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Author Topic: The trouble with trays  (Read 1730 times)

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Offline Carausius

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The trouble with trays
« on: July 18, 2016, 01:00:36 pm »
I made a long overdue visit to the bank vault today, dropping-off some recent purchases. In the process of moving trays in and out of the box, a tray of republican silver slightly slipped from my hand and landed on another tray.  It was a very minor slip, but coins went everywhere!  After moving all coins back to their correct compartments, I noticed one tagged compartment was empty. Perusing the room, I found the missing Brutus/Ahala denarius (!) on the (carpeted) floor. I suspect my conservation habits contributed to the Olympics-worthy jumps made by some of my coins: I place a non-pvc plastic sheet between my coins and their tags, which (a) reduces friction and (b) causes the coins to sit a bit proud in their trays. I suspect a coin placed directly on the Abafil velvet would be less mobile.

EDIT: The gold medal for long-jump, oddly enough goes to the heaviest coin in the tray. An Antony-Octavia Cistophorus somehow cleared 4 other rows of coins and stuck a landing in an adjacent tray.

Offline curtislclay

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Re: The trouble with trays
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2016, 01:34:50 pm »
In the Vienna trays there is an empty ticket for a silver quinarius of Caracalla, one of only two known for the type, with a note something like this on the back: "Dropped on 6 June 1933, and couldn't be found."

In museums usually only the curator will handle the coin trays, bringing them out and carrying them back one at a time for the visitor. But when I sold my first collection to the BM nearly 30 years ago, I was given access to their cabinets and asked to check which of my coins they already had and which they lacked.

I managed to drop one of their coin trays! Luckily the BM uses wooden trays stored in the usual small coin cabinets measuring about 12" x 12" x 12", not specially made larger trays which could hold many more coins. The kindly curator (Andrew Burnett) told me not to worry, and in five or ten minutes had all of the coins and tickets back in what I hope were the right holes!
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