Haven’t shared any coins in awhile. This one crossed my desk today. Not every day a Labienus aureus is available to study. The sixth known. Last one sold in 2013 for 800k.
Just another day at the office? I'd love to see what comes across your desk on an exceptional day! Seriously though, what a fantastic coin.
Rare for sure. But artistically not very appealing, to me. And can someone explain what is going on with horse? Was the die rusty?
It's normal description is Horse facing right, wearing quiver and bridle. I think there was a Harlan Burke one with much clearer and detailed strike.
Awesome coin, Barry. For every 100,000 Gordy III Ants you must see a month , it must be a treat to see special ones such as these now and then.
Harlan never had a Labienus aureus as far as I know. Here are 3 of the others that are known. I don't have a photo of the BN coin. It's illustrated in Bahrfeldt, but it's not on their website for some reason. The BM coin NAC 70, lot 192; ex M&M43, lot 242 Ex NAC 54, lot 279
Collecting certainly must be a lot more fun for those that have millions to throw around @Barry Murphy , not sure how to ask this without sounding like I'm making some kind of legal or ethical judgment...... But I'm not. I'm just curious about whether you get permission from the owners of coins before posting them here? I mean, publicly-accessible certification photos are stored in the NGC database either way, so it doesn't seem like it would make a difference overall. However, so far as I know, knowledge of the serial number is required to access them (or can they be found through population reports?). I'm just wondering if there are people that want their coins certified, but kept secret from the public for some reason. Or, is sacrifice of secrecy an inherent part of the certification agreement?
How is there a sacrifice of secrecy, when there is no way to tell who the current owner of a coin is (from a photo)? How can one be reasonably expected to seek the owner's permission to post photos, when there is no immediate means to tell who the coin owner is? Referring to this specific example... the photos appear to have been taken by staff of the auction house. If so, the copyright owner is the auction house, not who currently owns the coin.
I'm not talking about secrecy with respect to the owner, I'm talking about secrecy with respect to the coin's appearance/existence. I can't think of any rational reason that I would not want the world knowing that my coins exist, but then again, I do not deal in million dollar coins. This example in particular sparked my curiosity on the matter because @Barry Murphy said "The sixth known", as opposed to "One of six known", which leads me to believe that the coin wasn't known to the wider community until it showed up for grading (or maybe I'm misinterpreting this). In the case that a person has a coin this rare, that is relatively unknown to the collecting community, maybe they would want to keep it that way for some reason? Dunno. They have to return the coin to somebody....... I guess I'd start there. Unless I'm missing something, I do not think that the coin in question was said to have been sent in by an auction house. But, if the coin is being evaluated for the purpose of auctioning, then of course, publishing pictures would almost certainly not be a problem. In any case, like I said in the original post, I'm not being judgmental. I do not feel one way or the other about "whether" permission should be obtained, I'm just curious about whether it has (or about Barry's, NGC's, or other's perspectives on the matter).
