Questions on Coins with "Historical Pedigrees"

Discussion in 'Ancient Coins' started by ByzantiumBabe, Feb 27, 2021.

  1. Andrew McCabe

    Andrew McCabe Well-Known Member

    Screenshot_20210228-224031_Flickr.jpg
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2021
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  3. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    @Andrew McCabe There are so many public references to the identity of BCD that it never occurred to me that it was still considered confidential information. I'm not sure exactly where I first saw it -- and certainly it's not something somebody told me -- but the earliest public reference to his identity that I've been able to find was on the Forvm discussion boards in a rather lengthy post dated April 13, 2012: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=84394.msg497061#msg497061. In fact, you participated in that thread, and I don't see an objection to the identification on your part. That was 9 years ago, and the post is still there, so one would think that the cat is long out of the bag. So I didn't "out" anybody, and I don't think it's terribly appropriate for you to call my identification inappropriate at this late date.
     
  4. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    A even earlier identification on Forvm, this one on December 16, 2004, 17 years ago: http://www.forumancientcoins.com/board/index.php?topic=15065.msg102035#msg102035. Curtis Clay confirmed the identification in a post later in the same thread. I could post many more such identifications. I must have seen it so many times that I wrongly thought the identification was actually in the Triton XV catalog itself.
     
  5. Carthago

    Carthago Does this look infected to you?


    And all this time I thought Ratto 1924 was the Richie Riche collection.

    0*JM-xQ4kXAoz3UsZA..jpeg
     
  6. dltsrq

    dltsrq Grumpy Old Man

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  7. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    It could have been. Richard Rich, the first Baron Rich, was Lord Chancellor under Edward VI and previously held various high positions under Henry VIII. (He was a recurring character in the Wolf Hall trilogy, which is why I know his name.)
     
    Last edited: Feb 28, 2021
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  8. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Shhh!
     
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  9. ByzantiumBabe

    ByzantiumBabe Member

    I disagree. It is perfectly appropriate to mention, especially when dealers and auctioneers cite an undisclosed provenance as being from a "so&so" collection, often without verifiable evidence. For example, at least two have previously advertised sales noting (something to the effect of), "from the Lord Andrew Colin Renfrew, Baron Renfrew of Kaimsthorn collection" blah blah blah, who was intended to remain anonymous and (I believe) has now joined the anti-ancient coin collecting fringe element. This is why heresy and rumor perhaps should not be perpetuated.
     
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  10. Andrew McCabe

    Andrew McCabe Well-Known Member

    When you personally know most of the collectors who have consigned coins or their collections to auction under a "collection name" in recent decades, and they are not only still alive and kicking but CoinTalk members, then it seems rather awful, distasteful, for gossipers who overheard stuff to be publicly posting about them.

    Let those who have met and dined with BCD, JD, Student, Gibboni, America, RBW post their names and details. Yes I know most of them. Not gonna be posting about them.
     
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  11. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Qqq
    Does my pointing out that people publicly posted BCD's identity on the Forvm discussion boards as far back as 2004 and 2012 (without any objection from you or anyone else) -- and that the same identification has been publicly mentioned many times elsewhere, so much so that it comes up with a Google search without even having to click on any of the results -- count in your eyes as being a "gossiper" who "overhead stuff"? Please explain how that works. And how I was supposed to know that information that's been widely and publicly disseminated in different venues for almost two decades is still supposed to be confidential. (I've neither heard of, or mentioned, the other pseudonyms you list.) I know what your standing is in the numismatic community, but that doesn't give you the right to insult and vilify me when I did nothing wrong. Or to assume I won't respond. I'm not intimidated by anybody. Especially people who mischaracterize what I write.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2021
  12. robinjojo

    robinjojo Well-Known Member

    I agree.

    I always bid on the coin, not the pedigree. If the coin appeals to me, and there is a pedigree, whatever that may be, so much the better.
     
  13. Andrew McCabe

    Andrew McCabe Well-Known Member

    Yes.
     
  14. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    You are so unwilling to admit that you're wrong that you've backed yourself into a completely ridiculous and untenable corner. Reading information in public posts from 9 and 17 years ago -- Forvm posts can be read by anyone -- does not equal "overhearing" a private conversation by any definition. Especially when the information has been widely disseminated in subsequent years -- so much so that I couldn't even remember where I first read it, and thought initially it might have been in one of the auction catalogs themselves.. Your analogy is absurd. If the information is so confidential, and mentioning it amounts to scurrilous "gossip," then why didn't you object to its disclosure in that 2012 thread, in which you yourself posted after the identification was made? Why didn't you seek to have the post removed? Why didn't you inform BCD then, or even back in 2004, that his identity had been made public, so he could take any steps he thought necessary to preserve his privacy? Your complete silence at the time, and for so many years thereafter, can only be interpreted as acquiescence. It's far too late to complain about it now. Especially to someone who had no idea in the first place that anyone still viewed the identification as private. And especially when you can't possibly show that I did any harm by mentioning the identification, after so many have done so long before me.

    You're better than this. I'm tempted to repeat the famous comment that Faye Dunaway, playing Joan Crawford, made to the Pepsi board of directors in Mommie Dearest. But I'm much too polite. Still, the sentiment applies.
     
    Last edited: Mar 1, 2021
  15. ByzantiumBabe

    ByzantiumBabe Member

    It is perfectly okay to discuss anonymous collectors. The art world has been doing it for hundreds of years.
    It is also perfectly okay to question a specific coin collecting paradigm. In this case we are questioning the verification and verifiability of "historical pedigrees" many of which are presumed, rumored, secret or simply unverifiable. It seems there are only in very rare cases actual secondary evidence of a past ancient coin owner photographed holding a coin or writing about a specific coin in his collection. Perhaps the future Renfrew archive papers will offer such evidence, unless already destroyed.

    Unlike antique art or cars or historic buildings where historical Ownership lineages exist and are documented, a mass produced coin is more difficult to pin on an old Owner. I believe Mr. McCabe has recently mentioned his paradigm shift, arising after many years of collecting focus, a realization that the original dominant paradigm of collecting Republican Roman coinage became incompatible with a new, transformative focus of collecting only "historical pedigrees" with provenance, thus facilitating the adoption of a new collecting paradigm. A significant paradigm shift is very admirable, but like all focused paradigms, limitations always exist. I find it very interesting to suggest an "anonymous" collector sale, living or dead cannot be discussed.

    The very basis of many "historical pedigrees" comes from the rumors, gossip and conjecture abounding in the dealer/salesman/collector community. Eventually, someone is going to get this all down (again), find the secret clues, and have it published as a theoretically valid source of Historic Ownership.
     
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  16. ByzantiumBabe

    ByzantiumBabe Member

    Agree completely! This is why I mentioned my mentors axiom from many years ago in an earlier post.
     
  17. Orfew

    Orfew Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus

    Even when one of these gossipers was you? Obviously it was okay for you on Forum but not here by someone who was not a part of your obviously exclusionary club where one set of rules applies to the great annointed and the rest of us must take suffrage in your August company. No, I cannot abide your attitude, contradictory and ill argued as I see it. I think the worst part of it for me was the complete discourtesy with with you treated a fellow forum member or do I not have the standing here to point this out to you?
     
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  18. DonnaML

    DonnaML Well-Known Member

    Thank you, @Orfew But I'm sure he's written to the Cambridge University Press to complain about the following passage in this 2018 book, and to insult the author in the same way he's insulted me in this thread -- even though I had no idea, and no possible reason to believe given the wide dissemination of BCD's identity, that it was supposed to be a secret:

    http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/73697/excerpt/9780521873697_excerpt.pdf

    Cambridge University Press
    978-0-521-87369-7 — The Early Hellenistic Peloponnese
    D. Graham J. Shipley
    p. 7

    "the interpretation of numismatic data has recently taken several steps forward. Studies of Spartan coins, 25 Messenian issues, 26 and Achaean bronzes 27
    have put money, rather than coinage, in the front of historians’ minds;
    while the publication since the early 2000s (through auction catalogues) of
    the comprehensive haul of bronzes and small silver denominations by the
    collector known as BCD
    28 has begun to have a profound influence upon
    the economic history of late classical and hellenistic Greece (some of the
    implications are examined in Section IV.7 ).

    28 Now revealed as Basil C. Demetriadi; see e.g. his Festschrift , Wartenberg and Amandry 2015."

    I suppose he complained to those who published the Festschrift for their inappropriate behavior, too.

    I'm sure he did the same to the French compilers of this bibliography supplementing the John Spring book on Ancient Coin Catalogues from 1880-1980, published in the Revue Numismatique for 2010; see https://www.persee.fr/doc/numi_0484-8942_2010_num_6_166_2950_t28_0571_0000_2:

    frrench bibliography identifying bcd.jpg

    And I'm sure he's written to the Art Museum at the University of Bonn to ask them to revise the following portion of their description of their Corinth collection; see http://www.antikensammlung-muenzen.uni-bonn.de/showNeedToKnow.php?id=114:

    "The extensive coinage of Stateren in the 4th century, which was accompanied by further emissions from Corinthian daughter cities, is usually explained by the expedition of Timoleon to Sicily (but for details see Centro Internationale die Studi Numismatici, La monetazione corinzia in Occidente, Rome, 1993) - Literature: R. Calciati, Pegasi. 2 volumes, Mortara 1990; O. Ravel, Les "Poulains" de Corinthe, 2 volumes, Basel 1936; SNG BCD (Basil C. Demetriadi), K. Jenkins, Notes on the Mint of Corinth, in La monetazione corinza in Occidente, Istituto Italiano di Numismatica, Roma 1993, 21-27; SLG BCD Korinth, Lanz, Munich, auction 105 (2001). in La monetazione corinza in Occidente, Istituto Italiano di Numismatica, Roma 1993, 21-27; SLG BCD Korinth, Lanz, Munich, auction 105 (2001). in La monetazione corinza in Occidente, Istituto Italiano di Numismatica, Roma 1993, 21-27; SLG BCD Korinth, Lanz, Munich, auction 105 (2001)."

    If he hasn't complained already to these august institutions, I'm sure he will now. Using the same insulting language he did with me, making sure to call them "awful, distasteful" "gossipers" who inappropriately "outed" BCD after "overhearing stuff" about his identity in public conversations that have been taking place for the last 17 years or so. (I'd still like to know how one overhears written discussions on a public message board!)

    No? He's not going to insult the Universities of Cambridge and Bonn, and the Revue Numismatique? And the publishers of BCD's own Festschrift? I wonder what's different about me that makes him think he can get away with talking to me like that. Just some gossipy woman, I suppose. Not like all the famous numismatists he dines with who know how to keep secrets that aren't secrets. But: he shouldn't ever underestimate me, or my willingness to push back against undeserved insults. No matter who someone is. All Andrew had to do was apologize. But people like him don't apologize to people like me, right?
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2021
  19. Kevon

    Kevon Member

    I have been a mere watcher on the sidelines for years and didn't even register an account before last December. I had to jump in for this.

    Your sentiment about respecting people's privacy is correct. If the identity of a collector is not public, this identity should be treated as one would treat a phone number or a street address. This information is not for anyone else to publish for as long as the person is or has recently been among the living.

    What I can't agree with is the take against @DonnaML on BCD whose identity has been publicized on multiple occasions. The last part of this reply also comes off as elitist in a way which I would prefer not to see in the hobby, from anyone.
     
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  20. scarborough

    scarborough Well-Known Member

    I’d like to get back to the main premise of his thread to ask a couple of questions.

    Firstly, if our coin is not photographed in an auction catalogue featuring a named collection how can we ourselves prove provenance?

    (I think the answer is that we cannot.)

    And secondly if we cannot prove provenance, how valuable is that claim if challenged?

    The reason I ask my second question is that members here have written of the importance of provenance in an increasingly regulated market. But I would think that if challenged by any governmental authority the only proof would be a photo in a catalogue that pre-dates regulations. No?

    This note isn’t to be negative about anyone’s collecting preferences; it’s to benefit from others’ experience.

    Thank you

    D
     
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  21. Ignoramus Maximus

    Ignoramus Maximus Nomen non est omen.

    Interesting thread.

    My view: however long and lofty the provenance of a coin, it still pales in comparison to its history in antiquity. To me, that's the only true and relevant provenance. The rest is, at best, icing on the cake. Reading some of the threads on provenance I almost get the impression that where a coin has been after it's been dug up, and whose lofty hands it has passed through, is more important than where it was before it was buried. In my ears, it's like saying the provenance of, say, a painting by Rembrandt, is more important than the painting itself. To each his own, I suppose. I like my Rembrandts and coins for what they intrinsically are.
    And, usually, they come a lot cheaper. :)

    But it does confirm my suspicions about why (at least some) collectors are so hung up on provenance: a throwback and nostalgia to the good old days when collecting ancient coins was the province of the aristocracy and the well-off and not something the uneducated rabble should involve itself with. Sadly, the way this discussion has evolved it's not about respecting people's privacy, it's about sheer, unadulterated snobbery.

    I don't wish to insult anyone. It's not in my nature. Also, I have the greatest respect for all collectors -famous or not- who have, and still are, through their collections and studies, contributing to this great hobby. I'm equally grateful to everyone on this forum who are willing to share their knowledge with others, relative newcomers, such as me, included. But I had really hoped this hobby and this forum was better than this sorry display of elitism and snobbery.
     
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