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Top 10 of 2022 from FitzNigel


FitzNigel

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Hello Coin friends - boy have I been a non-entity around here.  At the beginning of the year, my wife got a job in another city, and so I spent many months scrambling to find a new job so I could join her, and that left me with little time for coining.  The move kept me busy, and then my new job has turned out to be more stressful and more time consuming than my last one, leaving even less time for coining.  Combine this with the migration to this new forum, and I just haven’t had time to keep up.  I have purchased some coins, but my ‘top ten’ also represent the entirety of my acquisitions this year, and all of them purchased before June.  I hope to be able to get back into the hobby next year, but I am once again on the hamster wheel of looking for a new job to escape my current situation.  Oh well, it is what it is!  But with those caveats, you’ll see I haven’t had an opportunity to take good photos of my coins, nor even do proper attributions for them, but I wanted to post SOMETHING.  Okay, Fitz’s Top Ten:

 

10. Mysterious Roman

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We all know about these coins from shady eBay dealers.  However, this one is special because it was a gift to me by one of my students who graduated this year.  This student loves Roman History, and really enjoyed the coin research project I had my students do when we did our unit on Rome.  I’m not sure I will ever figure out what this coin is, but it doesn’t matter - it was a wonderful gift.

 

9. Philip III Macedonian shield

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I grabbed this in one of JA’s private auctions - probably because it was cheap and I just liked the look of it.  Did he migrate over and is he still doing those sales?  I always enjoyed them…

 

8. Slavonia coin lot

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This is representative of one of a number of coins from Medieval Slavonia I acquired in a lot.  I think I got around ten, and nearly all were different (the purchase was in January and at this point I honestly do not remember).  I just like these coins as we can identify quite a bit about them, and they are generally inexpensive.

 

7. Decimal proof British coins

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One thing I did do quite a bit of before the move was changing my US, UK, and World coin collections to new and better binders.  As I was working on this I got the itch to fill in some of the holes in my UK decimal collection.  I happened to find a dealer who had a bunch of proof sets for cheap, so I nabbed these.  I still need to crack them open…

 

6. Richard I denier from Aquitaine

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I have darn near every other coin of Richard’s (except Issodun which is impossible, or Cyprus which is just expensive), but for some reason never had a denier from Aquitaine.  This popped up at a reasonable price early in the year so I snagged it.

 

5. Bohemian Ladislaus I

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I began the year planning on focusing on more of my Bohemian collection, and began with purchasing this coin and the next one.  The artistry of these reminds me of the same style as the marginalia one finds in manuscripts.

 

4. Bohemian Ladislaus II - Wenceslaus bust forward

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This Bohemian coin in particular I liked because of the bust of Saint Wenceslaus.

 

3. Caracalla with Plautilla

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Really the only reason I got this coin is because of its similarity to my number 1 coin this year.  I have a sub-collection of large bronze provincials of Caracalla, and this certainly fits that criteria.

 

2. Serbian coin

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I found this at a coin show and just fell in love with the imagery.  I don’t have any other coins from Serbia, and the price was right.

 

1. Caracalla Damnatio Memoriae

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This was the big purchase earlier this year.  To fit in my ‘big provincial bronzes of Caracalla’ collection, I knew I would one day need to get the Damnatio Memoriae of his brother Geta that was issued from Stratonicaea.  This came up for auction earlier in the year, and while I paid quite a bit for it, I still think I got a good deal.  Interestingly, just after my move the auction house contacted me saying that a certain museum in Europe was interested in acquiring this coin.  I never got back to them as I have just been too busy.  I feel a little bad about that, as I would have been willing to loan it, but it will not be for sale for some time.  Although it feels nice knowing that one of your coins is worthy of being in a museum! (And that they wanted it, as opposed to most coins which we know are just left to sit around and gather dust…)

 

Merry Christmas all!  I hope 2023 brings you many great acquisitions!  Hopefully I will get the opportunity to be a bit more active around here too.

-Fitz

Edited by FitzNigel
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The Serbian coin seems to be of the 1389 type for Stefan Lazar Hrebljanovic of Moravian Serbia, but I can only make sense of the +CONTE... on obverse and n0VO mOnT... on reverse, marking the mint of Novo Brdo. I wasn't able to find the fleur-de-lys  privy mark on reverse but I am not an expert on Serbian coinage. For a similar spec see here, but as far as I can tell with differing legends after the CONTE and after n0VO mOnT.

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3 hours ago, seth77 said:

The Serbian coin seems to be of the 1389 type for Stefan Lazar Hrebljanovic of Moravian Serbia, but I can only make sense of the +CONTE... on obverse and n0VO mOnT... on reverse, marking the mint of Novo Brdo. I wasn't able to find the fleur-de-lys  privy mark on reverse but I am not an expert on Serbian coinage. For a similar spec see here, but as far as I can tell with differing legends after the CONTE and after n0VO mOnT.

Thanks Seth - I’ll be able to identify it when I find the time (that’s really my only obstacle at the moment…)

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On 12/24/2022 at 12:45 AM, FitzNigel said:

At the beginning of the year, my wife got a job in another city, and so I spent many months scrambling to find a new job so I could join her, and that left me with little time for coining.  The move kept me busy, and then my new job has turned out to be more stressful and more time consuming than my last one, leaving even less time for coining.  Combine this with the migration to this new forum, and I just haven’t had time to keep up.

I feel you! Moving is simply stressful, especially when combined with starting a new job...

Still, this is a nice list of coins! I particularly like the two Bohemian denars as well as the Slavonian coin with the cute little marten on the obverse.

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