Nerosmyfavorite68

I have a possibly irregular follis of Justin I which says IAVSTINVS.

That's a nice, huge example.

Queen Boran is a good one to have! I plan to leave the coins untouched.

Thanks for the very kind sentiments! I'll leave everything as-is. The toning on the Ardashir may very well be find toning as well. I've had enough collecting experience to know when to get something before it goes away. Soon it will be tough to get uncleaneds and nearly uncleaneds. The Parthian was mainly just an inexpensive tack-on coin. I carefully went through the list of late ones and picked out the best one in that price range.

I didn't have any ideas for a buy, so I went back to the well of a previous want, a really nice example of Ardashir III (628-30), the ill-fated boy king who reigned briefly after the overthrow of Khrusru II. One can never tell what the toning will be from this seller, due to the photography lighting. This was a case where it's pretty true to the picture, a lovely slightly golden hue. This coin had really stood out to me; the portrait was so much better than the others, huge flan, etc. It had also stayed around for a long time. This dealer is great for getting inexpensive coins and uncleaneds, but the $100+ coins tend to be overpriced, in my opinion. The price on this was really not too far above the norm, however. Apparently other colletors disagreed with me. This had probably been there at least a year. I loved it from the start but didn't commit until recently. Sasanian Empire. Ardashir III (AD 628-630) AR drachm (35mm, 4.03g). WH (Veh-Ardashir) mint. Struck in regnal year 2 (AD 629/30). Bust of Ardashir III r., wearing first crown / Fire altar flanked by attendants. Göbl type I/1. The second coin is an uncleaned (or really, really deep (near black) cabinet toned Parthian of the last king of Parthia, if I'm not mistaken. Vologases VI (208-222) 20mm . 3.14gm Ecbatana? mint The downside to the inexpensive coins is the barebones description, just a size and the weight. However, I happened to come across Forum's Parthian numiswiki page... Feel free to post your post-Khrusru II (after 628) drachms. He also had one of the more obscure ephemeral late Sasanian kings, but the portrait was really ugly, in my opinion, and he had kind of a lame crown. It was also much more than the OP coin.

I again forgot to look. I had to get up early in the morning. Oh well, I'm content to admire the beautiful pictures from here. Heck, with kirispupis' pics, who needs to go outside? His pictures are always coffee-table-book-ready. Really great!

I forgot to look outside last night. Nice coins.

It's so much easier to shop at home, on vcoins, but some of my most memorable coins came from coin shows. I'll also generally ignore the unpriced dealer, unless it's something I desperately want. I'm pretty much in the same boat. If the dealer in question is heavily busy, I'll just browse around until things are more calm. I really love pick bins, but when one has a budget of < $600, then one has to be doubly careful to see if there's one or two special coins. If it's the deal of a lifetime, then perhaps I could cheat and go up to $1k.

A member of another forum brought up an interesting topic of dealer tactics at shows. While I claim no credit for thinking of this topic, I thought it would be interesting to explore it in terms of dealers in ancients at shows. His assertion was that there were three main types of dealers at shows; the friendly dealer who has a price on a coin, but offers it to the customer at a discount, secondly, the dealer who has no prices listed and is generally silent while handing over a coin, and lastly, the dealer who has a an allegedly inexperienced helper help the customer, while the dealer's chatting to another person. The dealer does the actual transaction and usually ends up offering a discount. It's been almost 15 years since I've been to a coin show but the dealers whom I dealt with the most were mostly at least somewhat friendly. I've done the most business with Jon Kern (probably 65% of my coin show buys were from him) and Sphinx coins. I think the Educational Coin Company might have been at one or two of the larger shows I was at. Most of the shows I reference have been semi-local to me, not the super-enormous shows like FUN. I don't recall too many unfriendly dealers although I think I recall there was one nice guy at Pegasi and one gruff guy. I'd always avoid the gruff guy. There probably were a few of the silent types but I would have just moved on and I don't remember them after so long. I have to spend my budget wisely so I'd always have an initial walkaround, and let the dealer know that I'm still in the walkaround stage.

That's terrible, Germanicus. Such things do sometimes happen, but are sad. That's why I gave up on coin trays early in my collecting career. I didn't like how they'd move around and after an inexpensive AE popped out and chipped, that was it. I keep mine in flips. It might be a trick of the light, but it looks like there might be some bronze disease going on in back of Agrippina's head. I also try to handle my coins as little as possible. When I was experimenting with photography, an otho spurted out of my hand, but luckily hit the carpet and no damage was done. Ancient Coin Hunter - I'm not exactly sure when the golden age of bulk lots ended, it was sometime between 2004 and 2014. Up to around 2010, I was getting pretty sweet fixed price picks ($5-25) from Dr. Fishman. Different genres of tetrarchal folles, high-quality uncleaneds, etc. In the late 90's, I picked up a lot of as-sized coins for $1.50 each. Not worth a lot, but very few culls.

As traveler noted my Note 20 Ultra doesn't seem to have an autofocus, which would possibly explain the less than stellar pics it takes of people. With objects, it usually does ok. However it does have a focus tracker (like if the person/object is moving) so it has some kind of focus. One has to to tap on the screen where one wants the main focus. When I got the phone I watched the third-party Samsung reviewers and they were getting better results than the iphone. I detest itunes/how one is forced to do playlists on the iphone, and since audio is my main thing, it had to be android. I even went with the 20 because they were saying that the camera was better on the 20 than with the 21. When I'm ready to experiment again I'll use the 12mp camera, not the 108, and use the raw mode. You are achieving some very nice results with that 'ghetto' setup. I'm all for it! My a77 takes pin-sharp photos of people, but like I said, I don't have a macro lens. I was getting adequate record label pics when I was advised to use some mode, I forget what it was called, might have been multi-frame noise reduction, where it woudl take a bunch of pictures at once and merge them together. I tried taking coin pics with my tripod but the moving parts would droop when it was pointed downwards.

What's the glass/plastic thing? Where did you find the little raise for the coin? I've spent hours in the past, pitifully trying different things with both my camera/phone. Both had non-sharp results.

I'll have to make my peace with the coins. With the exception of the Decius - a deal seems to come along once or twice a year - the others are pretty much out of my budget. And there's opportunity cost. I do have an Alpha 77 Sony DSLR. However, I don't have a macro lens. My cell phone is a huge Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Per the Galaxy I've tried experiments with the Galaxy supported by various numbers of CD cases. There's a lamp on the dresser above the Philco. I could never get the coin into sharp focus. There was also a problem of getting the obverse and reverse image to come out the same size when I would crop. I could try the Samsung in manual, raw mode. What ISO would be best, something like 125?

While I spent a lot (by my standards) on my two recent budget solidi, these two went in my 'enjoyment' category rather than ashamed. While they're significantly worse than the norm, the circulation wear does bring up the question of what journeys they went through. I'm also curious about the red adhesions. I thought that gold was unusually nonreactive?

Your Justinian is certainly better than my budget example. While it's also slightly wavy (so many of these are), mine is decrepit. I had to guess which way was up on the angel.

I guess the ones that bug me are the disappointing ones which I spent a lot on. I didn't spend a lot on the Caesar, but I'm always too ashamed to do the here's mine thing when a JC is posted. There's a lot of coins which are more decrepit than those, especially some of the dirtyoldcoins pseudo-uncleaneds from a couple of years ago. However, for $3 each, one expects as much. That was just in one category, though. They certainly were filthy but stripped is hardly uncleaned.

That's a lovely drachm. Mr. Berk was making the star statement from the perspective of a seller. He said that not many houses would slab AE coins because of the likelihood of the dreaded comment, smoothed, etc, which would significantly knock down the price.

Aaron Berk said that mostly only works on gold (or exceptional silver), especially ones that can get a star. If you're selling and that's a way to get a high price, there's no shame in that. They can always break it out.

Ok, thanks. Raising the coin has been one of the bugaboos I've encountered. Perhaps I should go to the local hardware store this week and buy some short plastic or wood dowels.

Those are expensive rulers. There's nothing to be ashamed of there. Concord on the Didius appears to be holding a severed alien head, which is kind of cool. It's funny what tricks of the light can do. My Pescennius, which is slightly better, was in the display window of HJB for $200, while my grandfather and I were visiting Chicago, circa 1998. I ran in there and bought it. I had intended to go inside anyway...

Wow, Heritage must have been having a bad auction. That 'choice Fine' Drusus looks like something that might be at the local coin shop for $40.

At least the Hadrian has a known pedigree and is interesting as such. I have coins that are worse than that. The Decius is the only one which brings me active angst. At least with the Claudius I'm in the Aureus club, and I didn't pay too much for it. It's a good thing that I was a poor college student and didn't have spare money for the even more ghastly Commodus Aureus, which was misshapen and looked like it had been run over by a truck. At least mine was only worn and mushy. This was worn, ex-jewelry, and misshapen.

Wow, we've had quite the spate of impressive posts from new members. Per the coin, all I can say is wow, wowie, wow!

It does indeed have beautiful caligraphy! I also enjoyed the writeup. I have very few Islamic coins, most being uncleaneds from Zurqieh or a misc. junky pseudo-uncleaneds from dirtyoldcoins.

Thank you! I'll go look! Maybe some lasting good will result from this thread. * I just looked. Perhaps I'll buy that instead of a coin my next regular coin buy. I've seen people on CT build shoebox lightboxes, using glass from a cheap photo holder for a reflector. One even used a can of tomato soup as a cell phone stand. I'll have to try the soup method sometime this weekend.