Can one man change the way we collect pieces of history? Today is 2016, we continued collecting but with additional care The emotions with our coins came to new heights today, when speaking with ‘R’ about Roman Bronzes, ‘R’ reminded me of the reason I started collecting Roman Bronze coins. Gold was always available and all we had to do when these were found was to wash and you had a pristine coin but it was very cold, silver the same as both in the earth managed their survival very well. With bronze coins they had to fight the elements of the earth, the chemicals that attacked them, the patinas it would attract depending were the coins were found. Whether black, blue, green a wonderful multitude of colours. The portraits, history, the record of the Roman Empire, the propaganda on the reverse the sizes and beauty. The last few weeks ‘R’ was instrumental to put ‘RZ’ and myself together. The collection of ‘RZ’ was first the excitement of seeing a quality collection, not just a few coins but the majority in a state untouched and just lightly cleaned or washed of bronzes. ‘RZ’ has spent many years checking his coins to be sure they were not false in any way, re-built, tooled, smoothed or given special patinas etc. etc. This has created a new issue in collecting for 'R' and myself. ‘R’ sees it that during the first 2 decades of the 1900 the delight of collectors was to have Roman bronzes cleaned, some more professionally than others, especially the fields being polished to highlight the quality of the portraits and legends. The careful cleaning left the surfaces hardly touched and there was still natural patina whereas more radical cleaning meant that the fields were more polished to give the portrait to become more exciting to stand out. ‘R’ did not leave in our long conversation a great deal to debate on this subject and I must concur with most of what he said although I tried to make a case for early smoothing of the fields during the conversation. Without success. This issue as not so prominent in the late 1800 until the Sarti sale coins in fact were mainly left untouched with layers of patina on them. The early collection of Herman Weber had illustrations already in 1896. What are we to do in 2015, we are faced with mountains of coins being smoothed, cleaned heavily, re-engraved, false and artificial patina, filled and smoothed fields etc. plus the new bronzes being developed see bellow to meet collectors needs with false patinas etc. To this end we are going to have a conference call with ‘A’ today Friday. We have a market that is hungry for material, the demand for high quality is growing. The dealers are under pressure to look in the market and now we are hearing “false” coins with fake patinas are coming to the market, sestertius of Commodus and Antoninus Pius, they look so perfect, coins that have been prepared for special sale as dealers are hungry for fresh material and dealers are not yet making an issue as they do not want to see the market disturbed. The ‘RZ’ collection had been created over 30 years, why was it so special, he specialized in only collecting natural coins untouched except the removal of earth so very carefully. He has also studied false patina, watched individuals working on restoration, tooling, smoothing ++. As his knowledge became better as he started returning pieces to dealers that he had bought earlier that dealers had claimed were natural. ‘RZ’ will write his thought about each piece, the provenance and any emotions when he purchased it. The collection was overviewed by ‘A’ in April 2014 prior to being acquired, ‘A’ was astounded by the quality and natural base of the collection and he remarked to Simon my son by phone it was it was a wonderful once in a life time opportunity. ‘A’ looked and looked at ‘RZ’ collection and was astounded. What an amazing collection of bronzes and what a Roman bronze should look like? Buy get the coins as quick as possible. Rome might be broken buildings today but the coins are witness to the history. Now it has left both us ‘R’ and myself now in a dilemma to what we should now collect in the future. Are we to become even more careful what is acceptable in our collections? We were careful up to now. We may notice that Roman in the late 18 hundreds were in the main natural uncleaned and just displaying their natural patina. Was it the remarkable Sarti hoard the abundance of bronzes to the market hat started the change in perception what collectors wanted to see in a bronze coin. What ever will it never be the same, or will a new level of collecting become the norm for a few as now we have seen the difference with ‘RZ’ coins what will be in the next few years? The J. Hirsch sales from 1901 and 1903 they had Roman Imperial from Sarti Hirch V and VIII, Hirch VIII it contained 1365 coins from Sarti and pieces of the Borghesi collection. What we need to uncover is the effect of the Sarti hoard from Bolsena, was this the birth of the modern collections in the early 1900’s. We should not forget that post the Sarti Auction in 1906 it was reported in the Italian Numismatic Journal that prices went up and up and up to heights never seen before. The pieces were of a quality were they were acquired not for the Emperor but the quality, the Hadrian Britanicus selling for 175 L and the Plotina for 1’400 L an incredible sum for a bronze. We were dazzled by this note but missed the real change that happened, coins were in the market in abundance, and they were so many they were not recorded in the catalogue and in most cases as in the Sarti sale 1906 only 5% were plated. We were witnessing the largest hoard that may have exceeded 4’000 and the market was able to prepare coins for the collections in a way that delighted the collectors of the early 1900’s. The hoard that that was forgotten for 5 generations and two world wars comes to life again. Geoffrey
