Kaleun96

4 minutes ago, CPK said:

Donna, I mean no disrespect to you or your friends. I have nothing but compassion for the people who are suffering in that way. I mean that. But I also will not sugarcoat the issue, and I don't think the best way to help such people is to reinforce their confusion - or to try to force everyone else in society to go along with it.

Again, I'm not trying to personally attack you or your friends. We can fundamentally disagree on this, I hope, and still remain cordial here!

"I hope, and still remain cordial here!"  

So far, you've called transgender people or their identity: pernicious, delusional, confused, and suffering of some form of an affliction.

10 hours ago, CPK said:

I can't say I'm surprised at this given the trend of today's culture, but it doesn't make it any less idiotic. 🙄

I don't know what aspect of this is more objectionable - the fact that they're trying to rewrite historical figures to fit modern ideologies, or that they (apparently) think we're all obligated to respect and affirm the personal delusions of a very confused man. I, for one, decline to go along. 😉

"Trying to rewrite historical figures to fit modern ideologies" has been a thing for as long as history has been recorded. There have been times (and still are) when the pendulum has swung the other way and the behaviour or predilections of certain historical figures has either been downplayed or weaponised against them, depending on what was needed at the time.

That's not to say it's correct though, just that it's not anything new and perhaps the LGBTQ community are now getting their turn at rewriting history after centuries of being on the other side. I don't agree with it myself but it's not like claims about historical figures or events that have greater implications haven't been made with less evidence by museums or historians around the world.

On 11/20/2023 at 8:19 PM, Prieure de Sion said:

I love the Koson Stater... I couldn't say no again 🙂

The Koson Gold Stater is surrounded by many - to this day - unsolved mysteries. It is assumed that the gold stater was used to pay the higher-ranking officers for the campaign of Brutus and Cassius against Octavian and Marc Antony. The coins contain Roman iconography: on the obverse, there is an eagle standing on a scepter and holding a wreath in their claw (inspired by the silver denarii issued by Pomponius Rufus); the reverse contains three men dressed in togas, two of them holding an axe on the shoulder (possibly inspired by the silver denarii issued by Marcus Junius Brutus in 54 BC).

You can also read the latest information on the state of knowledge here:
https://www.forumancientcoins.com/numiswiki/view.asp?key=koson 

 

King of the Scyths, probably Military mint for Marcus Iunius Brutus; Reign: Geto-Dacians Epoch, Roman Republic, Civil War; Mint: Probably Olbia (?), King of the Scyths; Date: ca. 44/42 BC; Nominal: Stater; Material: Gold; Diameter: 20mm; Weight: 8.38g; Reference: RPC I 1701A; Reference: BMC Thrace 208; Reference: Bahrfeldt, Berliner Münzblätter 1912, 366–81; Obverse: Procession of Konsul Marcus Iunius Brutus and two lictors, left; the foremost and hindmost carrying an axe over shoulder. Monogram in the field; Inscription: KOSON ΟΛΒ; Translation: Koson Olbia (?); Reverse: Eagle standing, left, on sceptre, holding wreath in on claw.

 

Congrats, was going to bid on this one myself but I was hoping it'd stay a touch lower. I see you already managed to sell it on Vcoins too, or at least it's reserved.

13 hours ago, DLTcoins said:

Horn silver (AgCl) darkens with exposure to light. This is the principle on which black and white photography is based.

And hence why you can often use photographic fixer as a source of sodium thiosulfate. What I'm surprised about is just the extent of it, not that it happens. I've just not seen one of my own coins with horn silver darken like that. Then again, on second look, I think the significant differences in the photography between the first and second photo may having the most effect on the apparent darkening.

Nice job! Interesting to see how much the horn silver darkened before you cleaned it. 

I see that after cleaning the coin has a yellow-ish dull tone to it. That often happens when cleaning with thiosulfates. In my experience it seems to prevent proper toning and can also give the coin an unnatural colour so I try to remove it. I haven't yet found a chemical method that removes it though. It can be removed by friction (e.g. using a small eraser), which won't polish the coin provided you don't do it a lot but it'd still be nice to find a better way of removing it than this. 

16 minutes ago, filolif said:

It's interesting. I also bought an owl from Leu that was misidentified as completely the wrong Starr group. I have to believe they don't have his book over there or they just spin a wheel to determine what they'll call a coin. Very poor form by them.

Yeah Leu is perhaps the worst in the game at identifying Starr group owls, at least the later ones from my experience. You wonder how they can be so bad for so long with the talent and resources that they have. 

Thanks! I found another Helbing provenance from the 1930 one you uploaded for my Aspendos stater that had been bouncing around auctions at that time. Guess they had trouble selling it!

Rodolfo Ratto 1927/04/04, lot 2247
Otto Helbing Nachf. 1927/10/24, lot 3101
Otto Helbing Nachf. 1928/11/08, lot 4039
Otto Helbing Nachf. 1930/01/31, lot 325

7 hours ago, JayAg47 said:

I simply hate playing these auction games. I'd rather buy the coin at retail stores, given I don't see much difference in the price if you include all the buyers fee and hidden costs. Is the $50-100 difference worth your time and sanity?

I'm cherrypicking one of my own coins that I consigned to Naumann here but this is a frequent occurrence for many auction houses (both those on biddr and not) as well as dealers who buy from auctions and list on MA-Shops/Vcoins.

An easy way to think of it is like this: if there wasn't a markup for coins from auctions being listed at retail, the dealer/auction house would be making no money from flipping the coin and thus have no reason try and flip it. Probably the only times that you will pay less than auction are when someone lists a coin that hasn't recently appeared at auction and the listed price is less than the current market value (in which case it will be snapped up immediately), or the coin has been sitting in their inventory so long the dealer is willing to let it go for cost or slightly less.

It may not be as much of an issue for some coin types but, for example, if I tried to build my Alexander III tetradrachm collection from only retail buys, I'd probably have half the number of coins (since so few interesting ones get listed at retail) and have paid 50% more for them. I still buy retail when I have the opportunity, it's just very infrequent these days as so much retail stock is ex. recent auctions.

10 hours ago, GregH said:

Recently I won a CNG auction with a hammer price of $90. With the buyers fees, the price became $118. Fair enough, it’s a business and they need to make money somehow. However, I was shocked when they added a $50 postage fee, bringing the total owing to $168! Previously I had been charged $25 for postage.

I queried this, and they told me they cannot send coins to Australia by USPS because Australian customs has restrictions on coins (first I’ve heard of it and I’ve been buying coins from overseas for years!) So they only send coins to Australia via expensive FedEx. I must admit I don’t understand the theory that a parcel sent by FedEx would be cleared by customs, but a USPS parcel wouldn’t. The customs rules would surely apply to either scenario. It feels like price gouging.

It’s a poor customer experience and I’m not inclined to bid in CNG auctions anymore.

is anybody else experiencing this issue? 

Even if they shipped via USPS, I wouldn't be surprised if the charge was the same. It might've been sometime last year that they increased the shipping costs. Originally a $250 hammer invoice would be shipped to Europe for $25 or so, then it became $40. These days I have all US auction houses (Heritage, Stacks, CNG) ship to a shipping forwarder because their domestic rates are really cheap and the forwarder's tracked rates to Europe are also cheap enough ($15). I can bundle a few wins together and save quite a bit on shipping.

All really nice as others have said! For me, #1 and #4 have distracting foregrounds, maybe #4 could be cropped to remove the darker bit in the foreground. Then #2 is nice but it seems the intended effect is for the coin to look like it's laying on a marble countertop with some shadows to help it stand-off but the size and distribution of the shadows at the bottom instead make the coin look like it's tilted on the surface, just a bit of a weird visual trick thing going on IMO.

So I would say #3 is my favourite

27 minutes ago, CPK said:

That doesn't follow, at all. If you agree with or like somebody's post, you're not putting forth a different opinion and there's not necessarily any obligation to write a follow-up post just to reiterate what that person already said. Whereas if you disagree, you are by definition taking a different or opposing view of the matter, and unless you state what exactly that view is, there can't be a discussion about it, and nobody will benefit.

They are not the same thing.

Fair, though there are occasions where I rather not reply with an opinion (like the Beale thread) because it's not worth my time for touchy subjects where people get triggered very easily. Let's be honest, people aren't using the "confused" emoji for level-headed numismatic discussions, they're using it when there's one of those heated discussions about something inconsequential and someone says something unhinged (like Beale's unknown criminal sentence being worse than what a murderous gangbanger supposedly gets).

There's also my second point to address.

Anyway, I'm already regretting participating in this thread. Perhaps I should have just reacted with the confused emoji and moved on.

6 minutes ago, Rand said:

This post reads sarcastic to me, irrespective of what the OP might have meant.

It could almost be a direct quote, I assure you.

8 hours ago, CPK said:

I agree. The "confused" emoji doesn't bother me.

It might be nice having a "disagree" option but as @Prieure de Sion said, merely disagreeing without offering anything else doesn't do much to further discussion.

The sentiments expressed in that thread were of frustration that certain areas/authorities seem far more interested in prosecuting and punishing white-collar crimes than dangerous, violent street crime. That's certainly not an unreasonable concern. This Forum may not be the place for such a discussion, but it's not confusing.

I won't touch the other bit you mentioned suffice to say that it's certainly confusing in the way it was characterised (e.g. Beale has not even been sentenced and the sweeping generalisations offered without an ounce of evidence). Such a thread only plays to peoples confirmation biases, it offered nothing useful.

But I did want to touch on one point that has come up a few times here: "merely disagreeing without offering anything else doesn't do much to further discussion". I could say the same about any emoji, not only the "confused" one, so it sounds like people are happy to be smiley-agreed-with but not smiley-disagreed-with unless that person also comments.

The other aspect is that people often do react with a smiley and then comment. The purpose of the smiley is to make it much easier for someone viewing the thread to quickly weigh up the opinions of a particular message without having to read the entire thread and tallying the yays and nays based on the comments left. In the "Beale" thread in question, I believe everyone who reacted with the "confused" smiley also left a comment.

I don't care about the smiley personally, I can take it or leave it, but there should be some form of "I disagree" or "I doubt that" smiley because if there are only positive ones, it will give the impression that everyone agrees with what has been said. Yes, of course you can also reply to have your voice heard but then by that argument there is no use for smileys at all and they should be removed.

I think the use of the "confused" smiley is driven by the lack of a clear disagree/not sure smiley. Even the "cool think" smiley is ambiguous as to whether it's a "I'm sceptical of that" or "that's interesting" smiley.

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Yesterday I got a bit angry when someone opened a thread and other people reacted with this smiley to the thread

This wasn't the "why aren't gangbangers doing 25 years to life instead of our lord and saviour Richard Beale" thread, was it? Because if there was ever a thread deserving of a "confused" smiley, it was that one.

I would guess it's from BD or some other corrosion product removal due to the pitted surfaces in those areas but it does seem very targeted. I think the quickest and most effective way to remove the symbols would generally result in some fairly clear tool marks being left behind but I don't see any. The only tool that might make sense would be a centre punch but that strikes me as a very ineffective way of removing a symbol from a coin.

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 On these coins his name sees many forms, from the legends M TVLLIVS M F CICIIRON to just TVLLIVS to the more recognizable M CICERO M F

Interesting, is the former legend a misspelling/mistranslation of the Latin by a Greek engraver? And in terms of using the nomen vs cognomen, as in the case of TVLLIVS vs CICERO, was there a general convention as to which one was more often used by the proconsuls on their coins? 

Congrats again on the win!

12 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

You're certainly entitled to post or not post for any reason you wish. But I do believe you're being a bit hyberbolic: out of 22 non-pinned threads on the front page, exactly 3 -- not "a dozen" -- involve coin games. One of which affords people an opportunity to post  Greek coins, your area of interest. (Speaking of which, it's hardly news, and shouldn't be a surprise, that it's easier and more common for people to collect ancient Roman coins than ancient Greek coins. There are more posts about the former than the latter on every general ancient coin forum I've seen.) Like it or not, this forum has never pretended to be a so-called "serious" numismatic venue (for those who remember the accusation from another forum concerning the old Ancients forum on Coin Talk), and has inherited the show-and-tell aspect (which I personally enjoy) from CT.

Sure there's some hyperbole but I do also include threads which are simply "Post x type of coin". So, recently, the following topics are crowding the homepage (since they often get the most engagement) at various times:

• The Alphabet game, for anything Greek
• Post your latest ancient!
• The perfect gift for your favorite megalomaniac!
• I think we need our own 'Post an Old Coin and and an Old Tune' thread
• Anyone up for a game of coin UNO?
• Post it and pick it! 
• Show me your Tetricus
• Post your latest medieval!

I have no desire to post in these threads (whether they're related to "my area" or not), I just personally don't find them worthwhile. While you say this forum never intended to be "serious", early on there were discussions around organising a curated forum section for member "articles" of sorts. Alas, that hasn't come to fruition and you're right that NF is mostly for non-serious discussion, which might be why Curtisimo and I are sharing our opinions on how one could change that slightly if there is interest in doing so. As someone who is most active on Discord, I'm quite fine with non-serious discussion but when there is more serious discussion on Discord than a forum, I do wonder why I keep coming back to the forum. Ideally, I'd like a forum that is a bit more serious than the average public Discord server as forums are generally better suited for that. But I'm well aware I may be in the minority here, which is fine, it just means I don't feel as compelled to invest time on here versus other platforms. 

I'm not sure how to interpret your intended tone when you said "it's hardly news, and shouldn't be a surprise, that it's easier and more common for people to collect ancient Roman coins than ancient Greek coins". Naturally I'm quite aware of this, why the need to point it out in what feels like a patronising way? I never said anything bad about Roman collectors, Roman coins, or the fact that collecting Roman coins is more common so I'm frankly at a lost as to why you felt the need to say this. I only said that there are more topics about Roman coins so I don't find the opportunity to engage as much, which is a shame (for me) because that means most of the good write-up content is about Roman coins. I do find some areas of Roman coins interesting but again it's not usually what is written about here.

I didn't make any judgements about the people who like these threads either so I didn't expect this kind of reaction to my comments to be honest. I was just expressing my opinion that I think these threads can crowd the homepage because they get frequent engagement and push better content (whether Roman or Greek) off the homepage.

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I also don't think it's necessary to impugn people's motives by presuming that thread titles that don't spell out a thread's exact subject -- which I don't think are nearly as common in the first place as you claim -- are "purposefully vague (so people click on them)." To me, "clickbaity" implies some sort of monetary benefit. Which obviously doesn't apply here.  In any event, I don't see anything wrong with trying to spice things up a bit by using a title such as "The perfect gift for your favorite megalomaniac!" instead of "Coins from cities named by emperors and other rulers after themselves or their wives."  How long does it take to find out the exact subject anyway, five seconds?

I really don't feel like arguing about the definition of clickbait but there does not need to be any monetary benefit, people post clickbait to boost engagement whether it results in a monetary gain or not. I also don't want to point fingers and name-names so won't share examples about thread titles I am talking about. Again, people are free to post using whatever title they please but as a matter of principle I don't waste my time opening threads where the subject matter is not clear from the outset. I'm sure the people who post these topics won't mind in the slightest, I just have better things to do and I don't like rewarding what I see as clickbait. I take the same approach with blog posts, news articles, reddit threads, etc. 

I will add that the specific thread you mention wasn't really one of the ones I was talking about. Sure it's a bit clickbaity but it at least tells me enough upfront for me to know that I'm not interested in it. That's not intended as a slight against the thread's author either - it just doesn't sound like my cup of tea. Though the alternative title you suggested would've at least told me that it was another coin game thread. I split my online time between reddit, Discord, and NumisForums when it comes to talking coins while others may only read this forum. Given a fixed amount of time one spends reading content about coins in a day, if one spends that full hour here they're probably not going to prioritise what they read as much as if they were splitting that time with other platforms.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Perhaps an improvement would be to add a forum section for "game" threads so I and others can easily filter them out. Alternatively, have a dedicated section for longer write-ups, essays, articles etc. This is something the Discord servers I'm active in use to separate general discussion (which can be serious or non-serious) from a longer form contribution that would otherwise easily be buried.

I was thinking the toolbar customisation may be beyond Restitutor's control and it would need to be something the developers at Invision add but seems like they've already thought of this and allow site admins to change which options are included in the toolbar depending on device:

I second your point about "A Homepage for Highlighting Great Topics". The biggest reason I don't contribute more to NF is because the homepage is either filled with one of a dozen "coin games" or people using clickbaity titles for their write-ups that are purposefully vague (so people click on them) and I simply do not care enough to find out what the topic is really about. Others are great at using quite specific titles so I know exactly what the topic is about, it's just a shame that most of the write-up threads are about Roman coins where I have less of an interest.

Some of these European auction houses can take a week or more to reach out about invoices and the like.

The upside with Rauch, if I remember correctly, is that they will ship your lot before payment if you've done business with them before. 

I've thought about what I would do if I were to move outside the EU. I'd definitely take paper copies of the invoices as I think it would have more weight in the initial moment than telling the customs agent "I have digital copies" (great, please follow me to this room and we can spend 5 hours going through them while you wait). But at the end of the day, customs generally have a lot of power to confiscate anything coming in to the country and I imagine they could hold items for some time before releasing them.

The issue, I think, is where the laws are somewhat vague about how a country enforces the 1970 UNESCO convention if they are a signatory to it. For getting my collection out of Europe, I think the laws are fairly clear. However, bringing them into NZ could be difficult as I don't think NZ's laws are as clear-cut on ancient coins vs antiquities and whether you need proof that they were acquired prior to 1970 or the like. But it's something I'll worry about when the time comes.

It seems the redirect isn't working for all links as I can still access the http version of the link you shared earlier: http://www.glebecoins.org/paleos/home.html

Maybe in your redirect rules you just specified the root URL and not the root URL with a wildcard suffix allowing it to match any subdirectories

Another collector pointed out to me that Italo Vecchi has now pled guilty to his charges as well, including an additional charge not previously added.

Next court date is September 2024. @DonnaML would you have any insight on why there might be such a delay? If sentencing is next in the process, wouldn't it a few weeks or months after the plea?

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcrim_attorney/Detail?which=charge&docketNumber=yAJhKmF0uBD8qJPRQIRTxcvZUEHiFZqdEfj7x2TUR/s=&countyId=K4i18rFVPQh5HTQ/kUoO3Q==&docketId=qdaaOGbUqlpA18P9SxnwHQ==&docketDseq=T/O1YN_PLUS_BG65HkOeqEnpAkw==&defendantName=Vecchi,+Italo&court=New+York+Supreme+Criminal+Court&courtType=U&recordType=U&recordNum=

"The Manhattan district attorney's office has been conducting an ongoing investigation into a smuggling network involving antiquities looted from Bubon in southwestern Turkey and trafficked through Manhattan."

So part of the same investigation that saw the other statute seized it seems.

"The museum said it purchased "Portrait of a Lady (A Daughter of Marcus Aurelius?)" in October 1966. At that time, the museum was provided with limited information about the object’s history. The museum was informed by the vendor that it had been found in southwestern Anatolia (the Roman province of Lycia) that same year. Although the museum conducted its own research at that time, it now acquires objects with greater diligence," the museum said.

Hmm sounds like they probably had a good idea it was looted when they first received it but things were different in the 60s so they played dumb. Probably didn't take much pushing for them to decide to give it up I would imagine.

14 hours ago, robinjojo said:

I have emailed Aaron Berk about this time.  His initial reaction to the thread is that he does not necessarily agree with Barry's assessment, so the discussion will continue.

If Berk can't see the tooling, then I'd have serious doubts about ever buying a bronze from him again. The best case scenario is that these are "cleaning scratches" but given their placement, that's a very generous interpretation and also doesn't excuse Berk for not mentioning them at all in the first place.

The obverse has less noticeable marks but when I first saw it, my eyes were drawn to the hairline and chin. The area around the chin and face is usually a good place to spot tooling when there's also smoothing because they smooth down the fields and then try to demarcate the face's outline and end up creating a hard stop between the fields and face where they've perhaps gone too deep and created a small impression. If the face's original outline is not easily discernable, they tend end up inadvertently changing the outline of the face, which seems to have been the case for the nose in particular.

Pic of rev to highlight just some of the marks that look like tooling to me, there's even more than this though.

Interesting that the museum supposedly said in 2012 that they think it may have been found in Turkey in the 1960s, they're just not sure. The very village the museum suspects it may have come from, Bubon, is the same village that is now apparently at the heart of the smuggling ring the Manhattan DA is investigating and which resulted in the statue's seizure.

Sounds like the DA may have finally uncovered some evidence of the looting, or at least reason to believe it did in fact come from Bubon, which the museum seems to think is quite possible anyway.