That is very sad.
Back in the mid-2000s when I was a fairly
new collector, and only
had some late
Roman bronzes, I decided I wanted to get a
cheap "
12 caesars" set. I
had just read Suetonius - the usual story. (Well not exactly
12 caesars, but the early caesars as I knew that I would have to skip the expensive ones.)
There were really no ancients where I lived in Ottawa and the only dealers I dealt with at the time were dealers in late
Roman / uncleaned coins. Someone, I can't even remember who, pointed me to Guy's website. This was long before he was on
vcoins. I emailed him to tell him what I wanted. Bronzes in the $10-20 range for the 1st century caesars.
Guy
had infinite patience for me - a collector totally new to that period and not intending to spend much
money. In addition to the two I
had seen on
his list he found me about 4 or 5 more from unlisted stock. I am sure that he took pity on me because I got some nice coins that I bet he would have listed for a
good bit higher than he sold them to me for.
I just looked at my Emperor's
Portrait tray and
still, 12 years later, my
Augustus,
Tiberius and
Titus are from that original batch from Guy.
RIP my friend.
Shawn