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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Valentinian, post: 3552789, member: 44316&quot;]Mine has a good pedigree.</p><p>Commodus. Sestertius.</p><p>TRP VI IMP IIII COS III PP</p><p>in ex: LIB AVG IIII</p><p>Struck Jan 1-Dec. 9, 181.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]944217[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Ex. British Museum, 1986.</p><p>I have a file of correspondence about it. I traded it for a Flavian provincial coin the BM wanted (I will not say which one. Don&#039;t ask). The story is complicated and I doubt if I would remember it properly if it weren&#039;t for the 12 letters I still have of our correspondence (which I just reread). (Remember when people sent letters?)</p><p><br /></p><p>In 1986 I bought the small collection of a man who lived in a nearby city. With it came a letter from the BM written in 1985 asking him if he would sell the provincial coin to them. He had bought it from Empire Coins. I infer they saw it in a catalog, but it had sold to him already, so they got his name and wrote him. He didn&#039;t sell it to them because the coin came to me. However, when I saw the letter it seemed right the BM have it so I wrote them and said I would bring it by on my trip to attend the 1986 International Numismatic Congress in London.</p><p><br /></p><p>I did and they still wanted it and asked if I would accept a trade. I said I would. They said they would need some time to come up with a possible trade, so we agreed to complete the trade by correspondence. To trade away a coin they had to have a better one and their choice of coin had to be approved by John Kent (curator at the time). Their first offer which I accepted fell through because it differed in a few details from the better one they had and consequently was vetoed by Kent. Later I got a letter and a B&amp;W print (I still have it) of this coin the mail. The letter ended &quot;What do you think? (JK has already approved this one!)&quot;</p><p><br /></p><p>I thought the Commodus sestertius was wonderful. I was not expecting such an excellent coin. The BM did have one extremely similar and even better. You can see it on plate 103.1 of BMC IV, Commodus 453.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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