I found the provenance (sort of) of this Didia Clara sestertius

Please, ominus 1 -restrain your hysteria ! I may be a growly old man, but even such have been known to strike lucky !!!

 

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ahaha! you're crackin' me up Bert!..by all means continue sir...

 

Thanks, ominus1. To be continued !!!

 

I found it interesting that the work offer by Spinks listed 886 catalogs from a period of 101 years as significant. I know that most of my coins have never been sold in a significant catalog but there are quite a few that I have found in old catalogs. I really prefer finding coins in a catalog myself rather than buying one with a laundry list of sales showing how many times it sold in the last decade. Certainly it is great to discover that I have a coin that was in the great Dattari collection, for example. TIF send me an image of a page from her Dattari-Savio catalog (I should buy this one) when we were discussing a coin on that page. The thrill was when I recognized two other coins on that page as currently being in my care. I had no idea. I had purchased them from auctions in the 80's and 90's but those catalogers did not mention this feature. I suppose it really makes no difference who owned the coin in 1907 but discovering it on your own remains a thrill.

Two things shown below. Dattari-Savio used pencil rubbings not photos. Some types of marks show more in pencil and others in photos. We deal with that. Both of these coins have suffered damage (bronze disease) in the last 110 years. Those who collect Alexandrian billon may not be too surprised. That is scary to me. How many other coins in D-S have not been stabilized and have turned to dust?

 

Me too. That's precusely why John Spring's book is so important. In my case, knowing which old catalogues have the most Roman Republican plates allows me to focus my catalogue purchases on those with high RR plate numbers which increase my chance of discovering an unknown provenance.

One thing I neglected to mention earlier: a catalogue library also permits me to confirm provenance refereces in dealer listings. Many times, a stated provenance is a breadcrumb trail to earlier provenances. Case in point: I bought the below Antony legionary denarius with a provenance to a 1982 Sternberg sale. Checking the Sternberg catalogue, I saw that the listing referenced this coin being illustrated in a 1975 book about Roman Ships. As the obscure book on Roman ships was not numismatic, I had a hunch that the author was likely the consignor to Sternberg. A friend had this Roman ships book and confirmed my coin was illustrated as being from the author's own collection. So now the provenance is: ex Sternberg XII (18 Nov 1982), Lot 512; ex H.D.L. Viereck Collection (bef. 1975). Common number legionaries rarely have early provenances because typically only the rarest of the type were illustrated in catalogues; that makes this common legionary a little uncommon!

 

Very interesting. I might try this with a few of my coins.