Box o' Mystery

@Bert Gedin - you're on the wrong thread for a giveaway entry. You need to post on the giveaway thread for that. Repost your message over there. (You can follow the link in my signature line to get to the giveaway thread.)

Yes, I thought so too. I suspect the knife money piece is fake for that very reason, though as mentioned I know very little about that stuff. It just looks "off". As far as other Chinese stuff, I've seen some early-20th centruy Republic stuff (10- or 20-cash pieces with the crossed flags) in my very brief peeking. Those look genuine enough. Maybe there will be earlier cash coins in the bottom of the box. The box on top appears to have mostly Romans while the Chinese stuff is underneath. I still haven't taken the boxes out of the bigger storage box.

Neat. Thanks. I wondered if it was a quinarius. That makes this the first one I've ever seen in hand.

Yes, a lot of work. I will see if there is anything that interests me and then the rest will go on to a dealer for an offer. And I already have a dealer in mind for the Classical ancients. We'll see who the Chinese stuff goes to, if it's even worth the effort. @Ken Dorney was the person I thought of there. Hopefully there's some genuine ancient Chinese stuff, since what's been seen so far looks suspicious.

 

A few more totally random grabs for Thursday morning. Y'all are seeing these on the same timetable as I am. I literally just picked up a few without looking, and took pictures.

Everything else remains in the box, still unexamined as of this post.

I have NOT peeked ahead. What's left to come is almost as much a mystery to me as it is to all of you.

Once upon a time, the suspense would've slain me and I would have had to plunge in and look at all of it in one go.

But for the sake of spectacle, I'm finding the slow-burn mystery more fun this time. At least for now. I might fast-forward later. There is much here to cover, and I really don't know how interesting the rest will be. So I'm kind of enjoying the suspense myself, and milking it for all it's worth, for dramatic purposes.

 

Tks, tsk. No crimped staples here. These are actually dangerous, to man and coins both. Where are my pliers? Hmmm.

Friends don't let friends keep their coins in holders with uncrimped staples.

 

Aha! Quintillus! There's somebody you don't see every day. Love those short-reign rulers.

Note the square-window 1960s-vintage 2x2.



(Sorry for the rotation on that reverse pic)



To be continued...


,

 

Neat. Wasn't Valerian the one who got captured by the Persians? Made into King Shapur's human footstool?

Edit: aha- yes. Thank you, Wikipedia. I get my V-named emperors mixed up sometimes. (Don't even get me started on Constantine vs Constantius vs Constans - ugh.)

Looks like the example I posted in Post #46 has some intact silvering.

 

This has been a morning preoccupation so far, if you can call it a preoccupation at all.

And yet I found myself opening the box this afternoon.

I didn't do any more than pick up five or six pieces out of the row box on top. And again, I only had my cheapo readers on - no loupe - and the light wasn't ideal, so this was basically squinting at little indistinguishable dark discs inside old flips and merely reading a scrawled handwritten inscription or two.

So... remember those little bundles wrapped with rubber bands in the earlier box shots? I picked one up to see what the note wrapped around the bundle said.

Aha.

So far there is still no sign of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle yet, if we're to meet him at all (I have my doubts).

But, the plot doth indeed thicken...

 

Oops. The rubber bands slipped.