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HN Italy Original Casts

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Curtis JJ:
This is an absolute treasure. I think I may have seen you post it elsewhere and may have made this comment:

Anytime I see old plaster casts like this (surprisingly rarely, given how many thousands must've been produced), I wonder what happened to them all, and how many have survived (individually or intact).

All those Naville Ars Classica and Egger and Ratto catalog casts... After a sale was done, did Jacob Hirsch or Felix Sclessinger put them in drawers? Throw them out? Seems like some were shipped to museum collections, but I imagine that's a minority of them?  Are any casts still floating around from Pozzi or Strozzi or Virzi and friends?

I'd be happy to come across just a few!

Virgil H:
Great comments Curtis. One thing that has always surprised me is not seeing plaster casts at auction houses or dealers that I follow and I follow quite a few in both the US and Europe. I see electrolytes. Maybe I am just not looking at the right areas in auctions, but it seems these would be a collectable area of interest for some people. What happened to them all is a great question. Did they throw them away? There had to have been thousands made over the years.

Virgil

Molinari:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen any for sale.  My guess is most were thrown away like old film after the pictures are developed.

Virgil H:
I always kept my negatives, but you are probably right. Those casts had a purpose and were not needed after their purpose was fulfilled. I was thinking that these casts would have been treated like dies that were finished with their run of production (I guess I am thinking mostly of modern medal and commercial token dies). But, I guess companies kept dies in case they ever needed them again. And with casts, there was no further need unless they auctioned the same coin again and that was so rare an occurrence there was no need to keep them. I am just thinking aloud here, it is strange we never see casts, so most must have been thrown away.

Virgil

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