraving talent to go with it.  All those new issues of the '20s-'40s manage at least to evoke Saint-Gaudens.  ...And, Yep, two-dollar bills.  Should've hung onto them.

2 hours ago, Alegandron said:

Awesomeness on the 100 pounder AV, @lordmarcovan. Very nice.  Gold is always good.  LOL, I wonder if Britain was celebrating the LEAVING of those pesky folks from THEIR shores!  🙂

 

Funny you put this up.  My daughter is doing some extensive research into my and my ex-wife's family tree.  Found out that, yep, I am descendent from the Mayflower clans, and that my family were one of the very few NON-Puritan folks that came over on that ship.  Warner, I believe was the guys name.  

I don't have any coins from this time period, so sorry I cannot contribute...

Oh, wait... here is something from 1650...

Egypt 15th Dyn Hyksos 1650-1550 BCE     Scarab Sobek kneel R 16x12mm ex DeVries Collctn Flinders Petrie 942-943     Plate XIV

 

OOOOPS!  Sorry that is 1650 BCE... wrong direction.  😄

 

 

@Alegandron, your ancestor has to be Richard Warren (c. 1580-1628).  (Cf. the full list of passengers in Willison, Saints and Strangers (1945); Philbrick, Mayflower (2006), passim.) 

And there were Plenty of 'strangers' along with the 'saints.'  The Pilgrims had to book the ship from an English 'venture company' (along the lines of the sponsors of the earlier colony in Jamestown), who proceeded to include many of their own people onboard, in various logistical capacities.  Most of whom stayed put in (edit: OW: Not Jamestown) Plymouth.

And, Just Guess, we're Cuzzes!  :<}  I'm really needing this.

12 hours ago, MrMonkeySwag96 said:

I used to be really passionate about collecting Early Commemorative half dollars. I’m surprised I never bought myself a Pilgrim half dollar considering it’s one of the more common types

Very impressive collection, @MrMonkeySwag96.  ...I can only wish that, along with Booker T. Washington and G. W. Carver, there was one commemorating W. E. B. Dubois.  ...Except, he was still alive as late as 1963.  Guess that rules him out as a candidate for the series.  ...But if there was one, I'd be saving my nickels! 

14 hours ago, robinjojo said:

The Dutch also founded New Amsterdam in 1624, later to become New York in 1664.  With them came the lion daalder, though I would suspect that it was likely traded in North America before their arrival.

Friesland, lion daalder, 1625.

Davenport 8815

27.12 grams 

 

Very cool, @robinjojo.   I have to especially appreciate your pointing out how early the Dutch settled New Amsterdam.  ...Right, where does, um, the surname Roosevelt come from? 

Have to love those daalders (bucket-list material ...should I live so long).  Your example is the best I can remember seeing online.

These are as fun as they are cool, @lordmarcovan and @CPK.  Right, including your genealogical backgrounds.

I can promise both of you, for English genealogy in the (future) US, New England is the perfect storm.  No, in the best sense of the term, thanks mainly to various accidents of history.  A convergence of relative masses of extant primary documentation, and a tradition of correspondingly responsible, Yes, Responsible research, easily going back to the 19th century.  @lordmarcovan, you have my solemn word and bond, the Mayflower Society knew what they were about, yes, as of your maternal grandmother.  When you refer to it as 'supposed' descent, it's like, word out: you have Zero obligation to defer to the mountains of subsequent American genealogy online, composed mainly of wishful thinking.  Methodology effectively replaced by technology; Not a Good Trade.  Back to responsible methodology, there are parallels in English local and regional histories, easily back to the early 19th century.  A surprising number of which managed to find their way into print.  For one thing, a lot of the people who were doing this stuff, as early as that, were in the legal profession, and commensurately fluent in Latin.  Primary sources, back to the middle ages?  Not a problem.  Back to transliterating the manuscripts --and, thank you, they were better at that than I, for one, will ever be.

...From a relentlessly New England WASP dad (with family who were into this long before I was ...including field research in graveyards, never mind stuff in manuscript), I get descent from a small handful of Mayflower families. 

(Honestly, if you're descended from one, you're likely descended from a few more.  The Pilgrims were in Plymouth for a full decade before the Puritans even showed up in Massachusetts Bay.  Right, and they brought their families with them.  A lot of them wound up being lineally related to a lot of the rest of them.) 

Not one of them is remotely as distinguished as William Bradford.  In fact, my favorite has to be one of the 'Strangers' (vs. Saints') ...mostly since, where ancestors are concerned, I always gravitate toward the antiheroes.  That's Stephen Hopkins, who had been shipwrecked on Bermuda a decade before.  The incident inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest, and there's the merest chance that the 'drunken, boisterous' character Stephano was loosely based on Hopkins.  Hopkins also staged a mutiny in the aftermath, maybe giving Shakespeare further plot material.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephano_(The_Tempest) 

Here are a couple of shameless (well, close enough) reposts, both of James I, during his English reign, 1603-25.  ...Right, leading the Pilgrims and Puritans to opt for the alternate, Geneva translation of the Bible.  Sorry for the size of the .jpgs.

Shilling; first, thistle mintmark --Scotland! get it? :<}  2nd bust, c. 1603-4.  Spink (2015) 2646.

From later in the reign --thank you, much more contemporaneous to the Mayflower-- the other one is a counter.  Effectively a modernization of later medieval jettons, for accounting (...?). 

This one, the (Edit: second) main type of three, has been dated c. 1620-1625.  You're cordially invited to look at the initial footnote (2nd and 3rd paragraphs) of this typically formidable OP by @DonnaML.  

This verges on romanticization, but in terms of militance (this time, specifically toward local First Nations), I still want to think of the Pilgrims as the hippies, with the Puritans more like the SDS.  Yes, the Pilgrims were eventually drawn into the Indian wars, but they didn't land on Plymouth Rock with that intention preemptively in mind.  ...And unlike the Puritans, they're characterized as preferrng 'Lincoln green' to the stereotypical Puritan black.  ...Generally easier to like, of the two.

Wow.  ...From here, the horns of Amon summarily dominate both (um, brilliant) examples.

Mainly thanks to @David Atherton's illuminating background on Zeus-Amon as a Hellenistic syncretization, specifically of Zeus and Amun /Amon.  Huge thanks, David; I'd never managed to make the connection with Amun, despite his having been as prominent in the Pharaonic pantheon as Zeus was in the Greek one.  ...And here are the horns of Amon /Amun, big as life!

Meanwhile, to the south, the Nubian empire of (Napata/) Meroe, who had ruled Pharaonic Egypt as its 25th Dynasty (mid-8th - mid-7th c. BCE), more consistently perpetuated the original Pharaonic cosmology.  ...At least of the two; not unlike the persistance of traditional religion in, say, Mali after the adoption of (an otherwise notably chill version of) Islam.  The official line coexisted with exceptions among the populace, but more as a demographic dichotomy than as an ongoing, syncretic influence.

Here's yet another repost (--Groan), of a Meroitic amulet, c. 3rd c. BCE, with stylized horns of Amun.  Tiny, but all of have from Meroe; replete with provenance from Christie's.

Terrific example, @Nerosmyfavorite68.  I don't have any that are remotely as late as this (doesn't keep me from wanting one ...or two!), but the relief on this one really pops.  One thing that's easy to like about Sasanians is that they manage to avoid the kind of stylistic decline that's more evident in late Roman.  Comparably to the Andalusian taifas, they never missed a beat where cultural sophistication was concerned; they just got badly beaten up by various unwashed barbarians who could run circles around them on the military front.

And, Wow, that sit-up-in-your-chair latest Parthian looks from here like another coup.  If it was me, I'd do the bare minimum about the toning, if that.  ...If the Greek on the reverse is merely stylized, but still legible, that has to be pretty impressive in its own right.  On the other hand, I'm wanting to see some impending influence on early Sasanian portraits, too.  If I'm not making all of that up, it makes for a cool cultural dialectic. 

...More generally, there have been a few times when I've gotten exceptional examples of something or other at a little more than the going rate, and watched comparable ones proceed to double in price.  Nothing I can count on, but when the wind's blowing just right, that can actually happen.

Oh, No, @expat, my machine (still with Windows 7) isn't getting the video.  But once again, I clicked on the arrow button, and found another bunch of other cool videos.  Got it tabbed; hope the page keeps the same links for a minute.

...Solid antoninianus.  Am I making it up, or does Probus have more than the usual number of martial reverses, even for the period?

Huge thanks, just from here, to @Coinmaster and @Anaximander for your plethora of exciting bibliographic references!  I'm looking forward to seeing what I can find online for any books by Moesgaard, just to start with. 

...Why not?  This example made it onto my list of Top 10 Coins of 2023 --a true 'bucket list' coin. 

I was initially seeing elements of the Mammen Style (c. 950-1025), but there are also affinities with the earlier Jelling style, named after (...dramatic pause --irony, there!) Harald's Jelling Stone.  ...Don't know if that's of even peripheral relevance to the present context....  Anyway, it's Time to look for some of these books!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelling_stones

Congratulations, @lordmarcovan, on a Terrific Caligula.  Reading the OP was fun for the dramatic turn it took.  You spend all that time lowering our expectations ...and Then, There's the Coin.  From here, that would be summary bucket-list material.

Tom Cederlind was the only big-name dealer I ever met.  Sadly, while selling off most of my first collection.  But he was cool enough in person (never mind an absolute maven about the coins) for the acquaintance to be a resoundingly positive memory.  Wish I still had any of his catalogs.

...Very much as an aside, it's like, then you get all those bellbottoms and big naturals.  Might as well give the nostalgia a minute to itself. 

Aaaah.  David Byrne, the pioneer and perfector of elevating Autism Spectrum to an art form.  YAY!!!  @Sulla80, if you really are the first one to have posted any of his stuff (and this one is as paradigmatic as you can get), you deserve a medal.

...And the coin is pretty great, too!  :<}

Just paid for this, from a dealer in York who by now is a fun correspondent and, why lie, dear friend.  https://www.ebay.com/str/lizzysbitsbobs?_trksid=p4429486.m3561.l161211  A Conder token, from the year of James Boswell's death.  (Edit: Oh, nnnNo, that's the year of the first edition of his Life of Johnson.  He hung on into 1795.  But that was also from memory; consider the source.) 

Boswell didn't just write an epic biography of Samuel Johnson; he also was a fan of G. F. Handel, taking in performances of The Messiah in London any chance he got.  (From their first meeting: 'Indeed, Sir, I come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.'  'That, Sir, is a thing I find many of your countrymen cannot help.'  --Suh-Lap!)

Meanwhile, to Handel's credit, he found those bl---y 18th-century wigs insufferably hot (as did Johnson), and is often shown without one, both in paintings and sculpture.  This one copies a rendering by a remarkably near contemporary, Louis François Roubiliac, who spent most of his career in England.  

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/george-frideric-handel-16851759-254902 

... And I have to need the convergence of the obverse quotation with the reverse legend: 'BENEVOLENT CHORAL FUND[;] INSTITUTED 1791 [...from 6 o'clock:] .FOR ITS DECAY'D MEMBERS WIDOWS AND ORPHANS.'

Which in turn --from here, anyway-- makes the obverse legend only that much more resonant.  Quasi-literally; this is my favorite aria for alto in the whole oratorio. 

Belated welcome to the forum, @Meander.

And  (...dramatic pause ensues, maybe with some tympani), the coin itself summarily relegates that amazing line of provenance to the level of anecdotal confirmation of what a gobsmackingly amazing example the freaking Coin is.  I'm glad I'm sitting down.

...Just to give you the antithesis of the same dialectic, there's one still recent example from my collecting, involving two exceptionally high-end examples, in which the condition wound up running circles around provenance.  The first one was from the collection of Vaccaro, who wrote an early, frankly unreliable catalogue of the series.

https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/shanna_schmidt_numismatics_inc/245/product/kingdom_of_axum_armah_alla_amidas_c_540550_ad_goldinlaid__unit_ex_francesco_vaccaro_19031990_collection/1602978/Default.aspx 

The second was what I wound up getting.  Double-Striking?  As subtle as this, with the otherwise surreally full strike, and the same kind of olive patina that I like to associate both with these, and Julio-Claudian to Antonine AEs, there was really nothing to argue with.

https://leunumismatik.com/en/lot/46/390 

The difference in the closing price gave me easy latitude to get a copy of Hahn.

But No, that's the most impressive line of provenance I can remember having seen.  @DonnaML might give you some competition!  (...She introduced me to the concept of taking a historiographical appoach to numismatic references.)

Thanks for the terrific OP, @Sulla80.  I'm on @ewomack's page about never having gotten as far as Ottoman coins.  But it never ceases to amaze that, all the way from the original Caliphates, the Islamic ruling elites never stopped patronizing scholarship and the arts.  (Compare to the selective literacy of some contemporary European monarchs.)  (Edit:) Right, and maybe with Ottoman influence, the calligraphy of the northern Indian issues, also well into the 19th century,is truly exquisite.

...This is annoying.  If you go back far enough, I got a range of Andalusian quirats, covering most of the Almoravid emirs (late 11th -earlier 12th c. CE), including co-issues with heirs.  They're sweet little fractional dirhams (upwards of 10 mm), and especially for the scale, the Kufic is creditable, at least.  These are the only two that are findable in .jpg --the rest of them are hiding somewhere.  I'll start with the venerable website for the Tonegawa Collection, proceeding to my 1998 ed. of Album.  (Caveat: I eventually upgraded the one of Yusuf Ibn Tashfin.)

Yusuf ibn Tashfin  يوسف بن تاشفين  (AH 480 - 500 / 1087- 1106 CE.)

Cf. Cf. http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/almoravids_silver.htm, 1st row (for his reign), 4th example.

Album (2nd ed., 1998) 465, noting 'several variants, mostly without mint.' 

Ali ibn yusuf with heir Tashfin, AH 533-537 / 1139-1142/3 CE.  Cf. http://www.andalustonegawa.50g.com/almoravids_silver.htm, 5th row, 1st example, citing Vives and Hazard.  Album (2nd ed., 467 /cf. 466) confirms the dates of the coissues.

On 2/5/2024 at 4:07 AM, Rand said:

Nice coins and an interesting period of history. Are there any recommended books about the history of the Holy Roman Empire?

Hi @Rand, if you're talking about solid overviews in English, I've yet to find one.  Anecdotally, I've gone after academic histories of the Salian and Staufen dynasties, back to the 11th and 12th centuries, including a translation from the German.  Even in those narrow ranges, I've found them less than great.  My advice to you is the same I (would) give myself (if I had a  couple of extra decades to play with): Learn German!  They do history, like we just don't. 

Shoot, condolences, @Didier Attaix.  But it's never anything but encouraging when you find dealers whose ethics only surpass their level of expertise (in any given context ...however arcane).

Very cool project, @kirispupis.  Commiseration on the pitfalls so far --Been there, Done that-- and best of luck with your further pirsuit.  The level to which the Flavians continue stylistic features of the Julio-Claudians is an obvious point in their favor.

...Gotta say, I, Claudius has to the best historical novel I've ever read.  I had major help: as a kid, a family friend loaned me her copy and said, 'Just, Read This.'  I've said this before --that's how high it rates-- but Robert Graves managed to exercise his full, formidable literary powers at no expense to what had to be a comprehensive acquaintance with the historical background.  Really, Truly Great Stuff.  Still contemplating finding a copy online. 

5 hours ago, JayAg47 said:

BIGGVS DICKVS

Nicopolis ad Istrum
193-211 A.D.
3.23g
Obverse: AV KAI CEΠ CEVHPOC, laureate head right;
Reverse: NIKOΠOΛI-TΩN ΠPOC IC, Priapus standing and pointing at his penis.

...What, in case you didn't notice it?

(Ooooh, Rats, I couldn't find the 'Naughty Bits' sketch online.)

Sadly enough, I no longer live with dogs.  But in the apartment building, just over the past week, I've run into one a couple of times, with her human mom.  Wish there were any pics; she's a Border Collie puppy.  Thank you, Border Collies verge on being as smart as they make 'em.  And she likes me a Lot.  I think she can smell 'Likes Dogs.'  This second time, I asked Mom what her name was.  It was Zora.  'As in, Neale Hurston?'  Yep.  That part was fun, too.  

Bookmarked that one, too!  I can use all the alternatives to endless streaming of BBC and NPR news that I can get!  Thanks, @Anaximander.

Thanks, @Ancient Coin Hunter!  If you were so inclined, here's the whole thing, but only with the Latin transcription --granted, I can bet that your Latin is better than mine!

...The one time I was in Europe, as a kid in '73 (...the French hippies at the campground were a gas), I MADE dad stop at Bayeux on the way to Calais to catch the ferry.  One of the most memorable parts of the whole trip.  I really Got Lost in it.  ...We got there too late to get inside, but the cathedral there was cool, too.  Years later, it inspired a haiku.

        Bayeux Cathedral:
        Gothic sits on Romanesque
        Like a wedding cake.

(Edit:)  Whoops, Minor Detail: the link.  https://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/Chronologia/Lspost11/Bayeux/bay_tama.html