Karma was at
work yesterday in a provenancing accident that must have been pre-destined; a bizarre sequence of event led to me identifying,
buying and provenancing a coin - from its original 1969
catalogue - in the space of a minute.
The story starts in January this year. I was bidding for a totally disbound albeit first edition in
German of Mommsen's
work on
Roman coinage in the RBW
library sale - I already have the expanded and superior
French version co-authored by the Duke of Blacas, but page numbering in all essential references refers to the
German. Competition was strong and I eventually dropped out; I later discovered who the buyer was. About a month later an example of one of the rarest
denarii in the
Republican series came up for
auction at a small venue, the early
Rostrum Tridens denarius,
Crawford 62/1. It was a very nice example; I bid online and believed I won it at a
good price but was most disappointed a week later to find there
had been a technical glitch and my last bid hadn't registered. The
type is a hidden
rarity because it's type-equivalent, the later
Crawford 114, is so much more common and
Babelon and
RSC just list these as a single
type, so many collectors are unaware the early
type is so
rare. As it turned out, the eventual winner was the same person who
had won the
Mommsen; a few weeks later I was surprised and pleased to receive in the post a package from the US containing a
good quality hardbound reprint in
German of
Mommsen, a gift from my overbidder, who no longer
had use for it.
Good deeds outlast the
man.
Fast-forward to yesterday, and there was another
rostrum tridens in my sights, but this time it was a
semis of the later series,
Crawford 114/3, one of the finest preserved examples and from the Clain Steffanelli
collection. I
had logged in early, which was just as well as the
auction started an hour before I'd anticipated due to some confusion over GMT/BST/CET/CEST, as sometimes happens. There was a long run of
Roman Provincials on offer and I grabbed an old
catalogue from a shelf and spent the vacant time browsing for provenances, and was also chatting live via text with two other
Forum members (one who was in the air between
Ireland and Newfoundland), whilst waiting for my lot. I'd been focused so much on the
semis that I'd neglected to look much over the other
auction lots, and it was with some surprise that I suddenly noticed a few lots ahead another example of the prized
rarity Crawford 62/1 that I'd completely overlooked. I bid and won, and immediately on doing so I reached behind me and pulled out
Crawford volume II to make absolutely sure I'd bought the
rare rather than common
type. Indeed I did, and thought to myself that the
Crawford plate coin
had a very ugly scratch, which is unusual for
his plate coins and is indicative of the rareness of the piece. I looked back at my desk, where was lying open the random old
catalogue I'd grabbed, actually a fixed
price list from Giuseppe de Falco from December 1969 containing a strong run of early
denarii, and saw that same
type in the
catalogue in better condition than the
Crawford plate coin; it was the Bastianelli
collection, which
Crawford cited quite a
bit in
RRC and I believe also took plaster casts of, and I was wondering why he hadn't used the Bastianelli coin as
his plate example when I noticed a small ding above the helmet that matched the coin I'd bought just a minute ago. Yes, the very same - I'd found a pre-1970
provenance for a coin in its original sale
catalogue within a minute of
buying it. When I think back on the sequence of events that led me to this point, I really feel this coin was destined for me ... and I capped it's purchase a few minutes later by
buying the
rostrum tridens semis I
had been chasing.
After the
auction I
sat down and carefully went through de Falco FPL
Dec.1969 and found another nice coin, indeed one which I'd illustrated as a
provenance find from the
Spink Num.Circ. only this week, an exceptional anonymous
denarius. Then I
had a
glass of wine and thought about the day's luck.
Illustrated below
- the
rare Crawford 62/1
rostrum tridens denarius I missed (I know ... it's better, but it wasn't destined to be mine)
- the
rare Bastianelli
Crawford 62/1, now mine
-
Crawford 114/1, the common
type, for comparison
- the
rostrum tridens semis,
Crawford 114/3, also bought yesterday
- my second Bastianelli
provenance find yesterday,
Crawford 53/2