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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;red_spork, post: 4991050, member: 74282&quot;]Here&#039;s a tip I have for provenance searchers: trust but verify. If you decide to pay a premium for provenance, try to verify it. Even if you don&#039;t, try to verify that provenance if you buy a coin that lists one because sometimes sellers do get it wrong. Here&#039;s an example of one I recently purchased:</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1198860[/ATTACH] </p><p>Roman Republic AR Denarius(3.81g), Quintus Pomponius Musa, moneyer, 56 B.C., Rome mint. Laureate head of Apollo right; behind, star. Border of dots. / Urania, muse of Astronomy left, holding rod in right hand and pointing to globe resting on tripod; on right, Q POMPONI downwards; on left, MVSA downwards. Border of dots. Crawford 410/8; Sydenham 823</p><p><br /></p><p>I purchased this coin in a recent Harlan J Berk buy or bid sale. No provenance listed but the price was right. Some research revealed sales from Gorny &amp; Mosch and Münzen &amp; Medaillen GmbH that pushed the provenance back to 2002. That 2002 sale mentioned &quot;Aus Auktion Numismatik Lanz, München 18 (1989), 253&quot;, which of course is not online, so I consulted my Lanz catalogs and quickly realized it wasn&#039;t in either of the catalogs of theirs I had from 1989, nor was sale 18 held in 1989. Further research revealed that the other 1989 sales I was missing did not have any ancients. Unfortunately I did not have catalog 18, but some further digging found that lot 253 was a plausible lot number for my coin based on other provenances I found listed online to that sale. With this info I started asking around and found a friend who had a copy of Lanz 18 and asked him to take a look at lot 253. Lo and behold, there was my coin, so it had an even older provenance than suggested by that 2002 sale. I am still hoping to find something older, but I consider 1980 pretty good.</p><p>[ATTACH=full]1198870[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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