Well, that's arguable for sure but one good candidate might be the 1887 sale held by coin firm Rollin & Feuardent of the collection of one Ponton d'Amercourt. Obviously filthy rich in that 19th sort of way that brings to mind the Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, d'Amercourt put together one of the greatest ancient coin collections ever. In this sale he let go his finest Roman gold coins; a thousand lots of EF/FDC aurei! That must have been a sight to behold eh? I'm about halfway through uploading this treasure to my test server and you're welcome to take a sneak peek as I add them from a scan of a copy of one of the catalogues (the one at the ANS library). The quality isn't the greatest, and neither's the OCR of the text, but is generally acceptable and gives one a good idea of what these coins looked like. http://coinvac.crabdance.com/index....7-04-18/date_from/1887-04-18/use_checkboxes/0 My eventual aim is to include every major auction from the 19th and 20th century - at least the lots that made it to the plates. If you'd like to help please let me know! Rasiel
Nice job. I think the entries look very good. This reminds me that I have a couple of coins to upload to Coryssa. I have a couple that are missing from your db.
Any idea how many of these coins were destroyed during the European wars? Have you seen any? For example, the Pescennius Niger is quite distinctive with that hole and should be traceable. Perfect coins shown in poor photos of plaster casts would be harder to trace.
I wonder too how many important artifacts, not just coins, were lost in these wars. However, of all things, I'd hazard a guess that coins and similar small things of high value were by and large protected by their owners at the first sign of trouble. The Jews in particular suffered great losses. They had to give up 90% or more of their wealth and possessions to get out of Germany in the late 30's. The Nazis, of course, confiscated their valuables and used them to fund the war. Rasiel
ACsearch shows around 100 coins from the sale which were sold in the last 18 years. https://www.acsearch.info/search.ht...s=1&thesaurus=1&order=3¤cy=usd&company=
Or over 200 from Coryssa ;- ) http://www.coryssa.org/index.php/co...arch2/yes/date_to/2019-07-15/use_checkboxes/0
