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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Blake Davis, post: 8105413, member: 91820&quot;]Thanks - you are correct!&nbsp; It is Fredrich.&nbsp; The CNG catalogs are June 8, 2005, with the George His collection of Roman bronzes, and September 21, 2005 with the John E. Sullivan collection. Is Turcan&#039;s catalog online?</p><p><br /></p><p>&nbsp;I have many if not most of the CNG catalogs from 2002 through 2008 or so and they are amazing, as are many of the other catalogs put out by major auction houses during this period.&nbsp; In fact, anyone who collected ancient coins from, say when I started in 1999 to about 2008 was lucky since the market was awash with coins from Eastern Europe, prices even for high grade coins were cheap (certainly by today&#039;s standards) and as a result there was an enormous enthusiasm among those in the hobby - either that or it was my own excitement of discovering ancient coins. And (I think) the dollar was trading well over the euro, at least for a time. </p><p><br /></p><p>I remember going to the New York show ca. 2004 or 2005 and there were huge trays with thousands of coins from recent hoards - I thought this was normal since I was relatively new to the hobby.&nbsp; On ebay you had Eastern European sellers Ancient Auction House and Paganecoins, among others, selling beautiful coins at prices that seem incredible today - I still have loose leaf notebooks filled with many of their offerings.&nbsp; I recall at one time seeing a large shopping cart filled to the brim with &quot;uncleaned&quot; coins, which another Eastern European dealer sent over to the West by the ton. And back then ebay was purely an auction site, and the Eastern European sellers started the auctions at $1.&nbsp; I think a well known member of this group found a Jotapian in one of the incredible 100 coin ebay lots of high grade Constantine era coins offered by Paganecoins - these used to go for about $300 for the entire lot.</p><p><br /></p><p>There was an incredible amount of enthusiasm for the hobby, as reflected in the early postings on the Moneta online board - of course there is still enthusiasm, but seems to me back then there were many more people interested in ancient coins. At the time my own means were limited since I had three young children but I did manage to buy some sestertii at prices that would not be possible today, to put it mildly.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then the party ended - it started to wane in 2007, governments cracked down on the diggers and sellers, cultural property became a big deal, especially after it became more and more politicized after the second Gulf War, and I guess things went back to normal until by 2010 or so it was all over.</p><p><br /></p><p>But, not to sound like a broken record (kind of an outdated phrase today), I still wonder what happened to the thousands and thousands and thousands of coins that were sold back then - even the so called &quot;uncleaned coins.&nbsp; What happened? Are these just sitting around in drawers somewhere, all but forgotten?[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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