New Old Provenance

I love it when circumstances align and yield a great old provenance! Last January, I bought this attractive Brutus AR Denarius with beautiful old collection toning on the NYINC bourse floor.



Roman Imperatorial
Caepio Brutus, 43-2 BC
AR Denarius (3.76 g; 21 mm)
Mint traveling with Brutus
Obv: LEIBERTAS, Liberty head r.
Rev: CAEPIO BRVTVS PRO COS, Lyre with quiver and filleted olive branch.
Crawford 501/1; HCRI 199

Coin looks like it hasn't been touched in 100 years, right?...well...

Yesterday, I received a book that I won in the last Kolbe & Fanning auction: Smyth, William, Descriptive Catalogue of A Cabinet of Roman Family Coins Belonging to His Grace the Duke of Northumberland (1856). The Smyth book has no plates (line drawn or otherwise), but does contain detailed descriptions of the collection coins with weights in grains. The Duke's collection would be sold 125 years later by Sotheby's.

After work today, I felt compelled to pull that old Sotheby's auction catalogue from my shelf. I'd not reviewed the plates in detail in some time. My eyes were drawn to this familiar flan shape and strike:



They look a match, but oddly, the Sotheby's catalogue (1982) doesn't give weights for the silver. So, I went to the Smyth book, where I found the coin description with weight in grains. A quick calculation confirmed the weight to within a few 100ths of a gram of my coin. Finding the coin in Sotheby's and then Smyth takes the provenance back to pre-1856! This is certainly my oldest verifiable provenance to date.

 

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That is a nice looking coin.

Great detective work, that must be very satisfying.

I love old provenances for coins. It adds to their story and is helpful today's world.

John

 

Congrats! That's a really excellent provenance hit.

 

Very cool!!

 

Provenience, shovenence......do you like what you have in hand? Then provenience shouldn't figure in.

 

Indeed, I liked the coin very much when I bought it with no known provenance, but with a look that was highly suggestive of many years in collector trays. Provenance hunting is part of my collecting fun, and it's quickly becoming a legal necessity in many segments of my Roman Republican collection (aes grave, pre-211BC struck silver and bronze). I have a collection of key old catalogues, and I greatly enjoy the hunt for pedigrees of my coins. To each his own!

 

This may be true of modern commemorative coins, every one of which was struck decades after the OP coin was first collected. Your assertion could hardly be more wrong regarding ancient coins however. The value of an ancient coin is enhanced immeasurably by a provenience like this... using any sense of value you care to select.

Phil Davis

 

Ancient collectors work in an increasingly hostile legal environment where provenance is quite important. For some types of coins, it is a requirement for import into the US and who knows what the US Department of State will come up with next.

 

Green just meant it in good humor. He gets it.

 

Gosh - I got derailed!

I really get a kick out of your provenance sleuthing @Carausius . Awesome score!

 

Thanks! I was really thrilled. I found a few interim, modern sales of the coin since acquiring it in January, but I was convinced it was a prewar collection coin. My prewar catalogue searches were confounding. I likely skipped the 1982 Sotheby's catalogue in prior searches as too modern (forgetting it's actually an 1850's collection). The word serendipity is overused, but this really was a serendipitous find - the book auction win inspiring me to glance at the Sotheby's sale.

 

Great sleuthing and coin. Thanks for sharing.

 

That's a really cool story and great coin. Congratulations.

 

Does it though? I have known many collectors and dealers who have placed great value on provenance. I dont see it really. Just because a coin was published in any book or sale should not really increase the value. I have sold countless published coins, for average prices. Maybe I am missing the boat.

My good friend Tom Cederlind (RIP) had many stories about 'plate coins' and how cheap some of us were selling them.

 

Like many things in life, it depends! It depends on the coin and the provenance. From my experience there is certainly value added to good-quality coins by a verifiable (i.e. auction record or fixed price list), pre-1970 provenance. If the provenance is pre-WWII, the impact is even higher. The value added also increases for MOU restricted coins. I do think you need a good quality or rare coin to fully witness this effect. The slew of Dattari coins in recent auctions are a good example. The provenance is great (when verifiable), but some of the coins aren't. Hammer prices for the good quality or rare Dattaris are very strong; not really so for the Dattari junk.

Prices aside, there is also added pride/enjoyment to owning a coin from a great old collection. Pride in knowing that I picked a coin that also appealed to Haeberlin or Voirol or the Duke of Northumberland. Enjoyment in the process of discovering the pedigree.

Add to the above the legal reasons for finding and documenting provenance to protect our collections and our hobby from government intervention. While provenance hasn't been critical for coin sales in the past, it likely will be for some sales in the future.

 

Very cool!

 

Wow, that's a fantastic find! There's nothing as enjoyable as connecting an old pedigree!

 

Excellent capture @Carausius ! Nice coin, excellent provenance, well done!

 

I place relatively little importance on a coin's appearance as a plate coin in a reference. There can be many reasons for the use of a coin that way, some of which have no bearing on that coin's quality or desirability. No doubt it's better than not appearing in a reference, but I wouldn't even term that provenience really. What matters to me and many others is a coin's appearance in an important collection. It vindicates our connoisseurship; it makes us links in a chain of collectors going back who knows how long. The quality of a coin will still be what matters most in the end; a mediocre coin won't be enhanced all that much from having been in--say--a Naville Ars Classica sale, but an exceptional coin will be enhanced a lot.

 

Brilliant! The coin, the provenance, the fact that it is a newly discovered provenance.....and you bumped your coins value as a result of your serendipity.

Spot on IMO.