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Message:: [QUOTE="Curtis, post: 8252324, member: 26430"]Here's one that qualifies in some ways. I've been interested in the Archer Huntington (1870-1955) Collection for the tremendous backstory. I need to check if a full post on Huntington has been done yet, but below are some of my summary notes on the story, which includes: <blockquote>legal fighting between two neighboring Manhattan museums: the Hispanic Society of America (who technically owned the collection & wanted to sell) and the American Numismatic Society (who had been in possession of ~39,000 coins since the 1940s & wanted to keep them); the coins being sold in a famous single-lot, secret-buyer sale by Sotheby's for 10s of millions of GBP (to a consortium including Jose Vico, it appears); about 26,500 of the original 39,000 coins being anonymously donated back to the ANS: 10,000 were quickly returned by an anonymous donor (incl. 3,000 Roman AR and AE), later 7,500 more (including the Brutus Eid Mar AR Denarius); then the ANS selling many the duplicates anyway (fair play, really)!</blockquote> I'd already gotten a couple coins from the Huntington Collection, a pretty neat large Augustus/Caligula AE Dupondius and an otherwise forgettable quadrans:[ATTACH]1454109[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]1454110[/ATTACH] The Dupondius was an impressive enough exemplar of the Huntingtion Collection, but when I saw this one up for auction last year I really wanted something that would be special even apart from the history of ownership. I bid on this Vespasian denarius with fantastic tone at CNG 487 (in 2021) and went a little beyond my budget and STILL LOST (either first or second underbidder):[ATTACH=full]1454115[/ATTACH] Then it appeared again a few weeks ago at CNG auction 509. The toning looked a bit lighter. Had it been lightly stripped (justifying a lower price) or was it lighting? Still beautiful, so I bid again, this time winning at ~half of my max bid the first time![ATTACH=full]1454117[/ATTACH] <blockquote>Roman Imperial Coinage. Vespasian (Emperor, 69-79 CE) AR Denarius (17mm, 3.50 g, 6h). Rome mint, struck July-December 71. Obv: IMP CAES VESP AVG P M. Laureate head right. Rev: TRI POT. Vesta seated left, draped, holding simpulum. Ref: RIC II.1 46; RSC / Cohen 561. Prov: Archer M. Huntington (1870-1955) Collection; loaned, then bequeathed to Hispanic Society of America (HSA 1001.1.22362); late 1940s - c. 2012, housed at the American Numismatic Society (same accession number); 8 March 2012, sold at Sotheby's sealed-bid sale of all 37,895 Huntington coins; acq. by consortium, incl. Jose Vico; May 2012 - summer 2013, returned to ANS among 26,500 other Huntington coins; 17 May 2017, consigned by ANS to CNG e-Auction 397; Lampasas Collection; 10 March 2021, consigned to CNG e-Auction 487; Charles Chamberlain Collection; 9 February 2022, consigned to CNG e-Auction 509; acq. by Jackson - Jacobs Family. Question: Does anyone happen to know Charles Chamberlain (coll. recently sold at CNG)? There's a Charles Chamberlain who was Classics Prof. at University of Arizona... I wonder if this was his collection?</blockquote> Honestly, in hand, I think it may have simply been an issue of lighting, but it's hard to say for certain. Here is my Coin-in-Hand video highlighting the lovely portrait of Vespasian and the rich toning: [MEDIA=youtube]Z2-e0tiIFSI[/MEDIA] It actually looks closest to a third photo from CNG 397 (in 2017):[ATTACH=full]1454122[/ATTACH] With the market going the way it is lately, I've been seeing lots of coins auctioned once and then reappearing again for sale only months later. So getting a second bite at the apple has become much more common! (I probably have some others like that, but this is surely my favorite such example.)[/QUOTE]

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