I last visited Coinex in 2001, in the same location, but it triggers a couple of interesting memories.
The first, as regards
ancient coins, I walked in the door shortly after the show opened for general entrance, and at the very first desk I visited I happened upon a lovely
Aes Grave
semis, of the bull/wheel
type, attractive and in nice condition with a
provenance as being from the Spencer-Churchill coin sale and indeed it was a coin suitable for the
collection of an illustrious family. I cannot now recall which date the sale was from, it wasn't from Winston Churchill - he
had better things to do such as drinking whisky, painting,
writing history books and winning wars - but from another branch of the family that also of course included
Diana Spencer. Perhaps someone might remind me which coin sale was the Spencer-Churchill
collection. At the risk of a frown for providing a link rather than a pic here it is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/3351480982 a lovely coin anyway. It was priced at £550 but ws mine for £500 cash. I thought it a tad over-priced at the time, but in that assessment I was gravely mistaken, it was not at all overpriced. So I
had my first and last purchase within 10 minutes of arrival because I saw nothing else of great interest, inevitably the
Roman coins at a British show being predominantly concentrated on the Empire. Still it was a nice browse, in size the room was about the size of the centre section only of the main room at NYINC, but quite decent
quality specially if you were interested in English coins, Gold nobles tumbling off every tables.
The second recollection was spotting a childhood numismatic friend from Dublin, a then elderly dealer name Emil Szaeur who sold me many
modern coins when I was aged perhaps 9 to 12, and subsequently
ancient coins after a trip to
Egypt at the age of 12 when I bought some
LRBs by the side of the Nile in Luxor from a street trader who
had a box of mixed ancients and moderns, priced at 2 for an
Egyptian pound and obviously not knowing that some were older than others. Emil left a strong impression on me, one of those formative bricks-and-mortar dealers such as Thomas
Curtis of Baldwin's was to prove for me two decades later. He emphasised
quality and condition to me, and to this day I am ashamed to say that I have consistently failed to take that advice. He never accepted to haggle over
price, but the coins were fairly priced.
I was a shy kid and not that good at talking to an adult about coins but he was the first person (many followed) who told me to buy the book before the coins, all my initial Sear handbooks came from him and perhaps fifteen years later I bought my copy of
Crawford's
Roman Republican coins. Several times I remember him spending a long time with
his books trying to identify some crusty old coin I brought in, one I recall was a
provincial issue with a bearded and turreted head within a temple with I think
Lucius Verus on the
obverse; we never identified the coin. I think I still have the coin at
home, still unidentified. My love of coin books stemmed from
his advice (although not my tolerance for crappy
rarities, that is all my own doing) as well as for
auction catalogues - as I got a little older he from time to time handed me a gratis
catalogue, one
NFA mail-bid
catalogue I still treasure twenty or more years later as having an excellent selection of Andrew-McCabe condition coins, ie battered
rarities in F-VF condition, and probably that
catalogue confirmed me in my current collecting interests.
As for the coins themselves, mostly
his shop was a paradise of a display of items of beauty - large Japanese gold bars side by side with African bracelet
money and
Aes Grave, Scottish 16th century gold and Kruggerands, Anglo-Saxon pennies and zinc small change from the third Reich, Hiberno-Norse imatitives side by side with
Victoria golden Jubilee coins, books on every available wall space and tasteful artifacts too. I've seen many bricks and mortar coin dealers in my life but this one was a treasure chest the like of which I have never seen since. And you wonder that I love coin collecting?
Well,
Roman Republic was not
his speciality, but one day about 1980 I saw a
Roman silver coin which I liked that was very very different from the
LRBs I was used to. When he explained to me that the coin held a picture of Ulysees on
his return from the
Trojan war being greeted by
his dog who was the only living creature still to recognise him, I was hooked - it was my first
Roman Republican coin and I collected nothing but
Republican coins from that day onwards. That coin is still a central
part of my
collection. The strange thing is that when I published my
collection on
http://andrewmccabe.ancients.info/#quick a couple of months ago, I was absolutely devestated when, of all the 1500 or so coins, the authenticity of that coin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ahala_rome/3538902680/ was attacked on an Italian discussion group, due to stylistic reasons. Much to-and-fro discussion and the intervention of several notable experts led to the conclusion that the coin is an ancient imitation in fair style. Of course I was blinded from questioning the coin myself due to its emotional attachment, but it is still ancient and authentic albeit not from an official mint - I just need to add a regular mint version to my
collection now and am looking out for a very nice example. Ted Buttrey wrote me a short note after the coin was "exposed" so to speak to say "never get too attached to your coins, they break your heart".
The second coin which Emil Szauer brings to mind was my genuine
EID MAR denarius. Yes I
had one. No you cannot see it on my site. The coin in question was the flattest, most worn
EID MAR in
history, showing on the
obverse just the very top of
Brutus' head with the letters BRVT showing, and one side only of a dagger on the
reverse. Pure silver, quite genuine. I owned this coin briefly in the 1990s when a financial issue sort-of forced me to
part with it in 1999. Well, not quite true. What actually happened is that Emil disapproved of it. Once when visiting Dublin and I dropped by
his shop I showed him the
auction catalogue where I obtained it, and he said he would never want to own such a coin no matter how
rare or desirable. Oh dear! So when I
had to dispose of a bunch of coins, the
EID MAR left me too. I guess this was as much out of respect for my numismatic mentor who disliked the coin as for any real need for cash. Certainly, a decade later, I cannot myself understand why I let it go. But then I recall the gleaming
showcase of Emil's
shop and it all makes sense.
So, seeing Emil in 2001 was a nice surprise for me and for him although he was clearly not in good health. I was surprised at him visiting a coin show across the water in London, but he told me that many old friends of
his, knowing he was in poor health,
had clubbed together to arrange a table at Coinex for him, gratis, and sponsored
his trip from Dublin for the show so that he could meet decades-worth of numismatic friends. Including, happily, me, given it was just a chance encounter. Emil
had on
his table a representative selection of very high
quality coins (as always!) from a range of different cultures, all for sale but as much a
showcase as anything else, and typical of how
his shop was always a
showcase for
quality. He was very proud to be there, reminding me that he was one of the very earliest
members of the International Association of Professional Numismatists, the high-end dealers club.
I did not see him again, the next year when I visited Dublin
his shop was still there and closed, and I saw today reference on the internet to an Emil Szaeur memorial event which was held in 2004, with notable numismatists in attendance and an important lecture.
Dear readers if you have got this far excuse please excuse me. But it may
help to answer the often asked question from beginner collectors, "how did you get so fanatically interested in
Roman Republican coinage". Well Emil Szaeur was the start, and other important mentors built on those strong foundation and are still building.
Andrew McCabe
Author