Ocatarinetabellatchitchix

195 GBP from Spinks.

Maybe you could ask one of the authors or contributors:

I’m not sure how we can qualify our member of the week; a skilled computer scientist, an athlete, an astronomer, a bibliophile or a numismatist ? I’ll let you decide for yourself, but one thing is for sure, he’s our favorite Irish collector here on Numisforums. So let’s talk with @akeady ! Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you're from, your family, work...? I'm from Ireland - Galway in the west, but I live near Dublin now. I design integrated circuits ("chips") - my first chip (1991) was on a 2.4um technology, nowadays they're on 55m and even 10nm. This is one of my chips from the 1990s - a Sigma-Delta ADC with an interesting bandpass sampling arrangement at the input. I'd do it a bit differently now, but then I was young and knew everything. Do you still run, like tropical fish, practice astronomy... ? I still run, but 2023 was my slowest year in a long time - I was injured much of the time. I've taken a break since the Dublin Marathon (end of October), but will be back for 2024, hopefully faster. I played some sports as a kid (hurling, mostly - check the sport out on YouTube if you don't know it - I wasn't very good!), then very little for a long time until one evening in late September 2007 when out with a couple of friends and one of them said we should do the Dublin Marathon (end of October). I'll never understand why, but it seemed like a sound idea. At that time the marathon never sold out, so I could still enter - the other two chickened out after trying a run the next day. I mentioned wanting to run at work and was met with some scepticism so I didn't say any more about it until the day after, when I hobbled in with my medal and some awful blisters. This is after a Budapest half marathon in 2021 - I'd worked up an appetite at least. I've got tropical fish - all the fish currently in my tank were given to me by people getting out of fish-keeping. This is my main telescope - well, this was it in 2018. It's much the same now, but with a different Celestron powerpack. The 'scope is a Celestar 8 8" SCT that l've owned from new in the 1990s, mounted on a CG-5 GEM mount (it was originally on a fork mount). I haven't had the telescope outside for a long time now, but my intention is to build a remote controlled observatory someday. I have another 80mm Skywatcher 'scope which is "upstairs somewhere". I haven't been skiing recently, but this is how I looked one time. Aidan, how did you get interested in ancient coinage ? What was the first coin you ever bought ? I used to trade coins and stamps with a neighbour as a kid in the 1970s and bought a few fairly cheap coins in the early 1980s on occasional trips to Dublin. Mostly Irish and UK farthings and the likes of an 1805 halfpenny. My late aunt gave me the remnants of her collection around 1980/'81 - she mostly had accumulated pre-decimal and foreign coins from circulation in the 1970s. I still have all of those and they're still mostly in the bags she stored them in! Then I collected nothing for years until in 2001 in Madrid I picked up a denarius of Marcus Aurelius at the weekly Rastro market. I bought a couple of coins from Spink a bit later (early 2002) - a Roman Republican denarius and an Istros drachm. Not long after, I discovered eBay and it's been downhill ever since. The Marcus Aurelius coin was stolen in a burglary in 2004, along with several other Roman Imperial coins, but I still have the Republican denarius and Istros coin. I've never sold a coin but have given away a handful to young collectors - we've got to keep people interested in the hobby, so someone will buy our collections :D Can you tell us an anecdote about a coin you own ? Your best bargain ? Your rarest coin ? The specimen you’ll never sell ? The one you dream of acquiring ? My favourite coin for a long time (since 2007) has been this Syracuse tetradrachm: At that time, Spink had some coins for sale on their website. I spotted this there and liked it. I went to the London Coin Fair in November 2007 and there she was at their table. I ran out, got some cash and came back and bought her. While it's a worn example, in-hand it still looks a lot better than the photograph and was my first Sicilian tetradrachm. If my house were on fire, l'd run back to save Arethusa (actually, she's in a safety deposit box, so I probably wouldn't have to run back). I'm not going to go into the journey this coin had to me, but I bought it in January 2022 and it arrived in August of that year... Entella tetradrachm. I can't think what my best bargain is and right now I would only sell some duplicates. Of course, l'd like a Herakleidas tetradrachm of Katane, a Kimon tet of Syracuse and Euainetos decadrachm of Syracuse :D The decadrachm is maybe achievable if I bought nothing else for a year or two and/or sold some other coins. What do you collect exactly ? What is the size of your collection ? I have a few different collecting areas: Roman Republican coins - this has been the main focus of my collection for several years and includes some imitative coins from the Eravisci and others. Irish coins. Ancient Greek coins - I have a vague aim to make a collection of the major cities and their iconic coins - Owl from Athens, Pegasus from Corinth, Turtle from Aigina and so on. Papal medals - these are good value for a chunky piece of silver or bronze. Anything else that takes my fancy - if I won the lottery, l'd have lots of Sicilian coins. I posted recently that l'd just reached 1000 Roman Republican coins. On the Tantalus database, I currently have 2351 coins entered - mostly, but also modern - Irish and World. I have more to enter - if I ever enter all my modern coins, it will be thousands more, but they're more of an accumulation than a collection. I started collecting RR coins in earnest to make an entry for a display competition at the Numismatic Society of Ireland and later in order to illustrate a talk. I became hooked :) This is most of my Roman Republican collection - housed in two Abafil Marmotta cases - the upper one holds 20 trays and the lower was a special order which holds 10 (or 11?) double depth trays - needed for the very thick aes grave coins. I have only two double depth trays, but the regular trays fit too. I store things by Crawford number and keep the bronze and silver coins apart - because the bronze coins are typically much larger than the denarii and other silver coins. Denarii and smaller coins fit in the 77-compartment trays and most of the bronzes fit in the 40-compartment trays. The largest coins are in 12- and 6-compartment trays. This is one tray I pulled out at random - it has a 14 Cr. 340/1 coins, but all different, in that they have different symbols, etc. (direction of horseman and Apollo varies too!). I will probably store some duplicates in paper envelopes at some stage and reserve the trays for one example of each type. Another tray - I try to leave gaps in each tray to allow for future additions without having to move too many coins. Some bronzes... And some aes grave - not the biggest, but too thick for a regular tray, so this is an extra-deep one. And that's about it - I have a few RR coins in slabs which I haven't broken out, plus a chunk of a currency bar that's too big to fit into a tray. The rest of the coins are in a safety deposit box (large - it takes Abafil trays, but I may switch to putting coins into paper envelopes there to save space), three other coin cabinets - a nice Zecchi cabinet in a photo' below, a Peter Nichols cabinet (the trays are not deep enough for large coins) and a small Swann cabinet I got at auction a few years back. What did you write about ? I haven't written anything coin-related. I am working (very slowly) on an online database for my coins, but I need some time off to make much progress. In what part of history are you interested in ? The history of the Roman Republic and Irish history, mostly. I've got an Aer Lingus credit card that gives me a couple of free return flights within Europe each year - I've just booked long weekends in Athens in May and Rome in June. Rome is one of my favourite cities - my profile background is a photo' I took in 2022 from the Capitoline Museums looking over the Forum. I've only been in Athens once - in 1989 on a great inter-rail trip - so I hope to take lots of photos and visit the coin museum. In 2015, I drove around Sicily for a few days to see where the greatest coins come from - Palermo, Segesta, Selinus, Agrigento, Syracuse and Catania - to be revisited someday. The Paolo Orsi Museum in Syracuse has a great coin collection in the basement with more than 30 decadrachms in one display cabinet alone, if memory serves me. Do you have a numismatic goal for the next year ? I'd like to fill some more gaps in the RR field - maybe a Caesar aureus, but probably I'll be distracted by other things. What numismatic books do you own / consult most often ? (I took far too many photos here). I like books - this shelf has the standard RR reference - Crawford - two copies, for good measure, but volume Il of the second set is just a collection of photocopies of the plates of the real volume I| (Spink sold it to me like that!). Plus Sydenham and the Kestner catalogue and the RBW collection and other things. Of course, anyone collecting RR coins needs Italian Cast Coinage and Historia Numorum Italy: And the Red Banti: And History and Coinage of the Roman Imperators (and the Green Banti): And Fides & Kairos: And a few other festschrifts: And Babelon: Arma et Nummi, Warsaw Collection, RSC and a couple of interesting books on Roman History and coinage: Oh, and Grueber's BMCRR, with Admiral Smyth's catalogue of the Northumberland collection: I also collect Roman Imperial coins and Greek coins to some extent, so have picked up a good few other books - BMCRE & Sear's RCV: RIC - not including the new RIC V.4: And the nice Handbooks of Greek Coinage: Byzantine and more Greek: And more: And there's a lot more, but that gives some idea of the clutter. I've ended up with books in several languages, some of which I don't understand. I've got books in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Catalan. I survived a few months in France back in 1991 and did a few courses at the Instituto Cervantes here in Dublin so can manage to read Spanish too. German, not so much; Italian and Catalan, where they're similar to Spanish and/or French. The last book l've got is the new RIC volume V part 4, covering the Gallic Empire. I have fewer than half a dozen coins of this period, but it's nice to keep the set complete. Many thanks Aidan for your time and generosity. I’m looking forward to read the comments of other members about your fantastic collection. In the meantime, please take a look here to see it in detail: https://www.tantaluscoins.com/browse.php?uname=ethnucoins

Here are two Victorinus’ imitations minted with the same pair of dies. On the first one the dies were brand new, on the other one you can notice some general wear + the strike was not as sharp as on the first coin.

Many studies have been published about what are the motivations of forgers, what’s in their mind exactly. Money is not the reason # 1. Here is a quote from one of these analyses: « The psychological need for recognition, the need to present oneself if even in their mind a belief that they are able to fool the museums, and the unsuspecting public is important to the forger. He gains a great deal of satisfaction from having outsmarted everyone and often made money in doing so. »

Very good question. Over time metal alloys do not always remain stable, they can slowly separate into their more stable natural components. An example of this happening with ancient silver coins becoming fragile is the crystallization of silver. Stable silver only contains about 1% copper at room temperature. This proportion increases when the silver is heated, so the heat is used to combine silver and copper into an alloy which slowly degrades at room temperature. Monetary silver is almost always a combination of silver with roughly 1.5% to 15% copper. Adding a little copper to silver normally makes the silver softer and more resistant to wear. Silver and copper do not mix well, and over time (300-500 years or more), at normal temperatures, the copper will begin to separate from the silver. Silver crystallization is the selective precipitation of copper from the silver alloy within crystalline boundaries, it is only the copper crystals that become visible when they separate from the alloy and they begin to corrode, weakening so does the money. The crystallization of silver is a natural process which, over time (300 years or more), separates the copper from the silver because this alloy is not stable. In this way they take empty spaces among the silver particles making the currency porous and fragile. This phenomenon mainly occurs on silver alloys with a copper content of 1.5% to 10%. Silver alloys with more copper content are resistant to this phenomenon. So theoretically it could be artificially produced by high heating the silver, but in reality it would be very difficult because the heating required would be towards the melting point of silver. Maybe we need the expertise of a metallurgist, a chemist or even better a skilled forger….

Crystallisation was for a long time a sign of authenticity because experts thought it could not be achieved perfectly artificial. Now we know that this is not true, because several fakes from modern dies with deceptive crystallisation appeared. A very strong crystallisation could be an indication of a very fast cool down of the metal; even Medieval coins can be found crystallized, so several hundred years are enough with normal temperature. But since we know that the speed of chemical reactions is related to temperature we can guess that you can create the same crystallisation artificially if you use very high temperature. You do of course need very pure silver about 95 % and some chemicals.

I wish you a speedy recovery Donna. I didn’t feel well at all last week, but fortunately my COVID test came back negative !

If someone here on Numisforums is very interested in a certain lot, he just has to know a friend collector living in Canada who can receive the package and then reship it across the border…😉

Be careful Milan, now we have a high resolution picture of your finger print; the next step is to find your iPhone, use the Touch ID and unlock all your secrets…😈

SCROOGE

A ROMAN SHEET BRASS HELMET OF WEISENAU TYPE FLAVIAN TO TRAJANIC PERIOD, CIRCA 69-117 A.D. 11 ¼ in. (28.7 cm.) high Estimate: USD 250,000 – USD 350,000 [The first occurrence MADE IN TAIWAN ever recorded] A ROMAN IRON AND TINNED BRONZE CAVALRY HELMET ANTONINE PERIOD, CIRCA 125-175 A.D. 11 in. (28 cm.) high Estimate: USD 300,000 – USD 500,000 THE BUYER'S PREMIUM In addition to the hammer price, the successful bidder agrees to pay us a buyer's premium on the hammer price of each lot sold. On all lots we charge 26% of the hammer price up to and including US$1,000,000, 21.0% on that part of the hammer price over US$1,000,000 and up to and including US$6,000,000, and 15.0% of that part of the hammer price above US$6,000,000.

Can an expert in this coinage tell me if the price is fair ? HJB has the reputation of having VERY high prices, and when I see Gallic empire coins in their hands, they’re usually 3 times too expensive than other dealers. For example in the next buy or bid: Estimated at 135 USD ??? In 5 minutes I can easily find 10 coins of the same type in the same condition for 45 USD !

My major distraction is ... wife. Can't remember the number of times I've planned bids weeks ahead, set multiple timers on day of auction, then still missed the lot due to my wife doing household chores etc.

As you may have heard, Mr. Terence Cheesman just passed away a few days ago. Finishing this interview was difficult after his two-week stay in the hospital in November, but despite his weakness he wanted to let us know a little better the interesting story of his life. I therefore present it to you without modifying anything, even if no one suspected that he would not be able to react to it personally... He is not only a student, but also a very qualified teacher on the subject of ancient coinage. He has shared this knowledge over the years at several conferences, readings and exhibitions across Canada. And what about the impressive collection he has accumulated over the past decades ? Let us just mention that more than 75 of his coins have been discussed or illustrated in different numismatic literature! Now it’s time to give the floor to Terence Cheesman aka kapphnwn. Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you’re from, your family, hobbies, work…? My name is Terence Cheesman. As that was my handle on the old CT site it is not much of a secret. I am 72 years old and I was born on a farm near Forget (pronounced Forjay) Saskatchewan. I was the eldest child with two younger sisters. I moved to Edmonton Alberta when I was five and have been a resident since. My parents were teachers and that was one of the two careers that I had attempted (the other was the army) that had cratered before I was twenty five years of age. Eventually I found employment with Canada Post as a letter carrier and stayed with that job for 30 years retiring some twelve years ago. Retirement is the best job I never had. I am single never married and live in an apartment style condominium. Besides coins I have a long fascination with military firearms something that I collected but eventually discarded. I have always been passionate about history. I would spend just about every waking hour reading about history. Especially military history. I enjoyed reading so much that for over fifteen years after i moved out from my parent's place I did not own a TV but I did have a lot of books. However in 1993 I gave up on renting and bought into a two bedroom apartment style condo. The second bedroom is my office and is where most of my library resides. How did you get interested in ancient coinage ? As mentioned I loved history and with coins I had a tangible connection with the past. I started collecting when I was 8 years old. However as I started collecting coins I found that I was being drawn to earlier and earlier coins. I felt that I was making a connection with some of the people I had read about in my history books. This was long before the invention of the internet and my only source for coins were some brick and mortar shops downtown. Over time I did find some ancient coins, however they were completely unidentified and I did not have access to any books that might help. However I did like them but given the situation I remained a generalist. However I will have to say that this changed after I had returned from overseas. I had been content up to that time in just purchasing what the local shops could provide, but I started writing letters to coin shops I would see advertised in the trade journals. I would include a want list and generally I did not get any kind of response. However this changed when I contacted Joel Malter. Not only did he respond but he actually sent me a coin. WOW So from this point on I could actually purchase the coins that I really wanted, plus could actually see what was out there that could be purchased. At the time I was most interested in Roman Imperial coins and concentrated on them. Later I developed interests in Roman Republican and eventually Greek coins as well. Can you tell us an anecdote about a coin you own ? My first coin Gallienus Ae Antoninianus Rome 267-268 AD Animal series. Obv Head right radiate, Rv antelope walking right RIC 181 20 mm I bought this coin in the summer of 1965 I paid $6 for it and I suspect I would have been able to find something similar for about the same price decades later. I did not know what it was for almost 20 years. (no books) I gave the coin to a University collection about 10 years ago? Terence, what do you collect exactly ? What is the size of your collection ? I consider my collection to be a teaching collection. I use coins from my collection to illustrate talks and seminars on ancient coins. When conducting a seminar on material culture I find that by showing more than 200 hundred coins the audience's brains turn to mush and thus in order to convey what I need to tell them. So most of my coins could be considered to standard types that one might see in any book on ancient Greek and Roman coins. After collecting for over 50 years I have many stories about acquiring coins, selling coins making and losing money on coins. However I can say that one story is unique. Generally speaking my parents were never a big fan of any of my hobbies. I think they believed that I spent way too much time on them to the detriment of everything else. However only once did my collection get the approval of my mother. She was a member of a bridge club and one of the other members of the bridge club was a rather arrogant condescending woman who constantly reminded everyone of the success of her son who I believe was a doctor or an investor. Either way he was very successful and doing a lot better than I was a Postal Worker. However when I heard about the Bunker Hunt Sales held by Sotheby's back in the earlier 90's I endeavored to get the auction cats. They had a deal; either buy the auction cats at $100 or buy a years subscription to Sotheby's for $20. (Not hard to guess which option I took) Eventually I did get the cats but even better I got a invitation to attend the auction. I still remember it going something like this Dear Mr Cheesman The Directors of Sotheby's as well as Nelson Bunker Hunt and William Herbert Hunt requests your presence at the numismatic auction held ........ I showed this thing to mom. She took it and made certain that her friend (nemesis) saw it as well. Mom was quite pleased with the result. However only for a while. I am a generalist. I collect ancient Greek and Roman Coins. However there are subject within this general field that interest me more than others, The coinage of Alexander the Great is one of these and the development of portraiture on Greek coins is another. These are easy to explains others less so. I believe that most Roman coins issued during the Imperial period should be seen as a part of a larger group which each coin working together to form a larger message. I have worked this concept out on a few (to me) obvious issues but much of the series remains difficult to discern. One thing I always enjoy is once purchasing a coin I try to find out everything I can about it. Sometimes it is not a great deal but other times........ What did you write about ? I write short articles on Greek and Roman Coins with are published in the Edmonton Numismatic Societies publication the Planchet. This publication can be found on line and most of it free. Generally I like to keep my articles brief. Usually my articles are centered around coins that I had recently purchased, Usually the article centers on what the coin is and some short synopsis on the period during which the coin was struck. Occasionally if the situation warrants it, some coins will have a chapter about what I might call my adventures in pedigrees. Overall I find this process to be interesting. What part of history are you interested in ? I like most periods of history not only those periods that touch on my coins, I am particularly interested in recent work on World War Two I have been following a series of presentations on the Battle of Stalingrad and found the whole presentation utterly riveting. I do watch a number of YOUTube videos and try to read what I can on any subject that catches my interest. I do enjoy the ANS Longtable lectures but I will admit that I often fail to watch them. Do you have a numismatic goal for the next year ? I really do not have any numismatic goals set for next year. I just got out of the hospital and am still dealing with a secondary issue that is currently causing me a lot of grief. I suspect that the nature of my recovery will affect the direction of my collection over the next year. What numismatic books do you own / consult most often ? I have over 700 Numismatic books monograms and articles, as well as another 50 on line articles and about 100 auction cats. I also have about another 3 or 400 bookings on ancient history. Last year I added something like 60 books though slightly less than half of them were copies of Banti I try to use each book for the purposes that I bought it and as often as necessary. I really cannot say which books are my favorite's. An article i a series of essays on the coinage of Alexander gave me the key to understanding the Alexander coinage in Asia Minor, I believe is is very useful to purchase books on a given subject as they will you a even great insight into what you collect. Thank you Mr.Terence for your many contributions to this forum. We will miss you, but we will not forget you. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=779038150932233&set=a.563421109160606&type=3&ref=embed_page

Rest In Peace Mr. Terence. We had an interview in preparation… I will post it at the end of the week. Dominic

It seems there are many « variant » obverse legends. By the way, this denarius belongs to the last issue of Trajan struck before his death on August 8, 117 at Selinus of Cilicia.

If you want to study fake sand patina, just check the inventory of this seller on Vcoins. At least he's not hiding the facts…

Archeology is second nature to many lovers of ancient coins. Here are my top 4 of the best archaeological discoveries of the year 2023, all for the pleasure of your eyes! MARCH – Funding has been signed to restore more than 20 large ancient statues, unearthed in recent years under the ruins of ancient sacred Roman baths (San Casciano dei Bagni). Artifacts from the 1st century B.C. depict ancient gods and offerings. JULY – Four very well preserved swords (three of which are still in their wooden sheaths) are found in a cave near the Dead Sea. They date from the year 134 or 135 B.C., when the Jews rebelled against Roman rule. JULY – A fragment of what appears to be the world's oldest book, 2,300 years old, was discovered on a mummy. Papyrus had been used to wrap it. There are written, in Greek, the details of taxes on beer and oil. The discovery pushes back the origin of books by several centuries. JULY – The exact location of the theater of Emperor Nero (AD 54-68), known for his love of the performing arts, was until now a mystery. The ruins were discovered during renovation work on the Palazzo Della Rovere in Rome.

A wise man once said: « There is more happiness in giving than there is in receiving ». I believe that is true, so our member of the week should be a vey happy man, since he’s the most generous collector I have ever met. You know him from his more than 100 « Giveways », but we have a lot more to learn about him. So let’s talk with lordmarcovan… Can you tell us a bit about yourself, where you’re from, your family, hobbies, work…? My name is Robertson Shinnick (friends call me Rob- but not Robert). 2004 profile picture. I was born in December 1965 in West Palm Beach, Florida. I had something of a gypsy childhood. My parents were Pioneers for the Baha'i Faith in Tanzania in 1972, and we later lived aboard a forty-foot trimaran sailboat in 1975, island-hopping in the Bahamas. In fact, we lived aboard several boats when I was growing up, and moved around a lot. Today I am settled in the lovely Golden Isles on the coast of Georgia, and I am a hotel night auditor by profession. I am married to Lenee, my wife of 24 years, and we have a grown daughter, Victoria, as well as a large menagerie of four dogs and twelve cats at last count. I also have a son named Justice from my previous marriage. If anyone is wondering, my Internet username "lordmarcovan" derives from an earlier hobby: my 1980s Dungeons & Dragons gaming character, Lord Marcovan, was a Ranger Lord. In my late teenaged years, I used to write sword-and-sorcery stories about his exploits. I would cringe if anybody read those now, but I did borrow the old character's name when I came onto the Internet, and made it my username. Last year a friend on CoinTalk bought me one of those one-square-foot land parcels in Scotland, with a "real" title, so now I'm an actual lord, it seems. As far as hobbies go, coins are my primary focus- I have collected them since Thanksgiving Day of 1976, when I was not quite eleven years old. On that day I was setting the table at my step-grandmother's house, when I found a 1936 dime in her silverware drawer. The rest, as we say, is history. I'm interested in any curiosities that are historic or prehistoric (I also like small antiques and hunt for fossil shark teeth locally). But coin collecting is the pursuit that gets all of my attention and limited hobby budget. 1936 Mercury dime. First coin in my collection, November 25, 1976. I still have it somewhere. How did you get interested in ancient coinage ? I was fortunate enough to have some children's books about ancient history when I was a wee lad of six or seven, so I was interested early on- even before I officially started collecting coins. When I later learned that ancient coins could be collected on any budget- even on my youthful allowance- I was intrigued, and bought a few. But I didn't seriously start collecting ancient coins until much later on, as an adult in 2007, when I attempted an "A to Z" (Augustus to Zeno) Roman Imperial portrait collection. That only lasted a year, because I was laid off in the 2008 recession and forced to sell the collection. But I managed to obtain over 100 different emperors and empresses in that first year alone, so I learned a lot from it. What was the first coin you ever bought ? The first coin I recall buying was an 1866 US Shield nickel via mail order, in 1977, for five or six dollars, sight unseen. It was described as "VG, dark"- and it was dark- nearly black, in fact- but appealing, because the high points were lighter grey and it had contrast. It was what I would later call a "CircCam" - a circulation cameo. This is a shorthand term I came up with for circulated coins that have that two-tone, contrasting appearance. The term has gained some acceptance in the wider numismatic community. If you look at my collection, you'll see I like my circulated silver with contrasting grey toning. This is a CircCam from my present collection. This one's not a full CircCam, but it has that nice contrasting grey look I like. Can you tell us an anecdote about a coin you own ? Your best bargain ? Your rarest coin ? The specimen you will never sell ? The one you dream of acquiring ? Gosh, that's a lot to unpack. I'm full of anecdotes and could ramble on for days. Here's one of my best bargains: I found an XF 1914-D cent in a bulk bag of Wheat cents in 2006. It cost me 3-5 cents or so, and I sold it (after slabbing) for $700. The valuable mintmark had been concealed beneath a small speck of gunky dirt. I was astonished to see the "D" there when I removed the dirt! My rarest? I don't really know. I once had a very rare US coin slip right through my fingers. Some pieces I've had (particularly the love tokens) are unique. The one I will never sell? There are a few of those. The one I dream of acquiring? There are quite a few of those, as well. Here's one I would never sell- it's one of my detector finds. After an article about it ran in the Associated Press, I showed the newspaper clipping to a nice lady at work. It was a good conversation starter. We've now been happily married since 1999. So though the coin isn't worth much monetarily, it has a high sentimental and historical value. (You guys thought you couldn’t use your coin hobby to score with the ladies? Haha. Think again!) What do you collect exactly ? What is the size of your collection ? If I like it, I collect it! After 47 years of collecting, you could say my numismatic knowledge is fairly broad, but it doesn't run all that deep in most areas. I am the proverbial "jack of all trades and master of none", being a generalist rather than a specialist. I lack the attention span and scholarly strengths that so many of you (particularly collectors of Ancients) have, but I guess you could say I know a little bit about a lot of stuff. I must say I am both impressed and intimidated by the knowledge of my fellow collectors here. I often find myself out of my depth, but at least I can carry on a basic numismatic conversation without embarrassing myself too badly in the presence of true experts. My collection is a wide, eclectic assortment from the last 2,400 years of numismatic history. It is a bit heavy on Greco-Roman ancients and United States classic Type coins, but it goes all around the world, from the Archaic period to the present. I'm fascinated by the entire scope of World history and consider myself a world citizen. I recently decided to limit the primary collection to just 100 certified coins. That keeps it to a manageable size for my safe deposit box and online galleries. But that strategy is challenging, because every time I want to add a coin, I need to remove one, to keep the collection to a fixed total of 100 pieces. This hopefully will result in a gradual upgrading as time goes on. Quality over quantity is the idea. I call it "The Eclectic Hundred". Check it out! Never thought I would own an aureus, on my working class budget. Now I have two! Another, more whimsical, side collection is my accumulation of holed coins. I not only collect holed coins on purpose, but occasionally wear them as fashion accessories to coin shows! The Holey Gold Hat, in its better days before I sold off all its gold during the recession. The centerpiece was an ex-Eliasberg solidus of Zeno The reincarnated, much-humbler Holey Coin Hat (no gold). Hangin' out with ol' Ben at the 2023 FUN convention in Orlando, Florida. What did you write about ? I've not published anything of note, but the main body of my work so far consists of tens of thousands of message board posts, mostly on Collectors Universe and CoinTalk. A lot of it is half-brained drivel, but I do manage a little bit of thought-out, worthwhile content once in a while. In what part of history are you interested in ? ALL of it! All around the world! Just like my coin collection! Do you have a numismatic goal for the next year ? I don't have any solid goals. I'll work on completing the Twelve Caesars subset of my collection. Would like to add a nice Mexican "Caballito" peso, too. An Akragas "crab" tetradrachm, perhaps. Maybe a gold "elephant" pagoda from India. And a few other things. Who knows what will jump in front of me? What numismatic books do you own / consult most often ? Pathetically, I do not own much of a numismatic library and have relatively few books on the shelf. Limited living space, you see. I did use to use the Krause Standard Catalogs of World Coins a lot. These days, I depend largely on the Internet as a reference. And I lean heavily on dealers and Internet friends for research and attribution of Ancients, though I'm not incapable of teaching myself a thing or two now and then. Rob, can you tell us more about your hobby of detectorist ? The Roman coin you discovered in Georgia ? Your trip to detect in UK ? Though not so much over the last ten years, I was a detectorist for almost as long as I'd been collecting coins. As you mentioned, I once found a Roman coin in Georgia, on a colonial site. I didn't even have the detector with me that day. It was an "eyeball" find, washed out of a sand roadbed by the rain, mixed in with some 18th and 19th century artifacts. I call that story "The Arcadius Anomaly". Check it out! Arcadius AE2, Gloria Romanorum type. Found on a colonial site in Liberty County, Georgia. I finally managed to make it to the UK for a week of detecting in Essex, in 2013. I did not fare as well as my fellow diggers did on the trip, but I did manage to find two hammered silver pennies, of Edward I and Charles I, and a tiny late-medieval lead token. Disappointingly, I did not find any Roman coins over there, though a fellow digger popped a Marcus Aurelius sestertius right near me on the very first hour in the field. Another guy with us found a gold Celtic stater the day after I left. Here's a quick summary of the trip. Circa 1300-1310 English hammered silver penny of Edward I "Longshanks". I dug it in a farm field in Essex, 2013. One other very curious detecting find of mine was an old Chinese brass medallion, purportedly a diplomatic medal of some kind from the 15th century Xuande emperor in the Ming Dynasty. I found it in an old hilltop churchyard in a small town in Western North Carolina! It caused quite a stir amongst the proponents of the controversial 1421 hypothesis. Gavin Menzies devoted several pages to it in his book Who Discovered America?, and I'm mentioned by name in that book and a few others. Apparently Menzies and his colleagues believed my find was evidence of a Chinese landing by Zheng He in North America in 1421, decades before Columbus. I'm not so sure I totally subscribe to that theory, but on the other hand, I guess it's remotely possible. How in the world did that old medallion end up deep in the dirt of a little-known churchyard in North Carolina, anyway? It is fascinating to think about. The Mysterious Ming Medallion. I dug it in North Carolina in 1994. Well, I reckon that's all I've got to blab about for now. Thanks for reading it all, if you did. Come see me around the forums, and you know I'm happy to chat about those little round metallic discs anytime! ~RWS ("LM") Many thanks Rob for your participation in the project and also to allow us to know you better. As usual, fellow collectors, feel free to share your comments about this interview.

Nice one. And I’ll give you a scoop John: in the new RIC V.4, it is a RIC 507. P.S.and it’s from the Trier mint.

LEAVE HIM ALONE, YOU BULLIES. HE’S NOT WORKING DURING WINTER TIME !

I also talked with him 2 days ago and he mentioned the new discovery ! There was a discussion about it last week on a French site, and the reverse was also known by de Witte and according to a note in Schulte, the gold specimen would be a modern cast forgery. But the new coin will change that.

No. The other sources are: RIC (first edition), Elmer, Bastien, Schulte, Cunetio, Normanby, Doyen and AGK. The new version has many differences compared with his thesis, e.g. when a coin type exists with both punctuated and un punctuated coins, the distinction has been deemed unnecessary, and the coin are both listed under the same type. Other types are now considered as contemporary imitations, so they disappeared from the corpus. There are some changes about the dating of some Issues, but the BIG modification in this version is the revision of the moment where the two mints merge together. It will make a huge difference in the attribution of all the coins produced after the death of Victorinus. I’ll write something about it soon, but I have to digest all this first ! At 185 £ it’s not cheap at all, but I will use it (I hope) for the next 40 years…