Lord Marcovan's "Eclectic Box" collection as of May 20, 2019

"Look, Comrade! That way to the Workers' Paradise! Let's go stand in line!"

Know what you mean. I've always liked that design. Had a circulated example of this type years ago, but it was cleaned and rather mundane. This one is nice, and so was the price. I had a chance at an even higher grade piece (PCGS MS64), but for the money and eye appeal, I liked this MS62 best.

You should! There are a lot of expert folks on the Ancients forum to advise you, should you decide to take that plunge. Note that I do not count myself in that expert category. In Ancients, I am an intermediate-level collector at best, and still semi-novice in many ways.

 

Eclectic. You have to pay a monthly bill to get electric.

I remember you liking the King John penny, which kind of surprises me. That's not the sort of thing a US collector who hasn't collected medievals would normally gravitate to. But it grabbed my attention, too. I like that it came from a huge buried hoard that was found in France 1970. It had originally been buried with thousands of other medieval coins. Archaeologists found traces of the cloth sack they were buried in, still sticking to some of the coins.

The Henry VI groat from the Reigate hoard was found in a clay pot.




Coins with known provenance, like from a hoard or shipwreck, sure are fun and fascinating, with the stories they tell.

 

No, that pastel toning is a bit unusual, and was of course the selling point.

Or rather it is unusual for a business strike coin. I have had a pastel-toned 3cN before, but that was a proof, and a proof is a different sort of creature. Pretty toning is not uncommon on 19th century proofs.

 

If you check out the "Bygones" gallery, you'll see Kaiserreich and German States coins, and plenty of French, including some real eyecandy pieces I miss owning.

Goodness! Have I ended up without any French or German coins in the current lineup? Yikes! Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I shall need to address that.

(Edit- no, wait! I still have that nice octagonal French jeton from 1869.)

As to Belgian, well, that Austrian Netherlands Insurrection piece I just sold kind of counts, since that was from the precursor state to modern Belgium. Check out the Brabant gold florin in the Bygones gallery, too. And the Liège communion token with the skull on it. Yep. I'll need to cover Belgium again.

Here's another that went away in the March purge.

The problem with being a collector of very modest means and occasionally expensive tastes (and never enough savings) is that one often has to fall back on one's collection as a sort of piggy bank.

 

In that, you and I are in complete agreement. Considering that most (probably 99+%) of the ancient coins in the marketplace today spent centuries- if not millennia- buried in the ground before reaching us, one does have to be a bit forgiving of surface issues, and yet I still find myself picky about that. So a bronze with nice surfaces really appeals to me, for obvious reasons. I scrolled through hundreds of them before picking that one.

The nice surfaces were definitely the selling point on this recently purchased Antoninus Pius sestertius. It is something of a "consolation coin" for me, since I do suffer quite a bit of seller's remorse over a stunning, museum-pedigreed Hadrian sestertius I sold a few years back. (The Antoninus Pius here cost but a fraction of the price of the Hadrian.)

Ah, yes, I can see you "get it", and I totally agree. The optimistic, idealistic design on that rouble is indeed a bit at odds with the historical reality which followed, but I like that about it. In many ways, it's like a throwback to the Romans' use of coins as propaganda, and that is always interesting.

 

Yes, the Russian people have had a tough time of it for centuries. Still, I respect their resilience, and certain aspects of their culture.

(The Iranians, too, went from a rock to a hard place when they kicked out the Shah and had their revolution. And look at how the French Revolution turned out in the short term. Revolutions are rough. I'm glad that I have not had to live through any.)

 

Revolutions and insurrections certainly make for interesting coins.

One of the coins I just sold is a prime example of that.

I'd rather collect coins related to someone else's revolution in the past than live through one, that's for sure!

 

Whoa, that escudo is a stunner!

 

Just FYI, to those who might be interested, there is a nice example of that type for sale here. It is not quite as high grade as mine, but I like it just as much, due to its very handsome CircCam contrast. I have no connection to, nor transactional history with, that particular Czech dealer, though I've bought quite a bit from Europe through the MA-Shops mall with no bad experiences yet.

The price seems OK to me on a gut level, and I quite like the eye appeal on it. I don't know if it had a mount removal (common on Northern European coins of that era), but I don't see any sign of that in the pictures. I'd have snapped that piece up if I didn't already have one. I bookmarked it in case anyone else was interested, because I've gotten a lot of admiring comments on mine.

Because these were struck on roller dies, they have a very slightly curved/bent appearance- not quite flat. Mine is no exception. This slight "warp" is only noticeable when viewed from the edge, though.