To those of you who made
good use of your COVID19 lock-down time to reorganize your numismatic life, I can only say….. “&%S!, you #$#%#$”
Now, that might SEEM like negative energy, but that’s only if you are one of those people who actually made
good use of the time. The rest of us understand.
For example, Top Photo, are “Things I wanted to Do Something About”. That might seem like a very low threshold of accomplishment, but (apart from these photos), I did not even achieve that.
Item A are “
Aes Rude” – about 5 lbs./2.2 kg. Just big lumps of bronze. You can weigh them, photograph them, throw them at Carthaginians.
Still in the box they were in on March 13.
Item B is a storage box. Of things such as “medals I don’t remember
buying”; “thing in a nice case”; “paper
money (?)” and “
Lusitania Medal (
Brit. copy) 3 of 3”. The label of the box says “paid bills 1999-2002”. Zero progress on that one.
Yes, by the way, that is a very fetching new
Home Depot box below the items. Another, different, un-fulfilled project.
Item C is “2x2x9” boxes, black, which are undetectable in the back of a dark closet. They may have been there for years. Maybe since February. Hard to say.
Item D gets close to being interesting. As you can see from the next photo, the box is clearly labeled “Coin Supplies/Extras – No Coins—“. That implies that the following photo cannot possibly be a photo of the interior of that box, as, if that were the case, the box with “No Coins” would thereby seem to be nearly filled with coins. And casino chips and things that look like coins. And you would be right. It is not nearly “filled with coins”. It is only about 25% filled with coins (by volume).
In the Top Photo, there is a cardboard box to the right of C&D – it is 5/6ths filled with presentations boxes of the “Hall of Fame of Great Americans” series of medals. Perfectly nice. The medals are also perfectly nice, and also in the boxes. I have (maybe) half of the issue (or so) of the bronze. They sit in the back of my closet waiting for me to figure out “which half” I have. Not happening during this pandemic, apparently. A nice monograph of these medals, from an expert I know (not me), is forthcoming.
Now, note that these photos have almost nothing to do with my actual
collection, as I define it. However, the boxes at “E” are
part of the
collection – the
part consisting of struck bronze
Roman Republic coinage that doesn’t fit in my other boxes of struck bronze
Roman Republic coinage. Or even in the same cases with my other boxes of struck bronze
Roman Republic coinage. I probably made the most progress with these coins – the coins are in order of
Crawford,
RRC. Except, of course, for the box of “
Crawford 56 TBD”. And, except,
Crawford’s chronology has been tweaked and refined. Yeah, I know, live your life like it’s 1974….
But that may seem a
bit pessimistic, and there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The “F” items are Abafil cases. They are not my only Abafil cases, as I have a
bit of a fetish about them, but they are the ones I planned to make use of during COVID19. The one in the front is very old, with 5 half-size trays. Very handy --- if I were to go someplace while carrying coins. The beautiful blue one – just one half-tray -- carried some of my coins the last time I was in the presence of anyone else with
ancient coins – that was March.
Indeed, in January, I won “show and tell” at my coin club. I was extremely happy. So – you guessed it -- those January coins are
still waiting to be re-filed, in the double-size
red box next to items A and D. It was too depressing to label that box as “Get with the Program”, in
part because it also has about 100 other un-filed coins in it. I think I acquired them during COVID. Or perhaps I just moved them to the
red box because I was bored of them being in a black box (which, as I noted above, can be hard to see.) Or maybe I found them.
The final photo is the interior of the largest Abafil case. That’s the “new”
style, where the surface is really, really leather-like. I love it. If I was much younger, I might
hope that it would marry me some day. I was supposed to start filling it two years ago. The COVID19 lockdown would have been a
good time to do that. Note that most of the trays are
still wrapped….
So, for all of you who DIDN’T accomplish much, I join and salute you! Those of you who did make numismatic progress…… I look forward to your presentations.
(I apologize to our board
members for whom my highly-idiomatic American English in this post is not clear.)
Please stay healthy, numismatically and in all other senses.