Believe it or not I actually owned that
Silbannacus cast, photographed it and then sold it on
ebay for like ten bucks. I commissioned it from the BM for the plates in my first book. After receiving this
cast, along with a
medallion of
Priscus Attalus, I tried to order more from them because they were pretty
cheap and useful but was told that that was it. They weren't making any more casts because nobody ordered them any more and small runs were not a cost effective use of their time (or something to that effect). Considering that the
Silbannacus plaster probably pulled a few million atoms from the real deal during the impression I should have kept it instead of
selling it for next to nothing ;- )
On another note, reading this
thread for the first time I was fairly shocked to read
Curtis Clay give an unequivocal statement that erotic spintriae were
not used in brothels.
Had it been most anyone else making that claim I would have ignored it but coming from
Curtis I'd love to hear an explanation. I'm not sure if he's
still active but perhaps someone else know or
had this discussion with him. The way I see it, in the absence of corroborating evidence when all you have is a single source of data drawing to conclusions from that data is, of necessity, an exercise in speculation. I don't think I've ever seen him write off-handed comments so the conviction of
his statement leaves me to think there is either new evidence or a very persuasive study that was relatively recently published. Again, would
hope that someone found out more on this.
Lastly, apropos to this
thread, coincidentally just yesterday I added to my
collection this
Regalianus, a proper dream coin I'd been lusting after for nearly 20 years!