Numismatic and History Discussion Forums > Classical Numismatics Books and References Discussion Forum
Old Auction Catalogue Madness!
Carausius:
--- Quote from: Andrew McCabe on July 26, 2015, 04:43:06 am ---I had lucky provenancing spree on Friday evening: in a three hour period I found six provenances in Muenzen und Medaillen (Basel) fixed price lists from 1950s to 1980s. Of those six, one was a coin on its way to be sold, and one was a provenance I already had in my records. Four were entirely new, and three of those were pre-Novevember 1970, which is the Gold Standard when it comes to provenances. Here are the four:
Muenzen und Medaillen (Basel) List 189 April 1959 lot 41
Muenzen und Medaillen (Basel) List 215 September 1961 lot 71
Muenzen und Medaillen (Basel) List 260 December 1965 lot 24
Muenzen und Medaillen (Basel) List 352 January 1974 lot 32
On Saturday I continued my quest and scored zero when searching Schulten and MunzZentrum (except the famed MunzZentrum XXX 1977 sale from which I've about a dozen bronzes). But I learnt some things from the process I followed Saturday and from the success on Friday. The reason for my luck with Muenzen und Medaillen (Basel) is that their coins are typically of the quality I collect: rare coins in quite nice condition and commoner coins in really nice condition (but not FDC) such as the LEG II and the Faustus Sulla. But the sales I checked Saturday were mostly full of common coins in quite nice condition or rare coins in terrible condition. I realised it was pretty much inevitable that I'd find nothing. So for some catalogue series, one can quickly enough determine whether or not its likely to be useful. I did however on Saturday find three or four coins which I used to own but sold in recent years. Thus those catalogues reflect the quality of coins I collected maybe twenty years ago, and I've few of such coins in my collection today.
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Congratulations on your discoveries. Not surprising, as they are great coins. You said recently that FPLs were the secret. Not too long ago, I saw several groups of MuM FPLs from the 1950s-1970s for sale. However, they were not complete, and I thought they had likely been picked-over, so I did not buy them.
carthago:
--- Quote from: Carausius on July 26, 2015, 11:28:39 am ---
--- Quote from: Andrew McCabe on July 26, 2015, 04:20:59 am ---
--- Quote from: Carausius on July 25, 2015, 12:16:18 pm ---I would be curious to hear from any Forum members that have a rebound copy of the Martini or Sydenham catalogues - how were your plates bound?
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I wonder who you thought might answer this question ;)
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I had two likely candidates in mind. ;) Thanks for your reply. I'm not too keen on the center stitching, as I want to preserve full visibility. I'm leaning toward hinging and binding the left side of each double plate so that they fold-out. I'm hopeful this can be done in a single volume without page-sizing issues.
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I'd bind it it hinged on the left side so you can fold them out. I'm not by library at the moment to give specific examples, but I've got few catalogues that are bound that way it it works great. If they are larger than normal plates, you may be able to have them trimmed a bit to size and not affect the coins. I have a copy of Martini that it completely falling apart that I need to have bound too.
Nice addition to your library BTW. Monster sale!
carthago:
--- Quote from: Carausius on July 26, 2015, 11:37:47 am ---Congratulations on your discoveries. Not surprising, as they are great coins. You said recently that FPLs were the secret. Not too long ago, I saw several groups of MuM FPLs from the 1950s-1970s for sale. However, they were not complete, and I thought they had likely been picked-over, so I did not buy them.
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I have a mostly complete run of the M&M FPL's and there are some great coins in them, though it's hit and miss as to when they were offering RR. It seemed that the firm would focus on specific areas in each of their catalogues. Some would have no RR, some would have only a few, some would have a bunch. I hope to someday soon do a cheat sheet of the important ones (to me, Roman Republican) and I'll share it so maybe you could look to buy just those. I bought the majority of mine as a lot, bound years ago in multiple year groups. There were gaps in them that I've since filled for completeness and need to get all of them rebound to include the stragglers. Without a cheat sheet, however, it's hard to go looking for provenances in them because it's so hit and miss with the offerings.
Carausius:
--- Quote from: carthago on July 26, 2015, 12:22:30 pm --- I hope to someday soon do a cheat sheet of the important ones (to me, Roman Republican) and I'll share it so maybe you could look to buy just those. I bought the majority of mine as a lot, bound years ago in multiple year groups. There were gaps in them that I've since filled for completeness and need to get all of them rebound to include the stragglers. Without a cheat sheet, however, it's hard to go looking for provenances in them because it's so hit and miss with the offerings.
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Some sort of index would be awesome. My fear with buying incomplete groups of FPLs is to find that the ancient-weighted lists had been cherry-picked. Buying complete runs or nearly compete runs, as you did, is one solution. Knowing the contents of each list in advance is another solution.
Andrew McCabe:
--- Quote from: Carausius on July 26, 2015, 04:23:36 pm ---My fear with buying incomplete groups of FPLs is to find that the ancient-weighted lists had been cherry-picked. Buying complete runs or nearly compete runs, as you did, is one solution. Knowing the contents of each list in advance is another solution.
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Exactly this happened to me. I bought a massive group of Glendinigs catalogues for quite a high price, dating from the 1920s to 1970s, only to retrospectively realise that the group was the residue of a pick process. I actually had that information in advance as the seller happened to be also retailing a number of individual sales for prices that seemed too high whereas the group of about 100 seemed a bargain. Well it wasn't. I was just stupid. I learnt something.
It's most cost effective, if one has the time, to spend time in a numismatic library. For one thing it helps in identifying what catalogues may be worth buying. And, as carthago and carausius already know, I produced a cheat sheet (website) on Republican auctions that was intended to take Spring to another level of detail. In turn, I relied on others most notably Warren Esty's site for my initial guidance on modern catalogues. Esty's site is really worth looking to.
http://esty.ancients.info/catalogs/
Most effective of all is to own, and consult, Banti for Republican coins or Banti-Simonetti for Imperial coins. I wonder what the equivalent resource would be for Greek coins.
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