Bonshaw

I love that you are posting your father's coins here too. This one also has a beautiful patina.

This coin is in beautiful condition, and the blue-green patina is gorgeous

It is fun seeing how your father organized his collection

@DonnaML, I find your exonumia fascinating, as well as many of the others posted here. Could you please say something about what the boundaries are on your exonumia? Is there a particular date range in scope? Is Essaie money relevant here? Example - this is one of mine, a model crown from 1848 that I like a lot - it has bicolor gilt. I'm wondering if this is in scope of this Exonumia forum?

@Restitutor, I think it would be very useful if there were a forum where useful general information for ancient coin collectors could be captured from some of these discussions. This thread is an example. It is bringing together, through the input of many forum participants, the current state of guarantees of authenticity for slabbed ancient coins provided by the TPG slab companies (NGC and ANACS), and auction houses / dealers (CNG, Heritage, Stacks-Bowers, Great Collections, Davissons...), and how those guarantees of the slab companies and the auction houses / dealers interact. This is important stuff, some of the information is confusing to even some experts here, and it would be great to have it "pinned" somewhere for reference. The "Forum Rules and FAQs" folder seems to be more administrative. Is there anywhere we could put a summary post of all the information in this thread that would be more accessible in the future?

GreatCollections is another auction house that only sells slabbed coins. They mostly do moderns but do have a decent number of ancients. They are absolutely clear: ALL ITEMS ARE SOLD "AS IS" AND WITH ALL FAULTS. PURCHASER HEREBY ASSUMES ALL RISKS CONCERNING AND RELATED TO THE GRADING, QUALITY, DESCRIPTION, CONDITION, AUTHENTICITY, AND PROVENANCE OF AN ITEM. But they reassure you that the third-party grading services will: "Since the 1980s (and even before), there have been third-party grading companies which will independently assign grades to coins. As part of their service, they will encapsulate the coin in a tamper-evident holder and also guarantee the authenticity of the coin." So my count right now for auction house terms & conditions on slabbed coins is: CNG: Unconditional guarantee, but they (mostly) sell unslabbed coins. Heritage: T&Cs are confusing and self-contradictory. It is safest to assume that they don't guarantee authenticity of slabbed coins without written clarification. Stacks Bowers: Seems to refer all liability for encapsulated coins to the grading service, and not allow any return for any reason whatsoever by any buyer. GreatCollections: Only sells encapsulated, guarantees nothing about the coin condition, authenticity, or provenance.

This is complex and confusing, I see. I went back and edited my original post to make sure that it doesn't cause confusion, including the explanation for the edit ("I edited this post to soften the statement that auction houses don't guarantee the authenticity of slabbed coins. Apparently some do. Check terms & conditions."). The rest of this discussion is fascinating. I agree with @John Conduitt and @idesofmarch01 above that the only specific statement Heritage makes about encapsulated coins says that they "may not be returned for any reason," whereas "coins sold referencing a third-party grading service" have a "guarantee by the Auctioneer that they are genuine", but don't mention slabbed coins specifically. And having now reviewed the Heritage Auction T&Cs, I have to act under the presumption that they don't guarantee authenticity of slabbed coins, unless clarified further. I definitely would want this clarified in writing before buying a $100k slabbed coin from heritage. That will never happen, of course, but the principle stands.

@idesofmarch01 These are good points, but I have never seen CNG sell a slabbed coin. Do they? But you have now made me question my impression that other auction houses like Heritage do not guarantee authenticity of slabbed coins. I know that they don't grade condition, or allow returns, of slabbed coins, but I'm going to go read a bunch of Terms & Conditions now and see if I understood this correctly. Let me say that I *really* love this forum. There is so much expertise here. If I learn that Heritage, for instance, actually does guarantee the authenticity of slabbed coins, that will be great information, and will change my behavior.

This guarantee issue may be worth exploring a little more. I have done an extensive Lydian Weidauer XV electrum trite die study, which is why I have strong opinions in this area. I have carefully tracked the provenance of the suspicious slabbed coin I mentioned in my previous post. This coin was previously auctioned by CNG back in 2006, so presumably back then it had a guarantee of authenticity, but I don't have access to the CNG terms and conditions from 2006. The coin was then slabbed, and auctioned by Heritage in 2017, but was left unsold. Then it was put up for auction on heritage again on Jan. 7, 2018, and sold for $6,600 here: https://coins.ha.com/itm/ancients/greek/ancients-lydian-kingdom-alyattes-or-walwet-ca-610-561-bc-el-third-stater-or-trite-13mm-475-gm-ngc-au-5-5-4-5/a/3061-29208.s Here is a closeup of this (slabbed) coin directly from NGC: I can say that, from a die-matching perspective, this coin makes no sense at all. The front is at least an attempt at a Weidauer XV Type C obverse (but suspicious in several ways in comparison to other Obverse dies). Every single Weidauer XV trite was stamped with the same two reverse punches (at different stages of wear), but these two packpunches are different, much more like those used in other trite series. This is either a historically important coin, or a forgery, and the other iffy aspects of the obverse die push me towards forgery. Now here is the question: this coin was sold by CNG back in 2006, so presumably back then, it carried the CNG guarantee. The owner, or at least the owner in 2017 (presumably completely unaware of these questions), had it slabbed by NGC, who inspected and gave it their seal of authenticity, but no guarantee. Did that void the original CNG guarantee, especially since we are selling away from the original buyer? The coin failed to sell in 2017 (perhaps some folks thought it looked suspicious), but then sold in 2018 for $6,600, which is a princely sum for a Weidauer XV trite back then! The luster of this coin really stands out strongly, this isn't the sort of luster you see on one of these trites, so this presumably appealed to the buyer. So NGC doesn't stand by this coin. Does Heritage? Could the present owner go back to CNG? Surely not if they didn't even possess the invoice. So in this case, the slab distanced the owner from a previous guarantee. Do you think that Heritage would offer a refund, or wash their hands of this since they didn't look in the slab?

I don't have any comment on why the slab should be shown in preference to the coin, obviously the coin should be more important from the buyer's perspective. But there is one possible reason that some dealers and auction houses may prefer to sell slabs: the guarantee. Most reputable dealers and auction houses guarantee unslabbed coins against being modern forgeries. The terms of that guarantee vary widely, but it is still a guarantee, and carries with it some cost. Some reputable dealers and auction house do not guarantee slabbed coins against being modern forgeries. They make the (valid) point that it is hard to do the inspection that would be necessary to make that guarantee once the coin is slabbed, but it is a significant cost savings for them to not be liable for such a guarantee. There may be an auction house that guarantees even slabbed coins for authenticity, but if so, I don't know which one. In the case of moderns, NGC or PCGS will provide their own guarantee that coins are genuine, so this is just moving the liability from the dealer/auction house to the slabbing company. In the case of NGC Ancients, however, they do *not* guarantee the authenticity of ancient coins. They do, however, promise to do a careful job in an expert evaluation of authenticity, and they probably catch the most egregious forgeries at least. So if you buy a slabbed ancient from an auction house or dealer, you might not be getting any authenticity guarantee at all (check terms & conditions), but are swapping that for the confidence of at least having had an NGC expert look at it, which is worth something. I can see why some dealers and auction houses would prefer to sell slabbed coins, since it releases them from this liability. I know of at least one slabbed ancient that I am pretty sure is a forgery, and that sold (for a pretty sum) at auction. I assume that there are lots more. Caveat emptor in buying slabbed ancients.

A gimmick is exactly what it is, and it is a gimmick that worked on me. I do use high-purity materials in my work, and for some reason I love the stuff. It doesn't come cheap in general. I have a bottle of ultra-high-purity helium-3 in my office. This stuff is hard to come by.

It is often said that the British Guiana 1 cent magenta stap is the most valuable man-made object by weight. That is ruling out antimatter, perhaps, which can't be produced or stored at the macroscopic scale anyway. I believe it (the stamp) is around 40 mg, and sold for $9,480,000 in 2014, so that is $237 million USD per gram. As usual, philatelists have numismatists beaten all to heck in terms of excess. Doesn't this look like something worth $237 million per gram? But now let me go in the opposite direction of this thread. I have idiosyncratic taste in coins. One of my favorites is a modern gold commemorative. It isn't even that attractive. Here is a photo of my coin which is - horror of horrors - entombed in plastic! (Look! A PF69 Ultra Cameo!!! 🙂) Just to be extra triggering, I'm using the photo from the NGC website. This coin is a funny duck for sure, weighing in at 1.22 ounces of gold, with a face value of 350 Canadian dollars. Showcasing the flowers of Canada's coat of arms (and honoring the 90th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Mint, not a favorite of those here), it represents everything that many people hate about modern commemoratives. So why do I care? I'm strange. I think that this is the first coin of any material ever minted with 5N (99.999%) purity. No one has told me that, I haven't found it listed anywhere, but I have looked and have failed to find anything this pure minted before 1998. And you can probably pick one up for pretty close to its scrap bullion value. Why should you care? Well, you probably shouldn't. But I do! Now back to the main discussion of what ancient gold you bought after selling modern bullion coins.

Did he collect any Lydian electrum? That is my personal focus (not my father's, and my father's collection is really growing on me).

What kind of coins were in his collection? Were they mostly Byzantines and ancients from Asia Minor, found locally in Turkey?

@Jims,Coins, great, thanks for all of the details, and for posting your coin! The difference in coloration between your photo and the seller's photo is remarkable. You call it a "AE Follis - Silverdenar". Now I'm confused. Bronze and silver? [EDIT: @Jims,Coins explains below that "Silverdenar" is the name of the seller, the coin is AE Follis.] My camera setup takes much nicer photographs than my cell phone, but the coloration is always off (relative to my cell phone camera, which gets colors more faithfully but isn't good on details). I always spend some time color-correcting the fixed photos to try to match what the coin looks like in hand, and sometimes I can't get it quite right. But your coin - changing the quite attractive greens to a desert patina in the photograph - borders on color fraud. Thanks also for posting the price and date of your purchase. Your follis is in better shape, but if I inflation adjust $2.50 in 1978 to 2019 here: Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value From 1913-2024 (usinflationcalculator.com) I get $9.80. So your $11.50 for a somewhat nicer coin (lacking some of the corrosion on my father's coin) seems quite comparable.

Happy Sunday! It is time for the next coin from my father's collection, #5/83. Choosing this coin for this week was inspired by the Easter thread a little earlier. This coin doesn't seem to have been part of the main collection that my father had at one time in the binder; it doesn't have his writeup notecard associated with it. There seems to be no formal receipt for this coin in his thick stack of receipts. I think it likely that the lower dollar value of this coin ($2.50) meant that it was a cash transaction without a receipt. I have only purchase info that he wrote on the coin envelope (date, amount, and coin details), I include what I have here. Coin: 5/83 Ruler: Constantine X (1059-67) Identification: Ratto 2021, S 1853 Type: AE (is this a Follis?) Location: unlisted (Constantinople?) Weight: 10.825 g Width: 30.8 mm Height: 31.6 mm Thickness (flan): 1.7 mm Purchase date: July 29, 1978 Vendor: unknown Purchase price: $2.50. This was clearly overstruck on another coin, as my father notes on the envelope. I I love the blacks, browns, and rusty reds of this coin. I'm actually not sure which side of the coin is the front, but I'm going with: Obverse: Constantine X with Eudocia, standing facing, holding a labarum on three steps Reverse: Christ facing, standing in robes. As I said, I don't seem to have the receipt, and there is no notecard, but here is the envelope with details. These are in my father's handwriting, so the envelope is not original from the vendor: So that is what I have on this one. Very much an ugly / beautiful coin in my view! Thanks to everyone for all of the assistance, information, and enthusiasm that you have been providing.

This is fantastic! By comparing Islamic scripts to other coins I found online, I had identified where the year and mint were, but haven't yet figured out what they said. I'll try Zeno.ru for more info.

Looks like tomorrow morning - thanks for asking!

@theotokevoithi, I want to thank you for this detailed post. It has sent me on a long voyage learning about the Umayyad caliphs and these drachmas and dirhams. I have spent a good amount of time comparing the Arabic script on this Dirham to different coins and databases, which has been fascinating. I wish I could go to Dan Brown's coin shop in Denver and pay $7.00 for coins like these now! 1969 was a long time ago. I looked up Dan Brown and discovered that he had some numismatic fame. He is the dealer who told the story about the 1964 D Peace dollars and said he had someone wiling to sell a few to him. Then things got hot with the mint hunting them all down, and he never closed the deal. HIs shop was right by the Denver mint, and he knew the superintendant.

Happy Easter! I like that this is a full-body portrait of Christ, standing facing on obverse. Lettering on front: EMMA OYHA IC-XC First and last letters of Jesus Christ; Emmanuel Reverse, Eudocia on left and Constantine X (1059-67) on right, standing facing, with labarum between. I think that this is the Constantinople Mint? But I'm still learning, and I'm not certain of the identification. My father had this as Ratto 2021 with EMMA NOVEA on front (the OYHA or NOVEA is obscured). This looks to me like an overstrike. For Easter, I like to imagine that this is an overstrike on a Roman depiction of Pluto, god of the underworld, perhaps one of the nice Caracalla provincials from Cyzicus. (That identification is only my symbolic imagination). Here it is in hand, I think Christ is a lot more photogenic than in the fixed photo:

Happy weekend! It is time for the next coin from my father's collection, #4/83. First, a shout-out to both @seth77 and @theotokevoithi. Thank you both so much for the wonderful rich details that you provided about last week's denier tournois. I loved the history surrounding the coin (including the mention of Geoffroy II de Villehardouin), the discussion about the coin's place in numismatic history, discussion about variations and mints, and the interesting citations. I especially loved the galleries of beautiful, related coins. I saw some discussion about Umayyad Dirhams in Numis Forums earlier, so today's coin popped up when I was choosing the next coin to post. It is an Umayyad Dirham from Damascus. Coin: 4/83 Ruler: Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 AD) Type: AR Umayyad Dirham Location: Damascus Weight: 3.184 g Width: 27.5 mm Height: 27.7 mm Thickness (flan): 0.64 mm Purchase date: August 15, 1969 Vendor: Dan Brown's Coin Shop, Inc., Denver, Colorado Purchase price: $7.00 Here is the envelope that it came in: And here is the invoice: And here are some historical notes written on an associated notecard by my father: I love how there are no images on these coins, but only script. Is this an outworking of Islamic aniconism? I would love to see related coins, historical notes, and numismatic details - all of these are making this a very rich experience for me.

I'd recommend my listing instead. I'm selling a half dollar that was actually in Julius Caesar's pocket as he went into the Curia of Pompey on the Ides of March.

I'm keenly interested in numismatic metallurgy, but am far from an expert, so please take this question in that spirit. Why does heat retention in a flan matter? I assume that this is because it cools down slowly after an annealing step before the strike? Am I correct that it is not because the flan needs to stay hot during the strike? Metals like silver are FCC (face-centered-cubic) structures, without a ductile-to-brittle transition. Their ductility is not improved (much) by heating them. I presume that these ancient flans were actually struck at room temperature. This is different from BCC (body-centered-cubic) metals like some steels. Those really want to be heated up before working. But silver, copper, and gold are all FCC. (I don't know about bronze alloys).

Holy cow, I just clicked through enough to see the prices. The one I clicked through on was 25,000 GBP. And you are too late for the Aurelius! Already sold.

I just want to say that this is an amazing forum. Such a pleasure to read the nuanced and informed discussions. This thread is an example.