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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;jamesicus, post: 3736468, member: 14873&quot;]During the 1950s, 60s and 70s I was serving in the United States Air Force and could only attend a very few coin shows. Most of my buying was at local coin shops or Department Stores such as Joske’s of Texas&nbsp; - the advantage was I got to examine the coins “in hand” before buying them. I specialized in bronzes (especially sestertii) of Augustus through Marcus Aurelius&nbsp; in those days - and Zander Klawan’s “Reading and Dating Roman Imperial Coins” was my constant companion during my coin dealings. I don’t think many present day collectors appreciate just how great a reference book it (still) is for beginning Roman Imperial coin collectors. Scholarly ancient coin reference books were hard to come by and very expensive in those days (it was difficult being a collector and researcher of Ancient coins on an NCO’s pay). Many small coin shop dealers (and also some mail order Dealers) did not provide reliable Coin attributions (no online resources to check or hardly any published Auction data, and most small dealers only had a “bare minimum” reference library) and so, being a precise attribution adherent, I used to lug around one or two (very heavy) volumes of BMCRE (British Museum Coins Roman Empire) with me&nbsp; during my coin shop prowls, especially during the 1950s and 1960s.&nbsp; Most of the local coins shops I frequented in those days dealt in primarily US coins - very few Ancients. All of the foregoing may explain why so many old dealers tags contain such sparse (or even inaccurate) attribution information which was not that easy to come by in those days.</p><p><br /></p><p>But I am beginning to drift here and so I need to “cut to the chase”: eventually I started buying many of my Ancient coins from mail order Dealers. As others have pointed out, many of them sent out mimeographed lists that contained only brief coin descriptions and attribution information - no photographs. So you were literally “buying in the dark” and relying on the knowledge and integrity of the dealer (to accept returns and refund money in case of problems) - in my experience, I have found most ancient coin dealers to be very honorable people in my business dealings with them.</p><p><br /></p><p>In the 1980s I bought many of my mail order coins from Edward Waddell - a very knowledgeable and reliable dealer (he dealt in a lot of high end coins - actually a little too rich for my blood - I busted my budget a few times buying coins from him) who put out very nice lists with reliable coin descriptions and attributions (very much my cuppa’ tea). To use a modern phrase “I was blown away” when he started to send out beautiful (albeit in black and white) glossy coin lists with high quality, large, coin photographs!!</p><p><br /></p><p>I recall one detailed listing for the most magnificent Claudius sestertius I have ever seen - perfectly centered with complete legends and with the even olive green patina captured wonderfully on the accompanying photograph. I believe it was priced at (Edit: originally I think I had too many zeros) something like $2,000! Incidentally I do not know if Ed is still in business (or even alive) - the last time I talked to him was about ten years or so ago (maybe longer) at a Los Angeles show.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have rambled on for too long here, please excuse me, but the nostalgia was great for me. In closing I want to say that my memory is sometimes not too good these days so some of the dates and descriptions of events may be somewhat inaccurate (as I discovered on carefully re-reading this post).</p><p><br /></p><p>BTW, I am still maintaining my “Twenty coins” (that I will fondle, admire and study for the remainder of my days) page at:</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://jp29.org/twenty.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://jp29.org/twenty.htm" rel="nofollow">https://jp29.org/twenty.htm</a></p><p><br /></p><p>The constituency has changed a little, but it is now stable.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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