Salomons Cat

Commodus 😔

Leu is a Swiss auction house. In Switzerland, there is something that is a legal principle that is called "Good Faith". It protects the parties’ reasonable and fair expectations in any legal transaction. It cannot be excluded from any contract. If Prieure de Sion sent them an email with the information about the coins and Leu did not inform him that they would ignore it, then he could obviously expect that the core elements would be included. At least that's my conclusion. How a judge decides is usually not predictable. Anyway - the legal aspects are one thing, but morally it just doesn't seem correct to me. PdS gathered all of this information and supplied them with it. They did not include any of it and put the coins in a group lot. It does not seem okay to me what they did here. Anyone of us would be angry. I'm also a bit angry at Leu for another reason. There were so many great coins in this auction... I'm disappointed because I couldn't buy all of them. Not only the Commodi. Look at this Vespasian! Or that one!! It believe that they would have fit well in my collection... When looking at acsearch, I must say that it's hard to find better deals for such coins. Partially because Judaea capta coins seem to sell for a lot more in the US than in Europe. That distorts the view. But still, these coins would have been good deals. I'm a bit sorry for James Knox and his collection of biblical coins. Apparently, he did not notice that. But to me it seems like something obvious when I look at the acsearch results.

Great interview, thank you! I must admit that I have always read your name with a Spanish accent... One "teja" is a brick and I thought that "tejas" means bricks. Now, I found out that you're German and I believe that your name is not Spanish and does not mean "bricks"... Could you possibly tell me how I should pronounce your name in my head when I read it? 😄

Nice portraits and #8 has a great reverse! These are some charming coins. #13 (the Obols), #2 (nice portrait of Nero) and #8 are my personal favorites.

@Prieure de Sion is one of the best sellers that I know. He studies all of his coins, he adds perfect and detailled information to each of his offers. This IS actually adding value to the coins. And usually there is only a rather small mark-up, compaired to the auction prices. He‘s absolutely not acting like others - CGB for example, where the descriptions are not correct and they still sell the coins for 2.5x the recent auction price. @El Cazador, what you‘re doing is just diffamation, from my point of view. @Prieure de Sion contributes a lot to the numismatic community. And what he mentioned here are just facts, that doesn‘t have anything to do with greed. It‘s also in your interest, @El Cazador, that people like this stay in this business.

I don’t know what happened to the coin at the right. It is not exactly the same coin as the one at the left because some of the holes are filled, the cut across the cheek looks like it has been repaired and clearly, it is more “complete” than the coin at the left. It could be a cast from the coin at the left. Or something else. My point is: From my point of view, these photos do not support the claim that tooling on ancient silver coins is easy to do. I don’t know for sure if the coin at the right is a cast fake. For me, it looks like that. But tooling is something different. I understand tooling as a kind of “re-engraving” that interferes with the metallic part of the coin. I would say: Removing of deposits = cleaning Removing deposits along with some parts of the original surface = smoothing Re-engraving in the misguided effort to improve the appearance of a coin = tooling I have seen only very few ancient silver coins that have been tooled. It would be interesting to know why tooling (or „re-engraving“) is apparently more difficult to do on silver coins than on bronze/orichalcum.

Maybe the coin at the left is genuine. Not easy to judge because the image is not sharp. If it is crytallized, brittle and broken, then it must indeed genuine. But the version at the right seems to have many features of a forgery and I cannot spot any of the hallmarks of a genuine ancient silver coin (e.g., flow lines, cracks, sharp features, ...). As I said: It has soapy features, uneven wear and even the pores look quite round, like casting bubbles. If a genuine ancient coins somehow ended up looking like that, then it is a very unlucky coin that imitates a forgery really well.

To say that this coin is more than highly suspicious would be an understatement 😄 Bubbles, soapy features and the mouth appears more worn than the hair. To me it looks more like a forgery than tooled. Nowadays, it's not difficult to find a die match for most denarii online. So identification cannot be the problem. Apparently, tooling silver coins is more difficult. I read somewhere that it usually turns into a mess. But I don't know why, either...

I wished that I would simply take the coin. If they just sell it in a yard sale they failed to exercise due diligence ☝️ But I know myself - I'm usually too honest. I once bought a jacket second-hand, found a few hundred Euros in a pocket and transferred them back to the seller.

Well, how shall I say it... I'll do it with a picture. (source: wikipedia) The internet is always growing 😄 Another graph (source: webretailer.com, based on Statista) The results on acsearch show how many coins found their way to their database in a given year. But this doesn't measure how many coins exist in total, how @Rand has already mentioned. I'm actually surprised that the curves that @Rand generated are not steeper. That's why I believe that they clearly support the hypothesis that there is only a limited supply of ancient coins. Also - right now, the community of ancient coin collectors is incredibly small. Most of us have experienced that a few times. How often does it happen that you bid in an auction and then you figure out that the other bidder was a colleague from this forum here? I think that this has happened to most of us. The market is somehow very strong although the community is so small. I don't want to know what happens when a few philatelists figure out that ancient coins are more interesting than stamps 😶

Some additional thoughts. What would you say - where is the difference between restoring art and tooling of a coin? Is there a difference if it is done correctly? If the original aspect of a coin is completely conserved or even restored after it had some work done, would we even call it "tooling"? Let's have a look at the restoration and conservation of an old artwork. Or, if the video is too long: Now, let's take a look at these coins: (source: https://coinweek.com/the-hole-truth-ancient-coins-that-were-pierced/) Would you prefer one of the pierced aurei or a plugged one in your collection?

@Ricardo123and @ajax, I must say that I find it respectless to publicly speculate about the identity of a user. @David Atherton has a clear opinion and he expressed it firmly. Nothing wrong with that. And there is nothing that indicates that anything of it was meant in a personal way. So maybe you 2 (@Ricardo123 and @ajax) could stop conjuring any kind of personal conflict? Because I find this discussion interesting and I would like to know how it turns out.

Wow, that’s horrible. There is really no detail left that resembles the original design. There is no way how this can be called “Good very fine”. For me, this coin is worthless… I assume that someone from the auction house was sitting next to the tooler and watching him while he did it. That’s how they know that he ruined the coin “with extreme care”. Similar to the “gently tooled” coin that @DonnaML mentioned. I would say that this description is deceptive because the “good very fine” is really out of place. The auction house certainly did not do that on purpose. It’s very unlikely that they get any benefit from this. After adding descriptions to hundreds of coins the employee was probably quite tired and didn’t know anymore what a Roman coins looks like.

3000 GBP!! On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other, I believe that you just should not invest this kind of money if you don't even know what you're buying... What kind of provenance is that, by the way?

The last few times when I had to make a payment to a dealer from the US, I had to pay some extra fees for the bank transaction... 20$, I believe. PayPal might be cheaper in some cases. You just have to check how they convert the currency because that could make you lose a lot of money. Yes, some things are a bit old fashioned. But we do have modern devices in Europe. Here is a picture of me, sitting in front of my computer ☺️

You bought a lot more coins than I did. But your numbers speak clearly against shill bidding. Seems like this suspicion was wrong. Thanks, @kirispupis!

I'm sure that this question of cultural heritage will become even easier to solve when the coins are a bit older. Let's just wait 1500 years and then we will see clearly to which country the coins should be repatriated.

Same experience for me, several times. I only bid at Leu for reasonable amounts that I’m really willing to pay. I assume that there could indeed be a shill bidding system, as several members here have already suspected. Or has anyone ever won something at a price that was significantly lower than their max bid?

Incredible… I must say that there were indeed more great coins in this auction than I could buy. This was a huge opportunity. And I cannot believe that I didn’t even notice this aureus. Although he has a dent at his eyebrow 🤔 That's a major setback for an otherwise perfect coin. But it’s the end of the year - I have to pay back a part of my mortgage and I have to pay taxes soon. I simply couldn’t afford it to buy more in this auction. I was probably not the only one. Thank you for your kind words!! These coins will be 2 very important cornerstones of my collection. It was very difficult to let these Commodus denarii go. I had them on my watch list. Not only the ones from your collection. There was a great unpublished bust type and an outstanding contemporary imitation of a Commodus denarius, too. I don't know if there will be any other opportunity to acquire such Commodus denarii. But I simply went all-in for the two coins shown above. Thank you, @David Atherton! I hope that these coins will arrive safe at their new home. But I live in Switzerland - maybe I should pick them up personally…

It's normal. You find your wins in the "My Leu" section. When the hammer price is green, it's yours. I've never spent so much in an auction... My wins: https://leunumismatik.com/en/lot/46/260 https://leunumismatik.com/en/lot/46/3939 2 long term dream coins of mine: A portrait of Julius Caesar and the Stone of Emesa. I cannot wait to receive them.

This is a bit off topic, but… I like my coins too much. I think that they’re really special. As a general rule, I only buy a coin if it’s historically interesting, the price seems good and I don’t find a better specimen on acsearch. That’s why I wouldn’t sell them, not even for more than I have paid 😜 I just couldn’t replace most of my coins, doesn’t matter how much money I would get. If specimens in similar condition are not on the market I cannot buy them.

I mean, everyone can have a personal opinion. But some of these pieces were unique… Or at least without any other documented specimen. Prices for such pieces mainly depend on luck and are not predictable. It’s completely ok if @Prieure de Sion is not happy with the results.

This looks like a really good thing. And they seem to be active and successful: https://accguild.org/Executive That's one of the main reason why this makes me so angry... When looking at the coins, they're certainly not from a recently discovered hoard. They're all rather low grade. It's difficult to judge their value without knowing any details, but they do not look like they're worth a fortune. By the way that these coins are put together (different times, different rulers, different denominations) it just looks like a normal coin collection. I highly doubt that it is even possible to provide any proof that any of them were acquired illegally. If it is so easy to confiscate a coin collection, then there is certainly something wrong with the law.

This is just pure ignorance and stupidity! How is it possible that people without ANY clue about ancient coins decide what should happen to a collection that they accidentally find at an airport? I already get angry and high blood pressure when I get emails from DHL about supposed issues with coins that I bought. Roman coins from US auction houses, with a provenance, that I want to import to Switzerland. What happened to this poor collector is at the next level of stupidity and ignorance… Many of these coins look like they have never been to Italy before. Now these officials are celebrating - soon they will realize (if they even care - I think not!) that these coins are not special to anyone except the collector himself, no museum wants them, they will forget about them and one day, they will most likely be sold in an auction for low prices and be part of a private collection, again… There are art museums that buy NFTs! But almost no museum wants to invest in ancient coins. Apart from randomly confiscating ancient coins (without even trying to understand what they have confiscated) there seems to be almost no public interest. This happens when people create laws about things that they don't understand. Aarghh this makes me so angry.

@Prieure de Sion, I fully agree... And I'm sorry for this experience that you made here. I'm shocked about the group lot. I think that it is the job of an auction house to mention such things. It is not only bad for the consignor if such important aspects about a coin are not mentioned. All of the information that is mentioned in the auction gets saved in databases - if they don't describe the coins accurately this just gets lost... A part of their provision is for the description of the coins. I don't really see an excuse for what they did here. I agree with @TheTrachyEnjoyer that this would be a reason for me to withdraw a consignment, if this information was available to them and they put it in a group lot without your agreement.