As provenance becomes more important these days and into the future, I am curious as to how people do provenance searches for provenance older than what you can find in ACSearch (which I subscribe to). I imagine buying about a billion old catalogues would be one way, but I don't have the space for that in my home, unfortunately. If anyone has ideas, please post them here, or if you are willing to share but don't want everyone to know, please send me a PM. I don't buy and sell ancients, only collect and only want provenance so that if I get hit by a train in the future (meet an untimely demise), my family might be able to sell my coins easier without having to worry about cultural property issues after down the road.
There is a commercial service which can look for the provenance of your coins although it's not reliable for provenances dating to the time when plaster casts were photographed instead of the real coins. The best way is to look yourself in old catalogs. As a matter of fact in the past I posted a coin in forum ancient coins offering 50$ to whoever could find a provenance plus another 50$ as a donation to the forum. Apparently the owner did not like my idea and deleted my post. I don't know if this model could work in coin talk, maybe one of the admins could let us know. I would happily let a fellow collector know a provenance even if I was the underbidder for the same coin. I would say maybe post the coin you search for and just ask if anybody knows.
Thats a great idea for provenance search, paying someone to dig up the provenance, if any. I'd gladly do that for the coins I buy. I would love to have a bunch of old catalogues to dig through and research, but its just not feasible for me.
I completely agree. I send most coins I buy through Ex-Numis but the results can be hit or miss. While imperfect, it's still a worthwhile, relatively inexpensive check. It found a few superb pedigrees early on for me so I consider myself a repeat customer for life. ForumAncientCoins is the most regulated place on the internet. There's some really phenomenal content but the draconian rules are a disservice in my eyes. I've messaged a handful of collectors here about provenances I've stumbled upon and generally keep any coin I've seen here in-mind when browsing through catalogs. I haven't had as nearly as much time as I'd like as of late (despite the lockdowns) but perhaps we should have a master thread of people looking for pedigree help with their pictures shown just in case.
It's impossible to have a good score of catalogs, or then you will spend more money on catalogs than coins. Crowd sourcing can be effective and if someone specializes in an area, he would probably recognize a coin coming from a well known collection.
There are a host of trade secrets in finding provenances, some based on the coin itself, some on where to look and how to prioritise, and some on how to look (training your eyes), and I intend to share none of them here, because there's a lot of commercial value in knowing how to find a provenance, fast, before a coin is sold to you, so you can bid or buy with more information than anyone else. What I will share is that there are no super easy short cuts because if there were then dealers would use them to find the provenances before they sell you the coin. You need a large resource base - traditionally a library- and you need your own techniques to save time, which take time to learn. Today, I bought the coin below about 20 minutes after a dealer listed it retail at a modest price. I knew about the coin within 5 mins of being listed. I knew by the nature of the coin itself (not just tone but other aspects) that it would have a provenance. Took me 14 frantic minutes of work, from the moment I first saw the coin to locating a provenance (Signorelli collection, sold 1952, and assembled mainly 1930s) and 3 more minutes to buy and pay. Due to what I now know about the coin I reckon it underpriced by $500 or more. So thats why I don't share the techniques except to note that you need a very large resource library with a mix of paper, digital and online, and you need a lot of hard work to find out what coins are likely to have provenances and how to find those fast
I think the question was how to find a provenance after buying a coin and not screening purchases. It surely is not easy to find a provenance. My question to you is how can you prove in court that the coin you have in hand is the same as the one in a sale catalog from the early 1900s. What is obvious to me may not stand in court. I give an example for one of my coins below. In my opinion it's 99.9% the same coin. The weight difference is just 0.01g. The photo speaks to anyone who knows. I don't have an invoice from the old sale. Will a judge accept it is before 1970? I say 99.9% no.
Yes this is exactly what I meant. As always Joe, thanks for the information. You are extremely helpful and a great resource. I signed up for an account and I'll be trying it out with my handful of coins from this year.
I would say just try the tarentum no1 from your top10 and don't hold your breath. It's not easy to find a provenance and there exist many more coins of the same type than you can imagine
Its the same technique whether in advance or after purchase. As for "proof" when you know you've found a match with possibly edge differences due to plaster cast mould shape, then you also have the expertise to convince any judge (what judge? For what reason?). These are expert techniques that produce 100% provable expert answer. You just explain using your expertise. So I'm not worried by any supposed difficulty in providing proof. I've many coins provenanced even to line drawings which I'm 100% confident I can prove. You just gotta learn how to do the work, which takes years. Once you have learnt, you will then have no doubts about your ability to prove your work just as a finger print expert can not only match prints but also convincingly explain same in court.
Supposedly in the dystopic future some dealers and collectors believe in, the ancient coins without a pre-1970 provenance become illegal and you are taken to court to support your claim that the scetch you have is the same coin as the one in your cabinet. Good luck.
