Spink 1941 Catalogs / Leonard Forrer tags

[Curtisimo]

I am currently doing provenance research and I am hoping someone on the board may be able to help.

One of my newest coins came with the below tag. The coin is from the George E Muller Collection, who was the head of the ancient’s department at Spink until the 1980s.

I think this tag may have come from a Spink Numismatic Circular sale in 1941 (see back of tag). If so, it may have been written by Leonard Forrer who was head of Spink’s ancient department before Muller. I have only been able to find one example of a Leonard Forrer tag to compare but it looks promising to me. See below.

My questions for the forum are:

• Has anyone seen a similar tag?
• Does anyone on the board have the Spink Numismatic Circulars for 1941 that would be willing to look?
• Does anyone have any other examples of tags written by Leonard Forrer?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Ryro]

No, but now I'm dying to see your new Antigonus Gonatas!?

Here are a few of mine:

This quarter unit has corn ears instead of bushels. I've conjectured the corn ears represent Doson

(Note the corn ears to the left of Pan on this Gonatas (?)

And to share a few of my regular sized half units, here is my most recent work an adorable owl below the helmet:

and some others:

And lastly, my Athena. Whoes legs go all the way up until making an ass of themselves😉

(and yes, this type does also come with a corn eared helmet in front of Athena... but she isn't as sexy/curvy on those)

And so I repeat, now I'm dying to see your new Antigonus Gonatas!?

 

Edited November 24, 2023 by Ryro

[Curtisimo]

19 minutes ago, Ryro said:

And so I repeat, now I'm dying to see your new Antigonus Gonatas!?

I am hoping to keep it under wraps until an upcoming installment of “12 Olympian Portraits” 🙂

Fantastic set of coins, my friend!

[DonnaML]

@Curtisimo, I assume you've looked through the British Numismatic Society's various pdfs reproducing old coin tickets? It appears that that's where your one example of a Forrer ticket comes from.

As you can see at this link, the Newman Numismatic Portal does not have 1941 in its list of digitized Spink Numismatic Circulars: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/545955 .

In fact, it appears that the years 1941-1949 are virtually impossible to obtain. See the table at https://britnumsoc.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/314-spink-num-circ-bns-blog-oddie-002.pdf at p. 5.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

 

[Curtisimo]

3 minutes ago, DonnaML said:

@Curtisimo, I assume you've looked through the British Numismatic Society's various pdfs reproducing old coin tickets? It appears that that's where your one example of a Forrer ticket comes from.

As you can see at this link, the Newman Numismatic Portal does not have 1941 in its list of digitized Spink Numismatic Circulars: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/545955 .

In fact, it appears that the years 1941-1949 are virtually impossible to obtain. See the table at https://britnumsoc.files.wordpress.com/2023/01/314-spink-num-circ-bns-blog-oddie-002.pdf at p. 5.

Sorry I can't be more helpful.

 

Thanks Donna. Yes this is the same place that I came to a dead end in my research. I did check the databases for coin tickets which is where I found the Forrer example. I was hoping to find more examples of Forrer tickets, particularly some for ancient coins. I think then I might be better able to compare some of the writing. For example, I’d like to look for other examples of the unique “AR” monogram.

As to the WWII era Spink catalogs I have been looking around with an eye to buy them but have so far been unsuccessful in my search. My current library goal is to buy up more Spink catalogs.

My dead end is why I turned to NF hoping others here may have some insight. 🙂 

I suppose my one option left after NF is to write an email to Spink and see if they have any insight. I am a Spink customer, but certainly not an important one so I doubt they would spend much time on such a question. Though I have been surprised in the past. Münzhandlung Ritter once went above and beyond when I asked them a question.