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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;robinjojo, post: 8470698, member: 110226&quot;]Have you ever been a situation where you are looking at a coin that you have been looking for along time, and that you are on the cusp of buying it or placing a bid.&nbsp; What&#039;s holding you back is that the coin does not meet your ideal of what it should be, however, in your calculus the issues, be they surface condition, strike, or flan condition are offset by the desire to finally acquire an example.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here&#039;s an example.&nbsp; Many years ago I owned a nice Julius Caesar denarius, the elephant type.&nbsp; It was a fine coin, as I recall, though I know that memory can be selective, and I have been sorry to have sold it.&nbsp; The sale was for a worthy cause - raising funds for the down payment on our house in 1993.&nbsp; But still there was a sense of something &quot;loss&quot;.&nbsp; I was actually able to buy back some coins of that sale from my local coin dealer, but not the Julius Caesar denarius.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I&#039;ve been looking around in an informal and thoroughly unsystematic way to buy a replacement.&nbsp; That effort was delayed because of shifting interests over the years, to world coins and early Latin American coinage.&nbsp; Now that I&#039;ve reentered ancients, actually since 2018, I&#039;ve concentrated on collecting owls, both Athenian and imitative.</p><p><br /></p><p>Then a Julius Caesar denarius appeared in a Florida auction.&nbsp; Actually there were two, one not slabbed (okay with me) that had really nice centering and a second one slabbed with a slightly off center strike.</p><p><br /></p><p>Here are the coins.&nbsp; Sorry for the grainy image, it is from an online shot of the catalog.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1500313[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>The bidding for the first coin was very strong and quickly exceeded my budget.&nbsp; The prices for this type is very strong, for understandable reasons, especially due to the really nice obverse, though the coin has been lightly cleaned.&nbsp; I had to pass.&nbsp; With the buyer&#039;s premium the cost was far too high for me.&nbsp; The next lot went up for bidding, so I had to make a determination.&nbsp; This coin type is available online and through other auction houses.&nbsp; The quality of coins offered vary considerably in condition and grade.&nbsp; Like Athenian owls they were made for utilitarian reasons, in this case to pay the troops who would be mumbling ominously had pay been not forthcoming, so speed of production no doubt ruled.</p><p><br /></p><p>So I bit the bullet and won the second lot at a lower cost.&nbsp; The obverse is off center, the reverse better centered and the coin has generally nice toning.&nbsp; NGC grades this coin as AU, strike 4, surface 5.&nbsp; I don&#039;t know if I agree, being incline to be more conservative in coin grading.&nbsp; It is a compromise coin, but at least that gap from nearly 30 years ago has been filled.&nbsp; That the coin is slabbed holds no weight for me, but it is still in the slab as you can see.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1500314[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>So, what are your stories of compromise?&nbsp; Thanks[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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