SimonW

We don't have any information, when he might have purchased the piece, do we?

Calling the coin a "piece of junk" and some of the following comments were a bit harsh, but I didn't take any of it personally. I value David's opinion, even if I do not agree with it 100%. Let's focus on the coin and a constructive discussion about it. @David Atherton and everyone else who thinks it's obvious that the reverse must be tooled: what makes you think it's tooled, other than the unusual style of the ship? To me, the surfaces look smoothed, but the ship's details do not look tooled. The S C and the dotted border look sharp and stylistically fine. If it turns out that the reverse is not tooled, the likelihood that it is authentic increases dramatically in my opinion, since it rules out David's theory of a cast with a tooled reverse. What else could it be? A struck/pressed forgery from a transfer obverse die with a modern or tooled transfer reverse die? Unlikely. Was the coin published anywhere before it turned up at Naville? Or what else makes you think the authors of RIC II.1 knew about it?

I understand that this is annoying. It's to prevent certain bots (the kind that doesn't follow the robots.txt instructions) from crawling our site too aggressively. I think even more annoying would be a slow site due to some crawlers eating up all the resources 🙂 Also, this should only happen if you change pages very quickly many dozens of times over a certain period of time.

Thank you very much for your opinion on the coin, David! I see your points. However, unlike you, I believe there is a small chance that it is authentic and official. If it is, it is a once in a lifetime chance. If it's not, I can return it. So I am more than happy to spend a few hours to investigate further.

Looks like I just wasted £3000 plus juice on a fake/tooled coin... or did I? 🙂 I agree with David and everyone else here in that the reverse looks off, especially compared to the usual ship types with either Domitian or Ceres on the obverse (both extremely rare). The obverse's connection to a denarius makes it even more curious. BUT, here is why I bought it anyway: 1. Cross-denomination die-links are rare, but they do exist for the Flavian period. 2. The 1/2 century roman AE fractions are a bit of a mystery to this day. There's an unusually high number of gilded pieces (more than for any other denomination, relatively speaking), there are a number of AE denarius off-strikes, mules, and many other fun things. 3. Despite the "special" ship style, I don't see any obvious traces of tooling. The surfaces look smoothed, but otherwise not tooled. At my request, Naville examined the coin closely a second time, and they are certain that there is no tooling. 4. According to Naville, the "Mentor collection" refers to "the director of an auction house in London from '60 to '90". If the coin is authentic and untooled, it is unique. If it's not (which I will hopefully find out once I have it in hand), I will return it and have no doubt that Naville will accept the return.

Sorry to hear you made such a big loss @Prieure de Sion! If you buy and sell at auction within a short period of time (let's say 2-3 years), you will usually make a loss of at least 40-50%+ on average (not taking into account market fluctuations). 30-40% is what the auction house takes (usually 20-25% buyer's commission and 10-15% consignor's commission). And 10% is the average bid step. Since your bid was the highest when you bought the coin, the second highest bidder was willing to pay 10% less. If the second highest bidder bid against you multiple times, it may be even more than just the 10%. If you're buying from stores or other fixed-price offers, you'll have to add the seller's mark-up on top of that. Take your Gordian that sold for 35 CHF as an example: If I buy it for 35 CHF at Leu, the final price will be 43 EUR, plus payment fees, shipping costs, VAT, possible customs fees, etc., making 60+ EUR. Quite a lot for an average Gordian. You can get them for 50 EUR and less in similar condition at MA-Shops/VCoins: https://www.ma-shops.com/stollhoff/item.php?id=5113&lang=de.

These are all different coins if you look at them closely, but they all share the exact same condition, wear, and some flan flaws on the reverse. They are very likely transfer die forgeries. CNG withdrew theirs in 2017.

Definitely a cast. The middle one in Shanxi's post looks fine.

Change the position of the two crimes in my example if you like. All I am saying is that IMO your comparison adds nothing helpful to this discussion other than deliberately stirring the pot. You can speculate all you want, and that's all you're doing, my friend! 🙂

I understand what he is talking about. But again, what's the point of comparing the two in this thread? If someone is accused of murder, what's the point of saying "murder is worse than burglary"? Does it add any value to a discussion about whether the person is guilty or not?

Talking about what is likely a greater concern for many people is an interesting way of expressing your own opinion. If that's your opinion, that's fine, but are you speaking for anyone else other than yourself? The main issue IMO really is that you are comparing what someone allegedly did (no evidence provided whatsoever) with what someone admittedly did. That's quite a difference, don't you think? What's the point of comparing the two?

Mike Gasvoda makes this accusation on FB without giving any background. This alone does not speak well of him and CNG. If you are going to publicly discredit someone, the evidence should be made public, too. Otherwise, malicious tongues might say that he is simply trying to do damage to a competitor.

I think that's exactly the case. In dubio pro reo. This seems to apply to the USA as well as Switzerland and most countries in between. No police report or other reliable evidence have been released. All that has been presented is hearsay. That's very thin ice, I'd say. If there is a police report, why not share it? If there is none, why not? I believe that no auction house would or should expropriate a consignor or cancel a consignor's contract and expose themselves to legal action by the consignor simply because someone claims that the coins have been stolen, without providing any evidence. Otherwise, it could easily be abused.

Great coin and thread! 🙂 They used to be much rarer a few years ago. Now you see them every now and then. Here's one of mine with a slightly different obverse legend. Titus, Quadrans (3.12 g), uncertain mint (Thrace?), 80-81 AD. Obv. IMP T CAESR DIVI VESPAS 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 505/6 var. (CAES [...] VES(P) F). RPC 507C var. (CAES [...] VES F). If you're interested in fractions, have a look at this thread: https://www.numisforums.com/topic/826-fractional-bronzes-of-the-roman-empire-quadrantes-semisses-tesserae/

Thank you all for the heads up. Fortunately, this was just a setup mistake. The fee has been removed from all invoices below 1000 EUR.

I don't think that fractions were limited to military camps, but that they entered the market through military camps (not exclusively). Not because their function was limited to something that was available in military camps, but because soldiers naturally had the biggest need for small change. They didn't produce any goods that they could use for small transactions and, thus, were dependent on small denominations to pay for whatever they bought. I strongly recommend Van Heesch's article PROVIDING MARKETS WITH SMALL CHANGE IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE: ITALY AND GAUL. It's available on Academia: https://www.academia.edu/es/951078/Providing_Markets_with_Small_Change_in_the_Early_Roman_Empire_Italy_and_Gaul_in_Revue_belge_de_Numismatique_155_2009_p_125_142

We have discussed Trajan Decius' "Semis" on page 1 of this thread 🙂 Here is what I wrote:

That's an interesting theory. But why would the official roman mint care about a specific item or entrance token to a bath house? Fractions were certainly used in military camps where a lot of small-scale transactions happened. But rather as a normal mean of payment than as tokens for specific items in my opinion. The coin mentioned in the article above (Domitian, RIC II 123) is one of the most common quadrantes under Domitian. I think it's very well possible that the camp in Nijmegen had a shortage of smaller denominations and, thus, got a consignment of what was produced in the roman mint at that time. But even if they were tokens, they were worth less than an as (the most commonly used of the small denominations) and you would probably not have used them as a store of value (to get back to your original question). "Small change" may be the wrong term compared to todays small change. An as (= 2 semisses = 4 quadrantes) was still worth about an hourly wage of a common soldier. But these denominations were certainly mostly used for small-scale transactions. Thus, the term.

I believe Van Heesch's thesis is the most comprehensive reference for fractions between Trajan and Antoninus Pius (including the anonymous issues) to this date, certainly much more extensive than RIC. Unfortunately, the plates published on Academia are not very good. I have them in a higher resolution. If you are interested, let me know. I am happy to share them. I've never checked if Woytek is more complete for fractions minted under Trajan, but that's certainly possible. There have been some at archaeological sites (mostly markets, taverns, etc.). In Van Heesch's article PROVIDING MARKETS WITH SMALL CHANGE IN THE EARLY ROMAN EMPIRE: ITALY AND GAUL he writes: ... Near the entrance of another building in Pompeii excavated in 1822, a box was found with 35 denarii, 354 sestertii, 188 asses or dupondii and 586 small bronzes or quadrantes. At another site, a tavern, a pot contained 374 asses or dupondii and 1237 quadrantes, ... But I believe it's rather rare. If you want to hide your savings, it's probably easier to bury a handful of denarii or aurei than a huge load of small change 🙂

I've never heard of them before either, but a Google search for "Siegelkapsel" turned up a German Wikipedia page (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegelkapsel) that says (translated): Seal capsules are protective covers for seals, usually made of wood or metal. Especially in Roman times, seal capsules were used to protect the seals on documents such as wax tablets. Here's an interesting book about "the seal capsuls from Augusta Raurica": https://www.augustaraurica.ch/assets/content/files/publikationen/Forschungen-in-Augst/Fia44.pdf

I still find the motives quite intriguing and will keep them nonetheless 🙂

On the German Numismatikforum someone pointed out that these are the lids of roman-gallic seal capsuls (probably 2nd century AD) and shared some pictures of intact capsuls that I wanted to share here, too.

With a pre bid you basically choose the auction house to bid on your behalf. There's no other way than to disclose your bid to them. One solution is to choose someone else to bid on your behalf, if you can't participate live. Many dealers are offering this service for a few %.

Exactly. Pre bids are an equivalent to the old mail bids and are always transfered and visible to the auction house. Here's a short excerpt from the "What is a pre bid?" link just below the bidding field on biddr: After submission, a pre bid is forwarded to the corresponding auction house. The auction house can either accept or reject the pre bid. If the auction house accepts the pre bid, it will be carried out by the auction house on behalf of the bidder during the auction. In case of an online auction that takes place on biddr.com and for which pre bidding is public, the pre bid is carried out automatically and step by step against other bidders by our system. The amount of the bid remains a secret until it is reached and is only known to the auction house. Proxy bids on the other hand: After submission, a proxy bid is safely stored in biddr.com's system and is executed step by step against other bidders during the live bidding process as if the bidder were bidding themselves. The amount of the bid remains a secret and, unlike a pre bid, will not be transmitted to the auction house in advance. For this reason, a proxy bid does not have temporal priority over other bids and it may happen that the proxy bidder is not the winning bidder, if the maximum bid has been reached and was first bid by a competing bidder due to the alternating execution of a proxy bid. For example: If the proxy bid is 300 EUR, the auction lot opens at 260 EUR and the bidding steps are 20 EUR, the system will bid 280 EUR for the proxy bidder. If another bidder placed a bid of 300 EUR, the maximum amount of the proxy bid would be reached and the system could not bid any more. The competing bidder would win the lot. If a proxy bid is successful, it is subject to the same auction terms as a normal live bid. The auction terms of the corresponding auction house apply.

@IanG that's not exactly shill bidding. Many auction houses maintain a stock and have a shop or a fixed price list for which they buy not only from other auctions, but also from their own auctions where coins are consigned to by third-parties. As a buyer, I don't think this is particularly fair since the auction house has an information advantage and it has the potential for conflict of interest and even abuse (e.g. use to hide shill bidding). However, as far as I know, it's not against the law in the countries where it's practiced (as long as it's not misused for shill bidding) and most auction houses are transparent about it (e.g. in their auction terms). As a consignor, I appreciate every bid that raises the hammer, be it from a collector, a dealer or the auction house itself where I consigned my coins to.