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Message:: [QUOTE="DonnaML, post: 7417357, member: 110350"]I saved this one for last. Because I thought that if I read it a second time, perhaps I would understand it better.  I'm still a little puzzled, but I'll attempt to respond. If you were trying to reassure me by telling me why I shouldn't be concerned, I appreciate the motive, but I'm afraid that you only succeeded in doing the opposite. I already said that there's basically no possibility that this coin was part of the Helbing inventory sold to Kress at a (probably) coercively low price 15 years before Kress auctioned the coin in 1960. But even if it had been, do you honestly think that the monetary value of the coin -- de minimis both in the abstract and compared to the billions of dollars of ancient and other art treasures the Nazis stole throughout Europe -- had anything whatsoever to do with my concern? As opposed to what would be its intrinsic character as an object stolen from a Jewish family, regardless of being only one among millions?  No one has the right to tell me what is or isn't worth my "speculation." Especially since in this case my concern was based not on idle speculation about possibly nefarious owners of an ancient coin over a 1600-year period, but on actual knowledge of a specific owner's association with the Nazis' confiscatory activities, within living memory. This I don't understand. So what if its intrinsic metal value is or was very low? That was true of almost all individual gold coins back then. The USA wasn't the only country that had a low fixed price per ounce for gold at the time. So most of the value of the individual coins Helbing and other dealers sold was probably numismatic, rather than intrinsic metal value. I don't think that the metal value of individual ancient gold coins had anything to do with whether such coins were illustrated in Helbing's catalogs, either before or after the sale to Kress in 1938. Needless to say, as shown in the OP, Kress himself illustrated my coin in his 1960 catalog, when he was still calling himself Otto Helbing Nachfolger [Successor]. And if you're referring to the years prior to the sale, you're still wrong. For example, see this catalog for Helbing's Auction 63, held on 29 April 1931 in Munich, and available online at the Heidelberg University website: [ATTACH=full]1288742[/ATTACH] Take a look at p. 59, listing a series of Late Roman/early Byzantine gold solidi, at nos. 1312-1329: [ATTACH=full]1288743[/ATTACH] In other words, solidi very similar to mine. And guess what all those asterisks mean? They mean that those coins were illustrated in the catalog! They "made it," notwithstanding their very low intrinsic metal value! See Plate 34: [ATTACH=full]1288744[/ATTACH] And, lest you think that these were all particularly valuable solidi, note this final page from the list of estimated prices for each lot, at the front of the catalog: [ATTACH=full]1288746[/ATTACH] As you can see, almost all the estimated prices for lots 1312-1329 (many of them illustrated) were below 100 RM, at a time when there were 4.2 RM to the US dollar. See p. 3 of the catalog, the first page of the estimated price list: [ATTACH=full]1288747[/ATTACH] In other words, of course my coin could have been illustrated in one of the plates in a Helbing catalog before 1938, just as it was in 1960 when the firm was owned by Kress. But this has basically been an academic exercise on my part, to show that it's entirely possible that an earlier illustrated provenance could exist for my coin, whether with Helbing or another dealer. There could just as easily be an earlier "trace" of my coin as for most other coins that already have a provenance back as far as mine. But I have no real interest in undertaking a search for one, given the logical conclusion that the coin was very unlikely to have been in the Helbing inventory before 1938.  Furthermore, as [USER=44357]@AncientJoe[/USER] commented above, the key date for legal purposes is 1970 (when the UNESCO Cultural Property Convention was enacted), and my coin has "the significant added benefit of a pre-1970 pedigree!" So an earlier provenance than the one I already have from 1960 would have no great practical value to me other than satisfying curiosity. If I happen to come across one, great, but I'm not going to put in effort to look for it given my conclusion that it wasn't part of the Helbing-Kress sale. I'm even more puzzled by this comment. First of all, I'm not sure I see what you mean. But if you mean the two nicks on the rim on the reverse, they're a little far apart to constitute evidence of mounting, not to mention that they're not anywhere near 12 o'clock on either side: they're in the upper right quadrant on the reverse and would be in the lower right quadrant on the obverse. But even if the coin has, in fact, been mounted in the past, what difference does it make? It seems to have passed through the hands of various dealers in the last 60 years without anyone noting it, and I don't think such a history detracts from its visual appeal or its value. The 325 DM price it sold for in 1960, on a 300 DM estimate (see the catalog page in the OP), was in the higher range of other solidi on the page. Furthermore, your entirely speculative comment that "the seller appears to have been quite eager to let it go for a very small profit margin" -- presumably meaning Dr. Busso Peus Nachf. -- doesn't seem to have any factual basis that I can figure out. What gives you this idea? Busso Peus apparently bought the coin on 23 Nov. 2020 at the Auktionen Münzhandlung Sonntag Auktion 33, as Lot 36, for a realized price of 600 € on an estimate of 400 €. See <a href="https://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=1768547&AucID=4057&Lot=36&Val=884de736d01e26da3d2ff6bc3e553588" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=1768547&AucID=4057&Lot=36&Val=884de736d01e26da3d2ff6bc3e553588" rel="nofollow">https://www.coinarchives.com/a/lotviewer.php?LotID=1768547&AucID=4057&Lot=36&Val=884de736d01e26da3d2ff6bc3e553588</a>. It then listed the coin for sale (as one might expect it to do!) for an asking price of 900 €. Is that really being "quite eager"? I don't mind saying that I paid that asking price, minus a 5% discount which the dealer offers to all non-EU customers -- not only for this coin -- for an actual price paid of 855 €, or just above $1,000. I'm no mathematician or accountant (and since I retired I've been happy to forget everything I ever had to learn about this sort of thing as an attorney practicing commercial litigation), but it seems to me that a price of 855 € on a 600 € investment represents a 255 € profit, or a 29.8% profit margin. Even if you add another 20%  (120 €) to the dealer's cost for the presumable buyer's fee, you still have a 135 €  profit on a 720 € investment, or a 15.8% profit margin if I'm calculating correctly. Is either of those fairly characterized as a "very small profit margin" for ancient coin dealers? (Obviously I don't know enough to calculate net profit margin, and I doubt you do wither.) More importantly, there's no reason whatsoever to believe that the dealer's profit margin was materially less on this coin than on the other ancient coins it sells, or, even if it were, that that somehow means that there's something wrong with the coin, as you attempt to imply.[/QUOTE]

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