Do Coins Belong in a Museum?

Where do all the coins sold in auctions and by dealers go? Who else collects NewStyles beside myself?
Most collectors DO NOT advertise their coins and the knowledge of their existence only comes about when it's time to sell.
That essentially unprovenanced EID MAR aureus proves that collectors are mysterious secretive Howard Hughes type people not interested in research and don't care less.
Why did the person who bought this NewStyle (below) do so? All the previous owners seemed to be unaware that it is unique including the auctioneers! And where is it now?

 

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If I had the budget I would definitely collect New Styles, they’re my favorite of the owl designs. To your earlier point I can understand why people don’t advertise their coin buys, but I also understand the annoyance. If I buy a coin in auction that had some interest I will endeavor to post it here or other ancient coin forums so if the people I was bidding against see it, they know it’s not just stuffed away in some vault hidden from the world but with someone who will enjoy stewarding the coin!

 

I fear that what you are presenting here is an inductive logic: The Eid Mar and the NST are examples of collectors that may be «mysterous and secretive», but you could actually just as well have presented collectors like Doug Smith, Joe Sermarini, our Valentinian, Sulla80, yourself, and so on and so on. That would be «evidence» that coin collectors love to share their coins and knowledge, being their own curator in their private museums and home pages.
Our culture has been rapidly changing in this respect: Sharing your thoughts, ideas, what you enjoy etc. has become far more usual for us than for past generations. And it creates a win/win scenario: I get to share my 10 finest purchases of 2020, and people actually like to see them, just as I enjoy their lists. This actually makes me very optimistic. It’s a great, generous thing quietly going on. Coin collectors are great people in general, and quite interested in research, if you look at this board.

 

On one hand - a case can be made that especially since the proliferation of the Internet in the late 90s and the explosion of social media in the last 15 years, allowing and encouraging private collecting will add to the hive mind, which will inevitably catch things that museum staff would miss.

On the other hand - the EID MAR aureus that was just auctioned by Roma had been in a private collection for decades/centuries(?) and nobody was aware that it existed until it popped up for auction. There are at least a few collectors of Indo-Sassanian coinage that are as serious as I am, yet whenever I bow out of a bidding war, I almost never see the coin again.

I feel that as a private collector, it is my duty in a sense to document, study, and share my knowledge and insights. I believe that coins belong wherever they will do the most good to our collevtive understanding of long-dead peoples and cultures, whether that be in a museum or private collection.

A case could be made that many of my coins (especially the uber-rare Indo Sassanians) belong in museums. Maybe some of them will end up there eventually?

These, in particular, represent a critical piece to the puzzle of the Malwa imitations, being the only type with an intact face. I have spent dozens of hours searching through auction archives, and to the best of my knowledge, I own 4 out of 5 extant examples.



Do they belong in a museum? Maybe. I wish I knew the archeological context of this hoard, but that data is lost forever.

Or maybe museums have thousands of these, all sitting in musty boxes under the label "India, Medieval Anonymous Gadhaiya Paisa". After all, if you are the curator of the death mask of Tutankhamun, who the heck cares about some obscure South Asian medieval coins? I don't have hundreds of thousands of ancient artifacts and pieces of art, so my coins I hope receive the attention they justly deserve.

 

This highly educated owner of the Eid Mar aureus knew exactly what it was purporting to be and certainly had the wealth and resources to obtain it from where and under what circumstances. He had the wealth, resources and connections to research it. I wonder why he didn't...did he not wonder whether it was actually genuine. Umph!
No doubt it rested with an Otho sestertius and a Mark Anthony Leg l aureus gathering dust.
Unlike us on CT and Forum and others such sites there are many people who only need to possess and keep for investment and don't even think about what it means.
I have always been curious (or suspicious) others seem not to be-strange.

 

I think private collections are "much" better cared for. Museum collections are often destroyed in time of War/ looted,like in post Hussein Iraq/ or they go MIA due to corrupt museum curators. We here on CT do a much better job of showing our treasures then any museum.
I used to also collect insects (papiliondae/ saturnidae). Here again, big government destroyed the hobby. Entomologists hated the prospect of private collections, they maintained we where not scientists, so had no right to have own specimens. Then the CITES do gooders made it impossible to buy certain specimens. When I was at the Paris insect show, we decided to see the national French insect collection. We where told it was restricted to "only" those that had degrees in entomology/ in other words, "no amateurs allowed" Yet I knew 10 times more then any of these professionals. Plus my specimens where all perfect AL quality, had precise data labels. The BNHM specimens look rather ratty.