Nice finds, Andrew. Which of the aes graves is the ultra-rare one?
The
triens. 3 head-right Trientes in
Haeberlin, against hundreds of head-left (he gave up counting after a few hundred but it wouldn't be difficult to find 1000 examples). The head-right is also notable for having no
obverse value mark.
Wow, a real Gaius Antonius denarius! 
Outstanding!
It's fairly
good (pretending modesty!!), but the
Caius Antony is probably the least
rare of the silver coins in the above group.
The head-left
Piso Frugi: 4 are known, including this example (plus a few others with another control mark, less than 10 in total). The last one at
auction, in NAC 54, which was the first head-left sold since since 1933, fetched CHF 28,000.
The Murcus: much rarer than
Caius Antony
The Scarpus
Quinarius: I am not sure if one has EVER appeared at sale, other than this example. Probably fewer than five known.
Of the bronzes:
V
Uncia: this is the second published example, and it is a splendid one.
L.Tituria Sabinus
Quadrans: one of the enigmatic
Apollo head quadrantes (why on earth does it have a
head of
Apollo rather than
Hercules?) There are none in
Paris, none in
Hannover, and a totally destroyed example in
London. This the second published example so far as I am aware.
If I could make one point: Collectors perhaps complain too much about the high
price of coins, when, if they did their homework, they might get splendid bargains on
rare and special pieces in obscure series that the speculators have just no idea about. All these coins were sold at public
auction, and many were sold at collector-friendly prices. For example I paid a few hundred dollars for each of: L.Tituria
Quadrans; Scarpus
Quinarius; the
rare Aes Grave Triens. The V
Uncia was even cheaper. The (CHF 28,000 value)
Piso Frugi cost me barely 1000, and the other (EF and
rare) Apollo-head
quadrans about the same. The other three coins (
Caius Antony, Murcus, Wheel As) sold at about their estimate at a sale where countless coins sold for 10 times estimate. Possibly my cheapest coin was one I paid 40 francs for (about $40), which I think is unpublished (although it is a dull variety so I don't show it above). I would advise collectors to read, read, read, so as to know what is
good when it
comes up for sale.
P.S. the opposite happens when I sell coins. I recently sold an extremely
rare L.Pl.H
sextans, only a few known, for GBP 10. It
sat unsold online for about a week until I told a few friends that they might have to wait a half-century to find another example and surely it was worth 10 quid??? One of them bought it, probably out of pity for me (after all it was the
price of 1 beer, and I think I deserved a beer). Someday, someone might actually want this
rare coin...
