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Message:: [QUOTE="DonnaML, post: 8243043, member: 110350"][USER=26430]@Curtis[/USER], that's a wonderful and extremely impressive timeline! I'm curious as to how many coins you have for which that much detail is possible. I have none; not even close. My oldest provenance, except for one Valens siliqua from the 1887 East Harptree hoard - which apparently remained largely intact, in private hands, for 129 years until it was auctioned by Spink in 2016 - is a Vespasian aureus with a documented provenance I found (with invaluable assistance from several of our members) dating back to its publication in 1910. For all the details, see my thread about the coin at <a href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/donnas-first-aureus-with-published-provenance-to-1938-and-also-to-1910.391624/#post-8153812" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cointalk.com/threads/donnas-first-aureus-with-published-provenance-to-1938-and-also-to-1910.391624/#post-8153812">https://www.cointalk.com/threads/donnas-first-aureus-with-published-provenance-to-1938-and-also-to-1910.391624/#post-8153812</a>. The provenance history I have is as follows: Purchased from Arete Coins, Seattle, WA, Dec. 2021; ex. Triskeles Auctions Sale 21, Lot 392, 29 Sep. 2017; ex. Ars Classica XVIII (“COLLECTION TRÈS IMPORTANTE MONNAIES ROMAINES FORMÊE PAR UN DIPLOMATE ÉTRANGER DEPUIS LONGTEMPS DÉCÉDÉ” [Collection of Vicomte de Sartiges]), Lot 144 [ill. Pl. 6], 10 Oct. 1938, l'Hôtel Schweizerhof, Lucerne, Switzerland (Experts Dr. Jacob Hirsch & M. Lucien Naville); ex. Collection of Louis, Vicomte de Sartiges (1859-1924), published in Sartiges, Vicomte de, “Collection du vicomte de Sartiges. Séries grecque et romaine, en 1910, ainsi que les acquisitions depuis cette date”(Paris, D.A. Longuet; Plates I-XLIII published 1910; undated supplement contains five additional plates), Pl. XXVI, No. 105 [this coin, acquired before 1910]. [ATTACH=full]1451271[/ATTACH] Here is the coin as illustrated in the 1910 de Sartiges Collection book: [ATTACH=full]1451274[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1451275[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1451273[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1451276[/ATTACH] And in the 1938 Ars Classica sale: [ATTACH=full]1451286[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1451282[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1451285[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=full]1451288[/ATTACH] The problem is that although I know that the coin was in the possession of the Vicomte de Sartiges (a French diplomat stationed at various times in Latvia and Washington D.C., as set forth in my original thread) from some date prior to 1910 until his death in 1924, and was held by his estate from 1924 until the 1938 auction, I have no information on when or from whom de Sartiges originally acquired it before 1910, or the identity of the owner(s) during the period of nearly 80 years from 1938 until it appeared in the Triskeles auction in 2017 with no listed provenance. (Which suggests that whoever owned the coin immediately before that auction was unaware of the 1938 provenance, which had apparently been lost in the interim. EX-NVMIS found that 1938 provenance for Arete, but found nothing to indicate that the coin was sold at auction between 1938 and 2017.) On the theory that perhaps de Sartige's family may have turned to Ars Classica  in 1938 to sell his collection because of some previous association with Jacob Hirsch -- and given the fact that de Sartiges himself was clearly not an anti-Semite* -- I did check all the pre-1910 Jacob Hirsch auction catalogs available at the WUSTL Newman Numismatic Portal to see if perhaps he was de Sartige's original source for the coin, given that he was in business as far back as 1897 in Germany, moving to Switzerland in 1919. See Provenance Glossary, p. 14, Numismatica Ars Classica Auction 91 Catalogue, 23 May 2016, Zurich, Switzerland: <img src="https://www.cointalk.com/attachments/biographical-entry-for-jacob-hirsch-in-rambach-glossary-jpg.1422517/" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /> But I didn't find my coin, although, coincidentally, I did find another specimen of the exact same type sold in two separate Hirsch auctions prior to 1910. I hope to go through some other pre-1910 catalogs when I can set aside the time. Perhaps I'll get lucky. I think a lot of luck would be necessary to find it absent the creation of some database including not only a comprehensive collection of old auction catalogs (which the Newman Numismatic Portal already has), but the creation of a word-searchable function or index that would permit the finding of all the sales of any particular type of ancient coin recorded in those catalogs, without laboriously scrolling through thousands of pages of catalogs looking for a needle in a haystack. As of now, my coin's whereabouts prior to 1910 are still a mystery. Although it seems evident that de Sartige's connections, numismatic and otherwise, were hardly limited to France but were quite cosmopolitan in nature. *The Vicomte de Sartiges typified a rather obscure sociological phenomenon in France in the late 19th century, prior to the Dreyfus Affair: he was one of a number of aristocratic Frenchmen who married the daughters of wealthy Jewish businessmen. So obviously he was no anti-Semite! Thus, the Vicomte's first wife (whom he married on 26 Feb. 1886 in Paris and who died at the age of 29 in 1893 in Monaco) was Louise Hortense Goldschmidt, from Frankfurt, one of the three daughters of Leopold Benedict Hayum Goldschmidt and Regine Goldschimdt b. Bischoffsheim. All three daughters married French aristocrats. For anyone interested, there is a French-language article discussing this phenomenon at length, including with respect to the three Goldschmidt daughters, by Cyril Grange, entitled "Les alliances de l'aristocratie avec les familles de financiers juifs à Paris, 1840-1940 : déterminants socio-démographiques et débat religieux," Histoire, économie & société 2014/4 (33e année), at pp. 75-93 (available at <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-economie-et-societe-2014-4-page-75.htm" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-economie-et-societe-2014-4-page-75.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cairn.info/revue-histoire-economie-et-societe-2014-4-page-75.htm</a>). It points out, among other things, that there is no evidence that Louise converted to Christianity upon her marriage, something that was itself highly unusual.[/QUOTE]

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