Featured A Coining Ritual

We all have our rituals once the coins have arrived in the mail and are ready to be 'unboxed' and attributed. Here is mine.

1. Make a cuppa Yorkshire tea (sometimes a glass of white wine will do too).





2. Have my coin supplies and the coin mailer ready to go on the desk.






3. 'Unbox' the coin.





4. Weigh it.




5. Pull the needed references from the bookshelf and attribute.





6. Write the attribution on a coin envelope.





7. Place it in the coin box for recent arrivals.





8. Insert a print-off of the coin in the appropriate 3 ringed binder with date of purchase, provenance, and the amount paid. The binders and coin boxes are organised by RIC or RPC catalogue numbers.





9. Do a brief write-up about the piece and post it online.

Vespasian
Æ As, 9.19g
Rome mint, 71 AD
Obv: IMP CAES VESPASIAN AVG COS III; Head of Vespasian, laureate, r.
Rev: CONCORDIA AVGVST; S C in exergue; Concordia std. l., with patera over altar and cornucopiae
RIC 292 (R2). BMC p. 130 *. BNC -.
Acquired from Musa, December 2019.

The seated Concordia type is more frequently encountered on the dupondii and rarely on the As issues. This As featuring Concordia and an altar is quite rare, with RIC citing only one specimen in Stockholm. Mattingly mistakenly conjectured the type was possibly struck at Tarraco (BMC p. 130). The style, however, is unabashedly Rome mint. Mattingly also speculated the type 'stands for harmony in the imperial house'.


So, that's my normal coining ritual, what's yours?

 

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Wow David your ritual is much more restrained than mine...



Great new addition btw!

 

Your desk is much, much neater than mine. I am impressed (and a little chagrined). I think my New Year's resolution is going to be to tidy up a bit...

 

That's what I was gonna say! Great looking coin!

 

Some things are the same and some are different. I'm using online resources more, and the first to do is weighing and measuring. Describing starts with checking the original description and making my own, making a picture and putting the coin in its rightful place, enjoying it for a few days next to my work place and maybe writing about it after checking if it was treated before on CoinTalk.



To the right you see my medieval pennies section (it is very small) and the place where I'm going to put this penny in its box. For the diameter I'm using an old printer's rule. Because ancients often are not exactly round it's rarely necessary to divide the millimeters.

Finding the right number to assign to a coin is always a little puzzle. In this case, medieval Europeans of the 1000-1300 AD period start with 47 (I have 10 of these). The boldfaced weight means that I weighed it myself and didn't use the sellers data (scales might differ).
A colleague seller once gave me sound advice. If a tray falls on the floor with all your coins of the same type, you can quickly put them back in the right place with the help of the exact weight.



4711. Deventer, emperor Conrad II (1027-1039). Obv. Portrait of a bearded saint. Rev. Small cross with four corner dots in a stipple circle, surrounded by a word starting with D(aventriae). 19 mm, 1.19 gr. Dann. 566. JMP 1997/98 p. 28. FD 1. Nice addition 2019

 

Can't go wrong with Yorkshire tea

 

What a lovely pictorial*! I hope to become as organized as you in 2020 .





*It would be better if Hershey was in the pictures .

 

For myself I:
1) Make a cuppa Chamomile tea.

2) Have my coin on the desk

3) I now seat on the desk and start meditating....trying to empty my mind of material thing like coins...my goal is to detach myself of all physical desire...

4) I repeat that for 30 days in a row...and now feeling full of self-control I deserve to unwrap my little treasure...A Ommmmmm

 

I couldn't go a day without it! Who knew that Yorkshire would grow the best tea?

 

Oh trust me, he tried.

 

Excellent!!

 

Excellent post, @David Atherton ! Enjoying the moment is really what life is all about—the journey—not the destination. I’m into green Matcha Tea

 

Nothing too fancy here. I mainly just open the package, take the coin or coins out of it, and do a quick look over to make sure they're what I ordered. After that is usually taking them out of whatever holder they are in, usually flips. Inspect them to make sure they are not fakes.

From there is usually an acetone bath as most were in PVC flips. You'd be surprised how much a coin can look different after an acetone bath.

Then it's weighing them & leave them on my bookcase to fondle for about a week. Then it's off into my flips & to be stored in an album.

 

Nice addition @David Atherton! And you have your own desk, thats neat. And so organized. My steps:
1. Receive coin
2. Place enveloppe on kitchen table between kids toys and wife stuff
3. Continue with household tasks, feeding kids or cats, etc
4. Almost forget coin, quickly open enveloppe and put coin in cabinet, locked and safe
5. Repeat step 3
6. Two weeks later remember coin
7. When wife is away with kids, weigh, measure and take pictures with minimal time
8. Somewhere deep into the night, create coin picture with pixlr.

Brings me to my question, where is your picture taking step? Or do you only use seller pics?

 

Very similar routine....
1. Sit down in the evening with a glass of red wine (not white)
2. Open the mailer carefully
3. Take the coin out of the cardboard protector
4. Remove it from the flip
5. Weigh the coin on my scale
6. Measure the coin with a metric ruler
7. Get out a new coin envelope
8. Grab a black roller-ball pen
9. Fire up Wildwinds or another online seach site
10. Attribute said coin
11. Carefully write down the attribution on the envelope, along with regnal dates
12. Insert the coin in the envelope after I have massaged it for awhile
13. Put the coin into my coin box
14. Repeat process for those days when I receive multiple coins
15. Sleep with visions of new coins dancing in my head

 

Normally I use the seller's pictures. When they are too poor to use or non-existent I normally take them at some point after the attribution.

 

This is interesting. Sometimes collecting is such a solo activity it is nice to see other people doing the basics - opening envelopes, etc.

I will add one other thing, part of my process. When attributing something, I "print to pdf" anything I find online that helps me attribute the new coin. Wildwinds, Vcoins, auctions, OCRE, Coin Talk posts featuring the coin in question, etc. On some of the trickier, or more interesting stuff, these files can get pretty extensive. They are saved in folders, sorted by type (Roman Republic, Bronze Antonines, Antonine Silver - Ladies, etc.). I use this information to print up my flip inserts, which I do in Word, with another host of folders by type/locale.

This is about the only thing I am somewhat organized and systematic about. Otherwise, all is disorder and cat hair and old coffee ring stains on the desk.

 

Thanks for sharing your ritual. My ritual begins with CAREFULLY opening the package and enjoying the coin with my eyes and magnification for awhile. Step two is to finally read the seller's tags and measure weight & dimension. At that point, I'll write the weight & dimension information on the seller's tag if it is not already listed. I also note (in pencil) the date & price paid in code on the seller's tag. The coin is put into a PVC-free flip & the seller's flip is tossed into a pile of unknown flips. The next step is to fire-up the laptop and begin typing my own label. This is where I start looking through my limited library and maybe search the Internet for further information. My ritual typically stops there and the coin & laptop remain on the bar for days or weeks. (The bar is in my house). Every day I will pour some refreshing drink and examine the coin under different light & magnification. Soon after this ritual, the coin will get put into my briefcase so I can enjoy it at work. It is around this time that the coin gets photographed & I think about how to share it with my friends at CT. I might text a photo to a fellow collector which almost always solicits some interesting feedback. If another week goes by and I haven't posted it at CT, then it will eventually get pulled from the briefcase & be inserted into the appropriate part of my collection.

 

'Wine, sex and baths ruin our bodies, but they are the stuff of life.' -1st century epitaph .... per Flavian Fanatic

A different version: "Once I had money; it is all gone now. Some I spent on wine, some I spent on women, some I spent on song; the rest I spent foolishly."

 

Great ritual except for one thing - this coffee-drinking American has no clue what "Yorkshire tea" is!