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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Andrew McCabe, post: 5009293, member: 90666&quot;]I bought this: which is R.Ratto, Martini coll. (Feb.24 1930) lot 1351 (est. CHF 600) ex R.Ratto Morcom &amp; Hands colls, (8 Feb. 1928) lot 1674 (CHF 350). Buttrey, Triumviral Portrait Gold, ANS NNM 137, 1956, pl.6, 48.13 (this coin)</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1201662[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>So some stuff has to go. I have too many Caesar portraits so discards on their way:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1201663[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1201664[/ATTACH] </p><p>These are BOTH lifetime issues.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ted Buttrey in &#039;Caesar at Play: Some Preparations for the Parthian Campaign, 44 BCE&#039;, 2015, makes a convincing case that all the Caesar portrait types in RRC 480 excepting the one accidental mule, an error coin wrongly classified as RRC 480/20, were struck prior to his death in March and to fund his Parthian campaign. Bernhard Woytek makes similar arguments in Arma et Nummi. I have always thought the sequential order proposed by Alföldi and adopted unchanged by Crawford, didn&#039;t allow for the evidently parallel workshops shown by the very different styles and flans of each type. I have long been convinced that all of RRC 480/1 through RRC 480/19 plus the fractions were struck in the first two and a half months of the year. Certainly the number of dies - less than 200 - makes that a physically easy task. I discussed this with Buttrey and Woytek (on a Saturday afternoon in Cambridge three years ago) who are totally supportive, and I hope to follow with an alternative study to the Alföldi/Crawford arrangement in time. First I have to work on bronzes for a while though. Anyway, this Mettius denarius was certainly struck during Julius Caesar&#039;s lifetime. </p><p><br /></p><p>Also some bronzes getting dumped due being duplicates where my others have better provenances.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1201667[/ATTACH] </p><p>[ATTACH=full]1201670[/ATTACH] </p><p>In the case of the Sol / Crescent and stars Uncia, my other coin was owned by the French first world war General Grandprey. My alternative Clovius goes way back further though, to Apostolo Zeno in 1600s Venice. </p><p><br /></p><p>And the early Brutus, first consul, with the famous cobwebby wrinkly eyes? Not really sure why I gotta lose Brutus and Ahala. Sometimes coins look better once they are gone. This type has many bad dies and just two or three including these that have the super aged realistic natural portrait busts.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1201672[/ATTACH] </p><p><br /></p><p>Friends tell me I&#039;ve the most ruthless culling knife in the collecting world. But when you wanna own a Triumviral Portrait Gold Aureus of Mark Antony, with a century old published provenance, knives must out.</p><p><br /></p><p>Wonder what experience others have in culling their collections?</p><p>Andrew[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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