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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Finn235, post: 5194296, member: 98035&quot;]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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>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?</p><p><br /></p><p>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.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1214292[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Do they belong in a museum? Maybe. I wish I knew the archeological context of this hoard, but that data is lost forever.</p><p><br /></p><p>Or maybe museums have thousands of these, all sitting in musty boxes under the label &quot;India, Medieval Anonymous Gadhaiya Paisa&quot;. 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&#039;t have hundreds of thousands of ancient artifacts and pieces of art, so my coins I hope receive the attention they justly deserve.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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