Hi Chris, thank you - really thank you - for that.
For me, the whole
catalog digitization,
auction database and online link resources...it's useful, but is actually just several years of prelude to what I really want, which is the
provenance database. That
part is just getting off the ground. It's early stages, but with a few of the older sales entered (3500 lots or so), there's now enough to show people and get some feedback. Is it useful yet? Maybe, maybe not. With so few sales entered, you'd have to be really lucky to find a missing
pedigree from a coin in hand today. But as more
auctions get added the chances will get better. The direction is
good. And it's
still fun to play around.
I do discover missing pedigrees all the time between the coins already in the database. It's quite easy - visually - once the coins are weight-ordered. For example, many coins in
Pozzi will show up again in another Naville sale soon after, but the
Pozzi provenance is never mentioned. So I'll record those as well and so build up a record of where the coins have been seen...the
Provenance Chains which are shown on the website. That's fun too. I think I have almost 80 new cases so far out of these 3500 records.
The bad news is how long it will take to build this database. For a single
catalog with a couple hundred Italy/Sicily lots, it's at least a week of spare time
work to do the image extraction from scans plus all the data entry. At that rate it's going to be 2-3 years to get up to the likely 25,000 or so records I think will constitute a reasonable Italy/Sicily database.
Gallica
BnF, Heidelberg and archive are incredibly useful. I can't say it enough. I keep looking for a similar resource that covers the
Italian houses but so far little luck (gallica has a few Rattos). Perhaps you know of one?
Published
collections I do buy and digitize as well (
de Nanteuil,
Locker Lampson, Lucien
Hirsch etc), but mostly
auction catalogs.
Jameson I don't have, but it's online so I can refer to that for now. I've been recently getting into and
buying the SNGs which I'd not paid much attention to, until recently. They are amazing sources of
provenance information.
Well, thank you again Chris. Let's keep talking, and if you have feedback -
good or bad - please let me know. I want those resources to get better.
Cheers,
Steve