Väinämöinen

This is a good point. Metcalf identifies the previously known obverse die as O23 and the die used on Fannius' coinage as O24. It seems that with this coin we have to adjust the chronology and the new Cicero is O24 while Fannius' coinage comes with O25. It would be curious to know whether there's any obverse die overlap between Cicero and Fannius with O24. I would also love to know whether the coin was minted before or after he was hailed imperator, meaning whether or not there was a gap in production or the mint (or even Cicero himself?) just opted to go with PRO COS over IMP regardless. I just noticed that the number of twists made by the snake on the obverse is consistent from O3 (Lentulus) up until Fannius' obverse die O25 which reverts back to the design of O1-2 and features one fewer. It's hard to argue that this is evidence for.. anything, especially since the style remains otherwise consistent. When in Rome, and so on. I think this is perfectly related to the topic and another example of a proconsular cistophorus to demonstrate what these are all about. I'll also throw in another coin from Septimius (/Septumius). This one is from Pergamon and design-wise slightly duller than your example. I do enjoy how fresh it is, obverse included. The obverse dies were commonly used to the point of becoming almost unrecognizable.

If I'm not mistaken, this is considered a misspelling and typically even mentioned as "CICIIRON (sic)". It's not the first such mistake on a proconsular cistophorus. Some dies seem like they've missed individual letters and have been hastily corrected, while some have more radical misspellings such as one die reading PVLEHR instead of PVLCHER. The lettering on the mentioned Pulcher coin seems shaky in general. Other mistakes include PVLHCRI, PVLCRI, PVLCRHI, PVLCHFR, and LFNTVLVS. I guess it's fair to say that the Greek-speaking engravers may have struggled with some of the Latin names and lettering. Cicero is a bit of an outlier. We most commonly see the abbreviated praenomen followed by the cognomen and often the patronymic, for example AP PVLCHER AP F or P LENTVLVS P F.

Marcus Tullius Cicero is best known as a writer, an orator, and a statesman of the late Roman Republic. When it comes to his political exploits we tend to remember the crushing of the Catiline conspiracy, the feud with Publius Clodius Pulcher, and his involvement with the First and the Second Triumvirates. There is, however, a brief lesser known period from 51 to 50 BC when Cicero reluctantly left Rome to become a proconsul in Asia Minor, more specifically the province of Cilicia. Numismatically the province of Cilicia stands out for it was one of the regions in the very late Roman Republic that held on to a pre-Roman monetary standard for silver coins. We commonly know this as the cistophoric standard. Cistophoric coinage originally started as federal coinage under the Attalids. It had lasted to Cicero's times and would go on to survive deep into the Roman Imperial era. Furthermore, we may find a chain of Roman aristocrats who served as proconsuls in these old Attalid lands and minted not only civic coinage bearing the names of the local magistrates but also coinage bearing their own names. These coins are known to have been minted in the provinces of Asia and Cilicia, and in at least five mints: Ephesos, Pergamon, Tralles, Apameia, and Laodiceia. There are also a few mysterious emissions which may have been produced elsewhere in the East. Despite Cicero's dislike for his governorship post, we as coin collectors are blessed by the turn of events. I have not just once or twice seen quoted that there are no coins minted under or even referencing Cicero. Some say that the coins most closely associated with the man are the bronze coins minted under his son, M. Tullius Cicero Minor. These are lies and falsehoods. Cicero was no a stranger to the proconsular tradition of immortalizing oneself on precious metal. Silver tetradrachms were issued under him in both Apameia and Laodiceia. 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. Some of the coins refer to him as an imperator, after having been hailed as such on October 13th 51 BC. Most proconsular cistophoric tetradrachms are scarce and many of them are rare. Cicero's coinage stands out as being ridiculously rare; the last one to sell was in the 1960s, and all of the currently known coins reside in public collections. Until now. A coin recently appeared for sale. It was described as a tetradrachm issued under Appius Claudius Pulcher, who had served as the proconsul of Cilicia just before Cicero. Some of their coins even share the same magistrate. This magistrate may also have been the method used to identify the coin in question. Some people, including a friend of mine, decided to take a closer look and noticed something off. This snake basket was no Pulcher. The coin was a tetradrachm issued under Cicero in Apameia. The reverse carries the legends M CICERO [M F] / PRO COS, with the name of the magistrate ΘEOΠΡOΠOΣ / AΠOΛΛΩNIOΥ below. Two coins of this type are previously known, one in Berlin and one in Paris. Long story short - a heated competition ensued amongst those in the know and the coin has now arrived to its owner. I have had a chance to inspect it and attached are some photographs. This is now the only known coin issued by Cicero in private hands.

I am also willing to guess that an auction house receiving stolen coins, listing them for sale, and when told they're stolen, ignoring the warning, and proceeding to sell the coins in question, would be a bigger issue to most people than faking the provenances of a few high value coins. It's not like many people here aren't presenting their subjective feelings as objective facts. He's talking about the scenario where this is proven factually true, so this part of your message is irrelevant.

This is completely unrelated as I see it. We ended up disgressing and this is a separate topic altogether.

Most Europeans don't typically deal in stolen goods where this would matter one way or the other. This probably varies quite a bit by country with some countries having legal deadlines or thresholds and others not. I had to look it up and in the case of my native legislation ownership can not be transferred through theft and stolen items that have been sold are not stripped off their original ownership regardless of how many years have passed. When an item is successfully identified as stolen property it is to be returned to its original owner. The person who had bought the stolen item is entitled to compensation from the person who sold the item, and that seller can further seek compensation from the previous seller, and so on. Yes, a person who bought stolen property can get shafted. I am willing to argue that this is better than the original legal owner getting shafted. I may be proven wrong, but I doubt that in most US states this someone can just walk to a person, claim that an item of theirs has been stolen, and place the burden of proof on the current holder of the item. Likely they need to be able to provide evidence of original ownership and that the item was stolen., after which the claim can be challenged which may require some digging.

The issue here is the exact dating. Phrases such as "From the Collection of a Gentleman" are window dressing that don't provide us with exact information. However, once you add the "formed before 2005" you are making a claim about the history of the item. It is not "reportedly" or "possibly". It is, just, "formed before 2005" stated as a fact over 7000 times. Actually there are also almost one thousand items with "From a Swiss collection, formed before 2005" to add to the pile. It seems like a hand-wave to try and avoid any issues with the Swiss legislation. That said, my main issue is with any given company willingly lying to their customers and abusing their goodwill and trust for the company. I find it morally wrong and it rubs me the wrong way. When you got dozens of a specific in some case rare coin type, from identical dies and die states, cleaned the exact same way, often blast white, repeating over multiple types totalling in hundreds if not thousands of coins including the group lots, and in some cases being the exact types that have suddenly flooded the market in multiple auction houses... I think a professional auction house will figure that those claims about a grandfather's inheritance are bull. Other auction houses sell these same coins, but they don't claim a pre-2005 provenance. It's also not one or two coins that have been flips from recent sales that have received the descriptor. The sales were definitely showing up on the popular search engines. One example from Bucaphalus was already provided. This is all obviously secondary to the actual topic of this thread.

I'll just leave this here.

Not really, no. Assuming the coins are indeed contraband, their path from the moment they were stolen to being put up for sale concerns primarily the authorities and the parties involved in this chain of events. To the public the relevant information is whether these coins are stolen and if they are then what the auction house is going to do about it.

You're basically saying it's unfair you're not getting your coins dirt cheap. I say it's unfair to the other people who wanted to bid, but couldn't, as well as the consignors of those lots who would've taken a financial hit. I think the decision to continue from where the platform started having issues is perfectly understandable and the best course of action. CNG isn't the first or the last auction house to do this. Some have reversed and restarted complete sales due to platform issues.

Do note that (if I've understood correctly) this is translated from German. When I translate the same word to my native language it translates into "machining marks", which is already a much stronger description. I don't understand German well enough to confidently declare what the nuance here is. Regardless, I do think the correct path forward would be to pull the items from this auction. If it's apparent that the consignor has intended to mislead both the auction house and the bidders, I would also ban them from selling with the company in the future. I wouldn't see an issue if the consignor was unaware themselves or disclosed having done such drastic work on the items.

Technically the EU requires an EU level export permit for any archaeological object more than 100 years old which are "the products of excavations and finds on land or under water" as found here. However, I can't remember seeing any party ever following or enforcing this. Perhaps this auction house is following the legislation? I'm not sure if 45 € matches to the cost of the permit in Germany. EDIT: Never mind, @John Conduitt above posted the explanation. It refers to the same 1k € threshold you were talking about.

As I see it, you need to try and place yourself in a different mindstate. There is interest in the history these coins represent, but no interest in the journey the coins went through. This means that pedigree is irrelevant unless it provides a direct benefit. Some people here have even described that they don't even care about the original find provenance, meaning that the specific event or events that led to the loss or the hiding of the objects is irrelevant to them. I'm not one to tell others how to collect, but I personally view things differently. I also care about the journey.

Paul Barford has over the years proven himself to never be arguing in good faith, especially when it comes to anything coin related. His holier-than-thou above criticism approach is nothing short of disgusting. This is yet another proof of that. Lovely summary you have made.

No, they can't. When you proxy bid it's Biddr as a platform bidding on your behalf and the proxy bids are not revealed to the auction houses. Why is this even a topic we're discussing in this thread? It seems more relevant to me that based on info posted on page 18 Roma seems to have skipped some pre-bids in favour of other bids, whether accidentally or intentionally.