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SimonW

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Posts posted by SimonW

  1. 17 minutes ago, Sol_Invictus said:

    I wonder what the point of faking these coins was?  How much profit could they possibly make off of fake bronzes of Aurelian, Probus, Severina, Diocletian, Carus or Constantius II?  

    Probably more than you think. The production cost is probably only a few cents a piece, and each one will sell for 10, 20 or 30 USD/EUR. Multiply that by a few hundred coins.

    • Like 4
  2. In my experience, not only the degree of cleaning/restoration/tooling of a coin varies greatly, but also the definition of these terms.

    Many/most ancient bronze coins that have been mechanically cleaned have also been smoothed (more or less extensively). Mechanical cleaning inevitably leaves traces in the patina that a restorer will usually smooth away.

    Smoothing, on the other hand, can go so far as to enhance/strengthen certain details without changing the image of a coin. Some may say that this is already tooling, others may disagree.

    For me personally, tooling is definitively starting as soon as the image is changed (e.g. by adding new details). If this is your definition, then the majority of ancient bronze coins are certainly not tooled.

    • Like 3
  3. Short update:

    After some back and forth, Naville informed me that the "somewhat tooled" was added as a precautionary measure because of the mechanical marks that can be seen on the obverse, presumably from cleaning.

    They assured me that they have examined the coin carefully and that they do not see any traces of tooling on the reverse, nor do they believe that the coin is a forgery. The coin will now be sent to the IBSCC by Naville to get some further opinions.

    I'll keep you posted.

    • Like 6
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  4. There are two reasons for the ever-increasing buyer's commissions:

    1) The fierce competition among auction houses for consignors has led to lower and lower seller's commissions. In some cases, they are now negative, meaning that the seller also receives a share of the buyer's commission.

    2) Some buyers include the buyer's commission in their bidding calculations and therefore do not pay more when the buyer's commission increases. However, some buyers do not and pay more than they would if the buyer's commission were lower. As a result, an auction house that charges a lower buyer's commission than all the others puts itself in a worse position.

    The buyer's commission will therefore continue to rise until it is so high that it negatively affects the final price. Premiums of 30% and more are not uncommon at art auctions today.

    • Like 8
    • Shock 1
  5. Don't worry @Rand, it's perfectly fine to browse past auctions, that's why we keep them online. You may also copy auction information, lot images and descriptions for your personal use.

    Web scrapers are programs that systematically download an entire website (or parts of it), sometimes making tens of thousands of requests in just a few minutes, and can be a huge burden on the infrastructure. If there are many aggressive scrapers at the same time, it can be like a DDOS attack, blocking out regular users, or - if the infrastructure scales automatically - greatly increase costs.

    @Ed Snible, if you are interested in the PDF catalogs, I can send you a list of all PDF URLs. You can then download them all at once with a download manager. Using them to train AI is not forbidden at the moment, but since we are not the copyright holders, I can't promise that it will stay that way. Content creators around the world are starting to take action against AI services that make money from models trained on their content.

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  6. 2 hours ago, Rand said:

    Thank you. This is a very important point. I need to be double vigilant on when taking notes about the occurrence of publicly announced events becomes scraping. I do not keep any information from Biddr outside my Watch list on their account, so this would not be an issue this time.

    To be clear, I was referring to legitimate means of obtaining such information, either from Biddr owners or any authorised third parties, with any charges as appropriate.

    Do you say that such information cannot be (legitimately) obtained, or are you unaware that it can be obtained?

    I think @Ed Snible is referring to this paragraph:

    4.1. Any action that affects the website or part of it in any form is prohibited. This includes in particular:

    • the use of software or any sort of equipment that could affect the proper function of the website,
    • the use of so-called Web Scrapers, Web Robots and other software to systematically collect data from the website of biddr.com,
    • actions that overload the biddr.com infrastructure in an unacceptable way,
    • blocking, deleting, overriding or modifying any content on the biddr.com website or disturbing its proper function in any other way.

    This is to protect the site and its infrastructure from anything that could affect its normal availability and functionality. Biddr is first and foremost an auction platform that needs its resources for running auctions, and not a data store for crawlers and the like.

    @Rand are you missing a particular auction house on acsearch? Although not all auctions are publicly available, all data is collected and as soon as acsearch has permission to publish them, they are moved to the public domain. Some auction houses prefer not to have their auctions available in the archives, and some we haven't asked yet.

    • Like 2
  7. 1 hour ago, Ed Snible said:

    To understand their approach read this paper by Ethan Gruber and Andrew Meadows: https://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/20-6/

    The people who organize conferences and write grants like Linked Open Data.  They are less interested in JSON and API keys, which is what I see in the tech industry.

    After reading early papers on Numishare and Nomisma I was fired up to see what I could do with their APIs.  I quickly learned that the museum community makes those API available to each other, but not publicly.  I cannot execute a SPARQL query linking WikiData with ANS coin data.  The ANS SPARQL endpoint is private.

    Thanks for the link to this paper! Makes more sense now. It would be nice to have a website/platform where collectors can upload/share their coins within the Nomisma ecosystem (redacted of course, similar to RPC). Individuals launching their own Numishare applications as a contribution to the linked open data doesn't make much sense. And it's probably too clumsy to be used as a simple collection/gallery tool.

    What kind of SPARQL queries did you try that didn't work? I've run a few here https://nomisma.org/sparql/ that seemed to work fine. I've also successfully tried some of their API endpoints here https://nomisma.org/documentation/apis/.

  8. On 1/3/2024 at 8:45 PM, Ed Snible said:

    This was two years ago.  Things may have changed.  At that time, the provided _Dockerfile_ didn't work.  https://github.com/ewg118/numishare/issues/119 .  Let us know if things are working now.

    I used Vagrant to install it.  It did not take minutes.  Instructions here: https://github.com/esnible/numishare-vagrant .  Running on a Mac under Vagrant I found it tedious to enter coins.  At that time I was looking for something that made it easy to enter coins by hand, so I did not pursue the work required to make it easy to install on a Mac.

    Thank you @Ed Snible, that's very helpful. I will let you know if it works once I get a chance to give it a try. I find the following passage in their "readme" funny:

    The architecture is a major departure from typical LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) content management systems, enabling far more sophisticated data models which allow for the creation of an advanced public user interface.

    They should have stayed with the "typical LAMP content management systems". I don't see how Orbeon and an XML database are in any way superior to MySQL and PHPMyAdmin, for example.

     

    6 hours ago, Ed Snible said:

    @John Conduitt asks how to get the ACSearch info without it being a manual job.  I want to point out that the ACSearch terms at https://www.acsearch.info/subscribe.html forbid web scrapers.  This is above and beyond copyright, and you agreed to it if you created an account.  (Not to pick on ACSEarch; other systems mostly have similar rules.  If you have a programmer who can scrape data you might be able to get permission if you ask nicely.  I prefer to do the work manually, rather creating scrapers and asking for permission to use them.

    It's always those who scrape the web themselves who forbid scrapers, isn't it? 🙂 

    No, but seriously, it literally takes years of work and effort to compile the amount of data that acsearch has, and of course this data will be protected. 

    If you are looking for information about just a few hundred or thousand coins and don't need price details, feel free to contact us and we will try to help. After all, acsearch was created to help collectors and numismatists, which is also why we keep access to all data after 1999 (except price information) free of charge, while others limit it to the last 6 months.

    • Thanks 1
  9. 7 minutes ago, Ed Snible said:

    I was able to run Numishare on my laptop but found it extremely difficult to install.  Only a few museums have installed it.  I don't know of any individuals using it.

    Although the software has the ability to enter coins, my understanding is that the ANS uses it only for searching and rendering coin databases.  (For data entry they use FileMaker.)

    If you find anything let me know.

    Did you use Docker to install it? With Docker you should be able to get everything up and running in minutes. I haven't tried it yet, but will definitely give it a try for a project of my own when I find some time.

  10. Thank you all. I very much appreciate all the kind comments.

     

    On 12/26/2023 at 9:53 AM, Limes said:

    By the way, the reverse of your no. 5 looks a bit corroded, is it active? (Hope not of course!)

    I don't think it's active corrosion, but more likely verdigris. The surface hasn't changed since 1912, as far as I can tell from the Adolph Hess Nachfolger plates, except for the edge split.

     

    On 12/26/2023 at 9:26 PM, jdmKY said:

    Coincidentally, I watched Aaron Berk’s latest Ancient Coin Podcast  (#38 I think) and he had a short discussion about contorniates as well as medallions. Very interesting segment.

    Thank you very much for the recommendation, @jdmKY! It is indeed podcast #38. It's a shame they didn't talk more about contorniates. I think it's an area that deserves an exclusive podcast. 🙂 

     

    10 hours ago, Curtisimo said:

    As I understand it there are a lot of fakes of these so having one that is securely authentic is amazing.

    Unfortunately, yes. Even those with old pedigrees are not always authentic as these have been forged for centuries.

     

    1 hour ago, Aleph said:

    The carpenter, no. 3, is a great find!  This series is tremendously rare but much more extensive than is generally realized.  Love no. 1 also!

    The ‘regular’ Ae tesserae of Rome, e.g., the extensive Spintriae series, the carpentum and associated types, and then the letter series, are special fields that nobody comes to appreciate without spending a lot of time already in Roman numismatics.  Ranging from run of the mill rare like the Spintriae to torturously rare like the carpentum series, these are difficult to collect and amazing mysterious.  It is likely that no one else will ever hold 1, 2, 3 at the same time unless Simon sells these to that person directly!

    Thank you very much, @Aleph! The carpentum series is so amazingly rare that I don't know if I will ever own a second piece from this group. In comparison, many of the spintriae series are downright common (at least if you don't collect by nummerals 😅).

    • Like 2
  11. 9 hours ago, David Atherton said:

    This first coin is an incredibly rare Domitian quadrans I purchased way back in September, cruelly I just got around to unboxing it.

     

    D502A.jpg.814b4c40bdf5d5b8a4d5f8f35b270143.jpg
    Domitian
    Æ Quadrans, 2.75g
    Rome Mint, 86 AD
    Obv: IMP DOMITIAN AVG GERM COS XII; Ceres bust r., wearing wreath of corn ears, draped
    Rev: S C in field; Bundle of three poppies and four corn ears
    RIC 502A (R3). BMC 370. BNC -.
    Acquired from Savoca, September 2023.

    Small bronzes such as the quadrans were likely used in minor transactions by the plebs and sported very simple designs with popular motifs, often lacking an imperial portrait. Ceres briefly appeared on the obverse of Domitian's quadrantes in 85-86. She frequently was paired with an appropriate reverse design, such as a bundle of corn ears and poppies as seen on this example. Both the obverse and reverse celebrate Domitian's careful stewardship of the grain supply. This is a fourth known example of the rare variety with DOMITIAN fully spelled out. The other specimens are located in the BM (the only one known at the time of RIC II.1's publication), Paris, and two (!) in Berlin.

     

     

    Congratulations @David Atherton on these two great additions to your collection.

    The Domitian Quadrans is indeed very rare, although there are a few more than the 4 that you mention. There are at least 3 on acsearch and an 8th specimen (?*) is in my collection:

    https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=531619
    https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=1240837
    https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=10096390 

    https://www.collection.ly/9QjWzTLtrW/Y0YmEmeGCR 

    * I didn't check if any of the acsearch specimens are the ones in the BM, Paris or Berlin.

    All are from the same obverse and reverse dies.

    • Like 2
  12. Thank you all for your kind words!

    And a special thanks to @DonnaML for the link to this new book, which I hadn't seen before! Clare Rowan has been publishing on the subject for several years, and the University of Warwick has a great collection of tesserae in both AE and PB.

    Another interesting read is Tokens. Culture, Connections, Communities (RNS Special Publication 57, London, 2019) by Crisà, A./Gkikaki, M./Rowan, C. For spintriae, I recommend Alexa Küter's article Roman Tesserae with Numerals: Some Thoughts on Iconography and Purpose in the same publication.

    • Like 2
  13. 2023 has been a particularly exciting year for me. Mainly because of two tesserae that I was able to acquire just a few weeks ago (number 1 and 2 in my list below). But also because I started to focus more on Roman AE tesserae in general, a highly fascinating area with many mysteries yet to be solved. Another reason is that I started to expand the scope of my collection (quadrantes, semisses and tesserae) to include contorniates, another seemingly (or not? 😄) related area.

    I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Please feel free to comment and share anything related.

    Happy Holidays!


    10. A rather common type, but I was excited to find the two old pedigrees.

    Anonymous, Quadrans (15 mm, 2.62 g), Rome, 81-161 AD.
    Obv. Bust of Minerva, helmeted, r., draped. Rev. S – C, owl standing r., head front. RIC 7 (C). Ex Sally Rosenberg, Auction 72 (11.06.1932), Lot 1040; Leo Hamburger, Auction 76 (19.10.1925), Lot 2004.

    1392_nGkMDwjL6t_th.jpg.fc6243109b9f7cca87a94482badc19cc.jpg

     

    9. A gilded quadrans of Antoninus Pius. This is just one of many examples of gilded AE fractions produced in the early 2nd century. Possibly an indication that these were used as donativa at the time.

    Antoninus Pius, Quadrans (19mm, 2.91 g), Rome, 140-144 AD.
    Obv. ANTONINVS AVG PIVS P P, head of Antoninus Pius, laureate, r. Rev. COS III / S C (ex.), owl, eagle, head l., and peacock, head r., tail spread. RIC 709a (R). Gilded.

    1308_xxgXCAtJuZ_th.jpg.9ffacf2d9fb4b1e7461d7b0adae11f9a.jpg

     

    8. An extremely rare and well preserved quadrans of Titus.

    Titus, Quadrans (18 mm, 3.37 g), uncertain mint (Thrace?), 80-81 AD.
    Obv. IMP T CAES DIVI VESP F AVG, head of Titus, laureate, r. Rev. IVLIA AVGVSTA, Julia seated left holding patera in her right hand and transverse scepter with her left. RIC 505 (R2). RPC II -.

    1405_gFPajGgfZI_th.jpg.618896fe9ec771ca3cbeea05b0958b46.jpg

     

    7. Rare, difficult to find in good condition.

    Anonymous, Tessera (18 mm, 2.31 g), Rome, 1st-2nd century AD.
    Obv. A·P·P·F, within wreath. Rev. Scepter surmounted by bearded male head left. Cohen VIII, p. 272, 53. Dancoisne 54. Ex Numismatica Ars Classica, Auction 2 (21.02.1990), Lot 664.

    1305_Plf00d1PhC_th.jpg.1a799ace229173af35fa44b43bef971c.jpg

     

    6. One of the few contorniates copying an actual coin.

    Anonymous, Contorniate (33 mm, 21.99 g), Rome, late 4th century AD.
    Obv. NERO CLAVD CAESAR AVG GER P M TR P IMP P P, laureate head left; uncertain monogram incised to left. Rev. S - C / ROMA (ex.), Roma seated left on cuirass, right foot on helmet, holding Victory and parazonium; shield behind; IXI incised to right. Alföldi, Kontorniat 129; Tocci –; Sachero –.

    1345_iPkYxlxAfH_th.jpg.1273b6b37ebd4ed202f02be94484b2a3.jpg

     

    5. One of the highly sought after spintriae with an erotic scene.

    Anonymous, Tessera (22 mm, 5.51 g), Rome, 23 AD.
    Obv. Couple engaged in sexual act on kline; drapery above, small figure seated below left with knees drawn up to chest, chous below right. Rev. III, within beaded circular border within wreath. Simonetta/Riva 4C (this coin); Buttrey 'Type 9'. Ex Münzenhandlung Adolph Hess Nachfolger, Auction 141 (28.11.1912), Lot 542.

    1344_8BAl0GvgvA_th.jpg.8b1976222d0f84b8979e80507c15874b.jpg

     

    4. A completely unrecorded variation of the mercury/caduceus anonymous quadrans type.

    Anonymous, Quadrans (15 mm, 3.18 g), Rome, 81-161 AD.
    Obv. Bust of Mercury, draped, wearing winged petasus, l. Rev. S – C, winged caduceus. RIC 31 var. (bust of Mercury r.).

    1291_JRsnJijgGE_th.jpg.903ec625177189745f726872c2566991.jpg

     

    3. An extraordinarily rare tessera of the "carpentum group" (a small group of AE tesserae, most of which show a carpentum on the obverse and agricultural motifs on the reverse).

    Anonymous, Tessera (17 mm, 3.55 g), Rome, 81-161 AD.
    Obv. Carpentum right, drawn by two mules. Rev. Olive branch. Cohen -. Dancoisne -.

    1409_bsGFny8jF1_th.jpg.cbf1cefe4185a0c472c5f06cab9e2794.jpg

     

    2./1. Tesserae of the spintriae group are all quite rare, but those of Mitreius seem to be among the rarest (almost all in museums). Only two have been offered in the last 25+ years. They can be divided into two subgroups, one with the "regular" numeral on the reverse, like most spintriae, and one with a basilica on the reverse with a number incised in the exergue. I was lucky enough not only to buy one recently, but also to exchange a second one from a fellow collector - also a member of this forum - at the same time, for which I am extremely grateful.

    Anonymous, Tessera (20 mm, 3.70 g), Rome, 23 AD.
    Obv. C MITREIVS L F MAG IVVENT (NT ligate), bare head of Gaius Mitreius, son of Lucius, r.; below, cornucopia. Rev. IIII, within dotted circle; all within laurel wreath. Crisà, A./Gkikaki, M./Rowan, C. (Hrsg.): Tokens. Culture, Connections, Communities (RNS Special Publication 57), London 2019, 79-94, fig. 19 (this coin). Ex Classical Numismatic Group, Triton IV (05.12.2000), Lot 449.

    1401_QpbuNHVtiV_th.jpg.87d194e46f9623afd1c3ebc91d8c2209.jpg

     

    Anonymous, Tessera (20 mm, 3.88 g), Rome, 23 AD.
    Obv. C MITREIVS L F MAG IVVENT (NT ligate), bare head of Gaius Mitreius, son of Lucius, r.; below, cornucopia. Rev. Two story building (basilica?), each with five columns on each floor; between floors, L SEXTILI S P; in exergue, incised VI. Rowan, Ashmolean p. 102, 1b. Ex Frank L. Kovacs, Mail Bid Sale XV (01.10.2003), Lot 304; Italo Vecchi, Auction 16 (09.10.1999), Lot 389.

    1400_30AbvjtXA7_th.jpg.e5841bc9e8a4b7fcaee57ab30d783369.jpg

    • Like 26
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  14. 2 hours ago, ajax said:

    Dealers constantly bidding in auctions are:

    1. Artificially inflating the prices

    2. Demotivating and frustrating collectors

    3. Making it impossible to estimate prices real collectors would be willing to pay

    If dealers would offer fair prices, more collectors would sell to them or consign in their eshops. But no, they would prefer to offer peanuts but then pay 3 times more for the same coin when it gets in auction.

    And Shanna Berk is distorting the market and annoying everyone - except perhaps for her client.

    Dealers usually don't buy for themselves, but for their clients, either directly or indirectly, making a margin (arbitrage). This is possible because not all collectors constantly follow all auctions worldwide. The same thing happens with stocks when they are traded on different markets. Arbitrage brokers will buy on the market where prices are lower and sell on the market where prices are higher.

    I can't argue with your second point, but your first and third points are only true for very rare coins where dealers might try to control the supply.

    • Like 3
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  15. 10 minutes ago, David Atherton said:

    I meant to ask this earlier, so forgive the delay, in Naville's own description of the lot tooling is mentioned: Apparently unpublished. Dark tone, surface somewhat tooled, otherwise Good Very fine

    Are they taking that back after the auction? The original description supports my hypothesis the reverse is indeed tooled!

    Thanks for pointing that out. That's actually interesting. It originally said nothing at all, then was changed to "somewhat smoothed" (which is when I placed my bid), and seems to have finally been changed to "somewhat tooled". Since my email asking about tooling was replied to with "we checked the coin and it's having just a minor smoothing" and my bid was placed before the final change (without being informed), it should be even easier to return the coin. I'll certainly ask them and have it confirmed before I pay.

    If it was just "somewhat tooled" but otherwise authentic, I'd probably still take it. But if it's tooled, there's no doubt that "somewhat" is a strong understatement.

     

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