Very interesting Joe, and by the title of the
thread I guessed it might have been started by you. I have four
aurei of
Octavian /
Augustus in my
collection; all are reasonably
rare, but none excessively so as in this coin. Bahrfeldt's
work on the gold of the Republic and
Augustus is the
standard I use - does anyone have
Calico to hand - does
Calico list a corpus of actual coins,
weights, locations, or is it just a
type catalogue? If the latter, I won't be
buying it, if it adds to
Bahrfeldt I might. Below are my four
Octavian aurei, the one with the facing
Victory is a new acquisition:
I resolved many years ago never to get into seriously collecting gold. A sample of each
Imperator would be enough, I told myself - just one
Octavian, one
Julius Caesar, one Mars/Eagle etc. The four
Octavian aurei below are an eloquent demonstration of my willpower, as are my 3 Mars/Eagle
types, my
good 18th-century-made Oath scene gold with
XXX below the Janiform heads of
Dioscuri (a non-ancient
type that is included in
Bahrfeldt) etc. I've also resolved to always eat healthy food and excercise regularly. In reality I eat chocolate, like
red wine,
good steak without the fat removed, take taxis, and snap up any
Republican gold I don't have if priced in the $2k-$5k range. Although one wouldn't recognise it from the prices for EF-FDC gold in NAC catalogues,
fine condition RR gold typically retails reasonably, even great
rarities, which means, annoyingly, I keep adding such coins. So, the four
aurei below (and quite a few other
gold coins in my
collection) really demonstrate my iron-clad willpower.