Do we want Saturnalia this year?

I knew I had a good feeling about this year. No complaints here about this year's Saturnalia, and last year's wasn't bad, either (and last year's deserves extra points for driving through a snowstorm to the post office).

I think a likes/dislikes list really helped. The giver didn't have to trawl through posts and guess what I liked.

A lot of it really boils down to whom the giver is. I lucked out this year.

Not including shipping, my picks for my giftee were about $110. There's no rule that it has to be in that range (my experience is that the European dealers are generally the better value), but I feel guilty if it dips much below that. With smart shopping one can find a pretty nice coin in that range (I got two - one being a nice, but inexpensive filler coin). The giftee is no longer on this forum, I believe, so no danger of ruining any surprises.

My gifts are a bit predictable, but generally well-liked. I kind of stay away from AE's because one usually can't find eye candy under $100. I'd also be tempted to keep it for my own collection for the ones that do pop up. I have a weakness for good patinas...

Trawling back through the 2021-22 Saturnalia pages, I guess I got lucky both years. I could see what mikenoodle was talking about (his experience popped up in a search). However, some past gifts were posted on N-F, and they were really nice. I didn't see those in my search. Edit* The 2019 ones were pretty nice - a Galba denarius (wow!) and an Egyptian tetradrachm, etc.

 

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The posted gifts have been very nice at N-F. I was truly blown away by the generosity of my Secret Saturn.
*Grr, I have to drag my pics into a temp folder to post them here. It always complains about the name length. Aughh, it's also complaining that it's too big. I don't feel like resizing it. I guess you'll have to check it out at N-F.

It's a very nice Faustina II Sestertius (smooth, dark patina) and a nice Persian siglos. I really couldn't have asked for anything better.

What I gave:

 

After some cropping and resizing, I can share these. I'm so happy with my generous presents!

It's also my first Faustina (the lost bag of asses doesn't count).



Faustina Jr. - AE Sestertius - 32.62mm, 24.19 g RIC 1383 - 156 AD - Rx Diana, draped, standing left



Persian Empire - period of Xerxes I to Darius Ii - 485-420 BC - AR Siglos - Carradice Type iiiB - 14.80mm., 5.49g - Fine