Another hut

Terrific variety Doug!! I'd love to have any one of them, although the third seems to be saying "Take me home Mikey"!! LOL (Rome Mint?)

 

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The one you like was a recent purchase from the last CNG electronic sale. I got it because it was beneath the notice of most of their clientele. It cost well over the others combined bringing up that old question as to whether we buy only high grade coins or more coins. You could have outbid me for it. As it closed, I was expecting someone would but a nice thing about high price auctions is that there are often a few coins where consignor dreams are trumped by bidder apathy.

Another hut from Saturday's Baltimore show is the more common Constans, more ordinary Heraclea mint and only Scarce in RIC (meaningless but people ask) but I paid 1/4 the price of the one you like just to stop it from being bullied by the other coins who are rough on patinated coins. It isn't easy being green. I bought it partly because the poor light at the show made me miss the really stubby branch (at the E of TEMP). I thought this might make this out of the ordinary for a Heraclea tree but it is still there and my hopes were dashed. It is still the best of my few from that mint.

 

Of the two Rome coins in post #20, the first looks like a lot of Rome emissions, the second got struck pretty hard. Which one is more typical for the series, that is, coming from Rome?

 

I love it Doug!!

 

Excellent pieces y'all.

 

The first is more worn than some but not bad compared to some of the Rome mint coins I have seen. The second is the nicest coin of its type and mint I have seen but the 'personality' marks made it unattractive to the high end clientele of the auction world so it went to my bargain hunter bid. This is one of those coins that we were talking about at the show. It is too cheap to be worth consigning to a 'good' sale and too special to be peddled to a market where most people want one coin per emperor. It is our place in the hobby to relieve the market of such coins at bargain prices. You did your part with the Gaius. I do not know where you found that Gaius but I really, really hope it was not in a box I had gone through and passed on it. I would not have recognized it.

 

No Doug, it was not in a box that you had examined. In fact it wasn't in a display or box at all. Bill and I got chatting with Tom Wood of Ephesus Numismatics, and he gave us a very interesting lecture on minima. I was going to buy a couple but they were not for sale. (Why do dealers put price tags on coins in their personal collections? Once a dealer always a dealer I suppose.)

So I asked to look at his other trays, and he said, "By the way, I have these coins that recently came from G-N that I haven't had a chance to attribute and price." That's when we discovered the Gaius. Bill searched coinarchives for comparisons and we settled on a price. Because of Bill's attribution, Tom and I both knew what the coin was and he offered me a price that made us both happy.

The only loser in the transaction was G-N, but I sincerely hope they don't go bankrupt for dispossessing themselves of a few hundred bucks.

 

I do not know the terms for consignments to G-N but assuming they are similar to most auctioneers, the loser was the consignor. The auctioneer got his seller's fee and buyer's fee. It makes no difference what the coin was but only that it sold.