Your Oldest Provenance

Provenance will only become more important as time goes on. I know many collectors keep as much provenance as possible, others none at all (I am both unfortunately). So, how about this: What coin do you have in your collection which has the oldest provenance? Not really a contest, but it would be interesting to see. If you can, list the chain of ownership from oldest to most recent along with price information if known. Here is mine:




Sicily, Syracuse. Hieron II, 275 – 216 BC
Æ27. 15.19 grams
Obverse: Diademed head left.
Reverse: IERWNOS, Horseman galloping right with lance held forward. Monogram below.

Provenance:
Thomas Virzi Collection, 1846
Alex Malloy Auction 17, December 1980, Lot 470
Garth R. Drewry Collection
CNG Electronic Auctions 144, July 2006 Lot 38, $98

 

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Could go back further, I honestly don't know.

I don't research every coin I get to see if it appeared in other avenues. Most of my buys tend to be common stuff. I have traced a few to Heritage auction lots, but its VC dealers buying lots and flipping.

Some come in old flips with writing but it's usually the coin's description.

But the coin below is one of the few that came with any provenance of some age.


Tiberius (14 - 34 A.D.)
AR Tetradrachm
EGYPT, Alexandria
O: [TI]BERIOS KAISAR SEBASTOS, laureate head of Tiberius right; LID (date) in right field.
R: QEOS SEBASTOS, radiate head of Augustus left.
EGYPT, Alexandria Mint, year 14=27/28 A.D.
13.43g
23mm
RPC I 5090; Milne 54; Emmett 61.

 

I should clarify, the Virzi Collection was from the late 19th Century, sold in 1907.

 

This is slightly incorrect information. Virzi sold his best Greek bronzes through Hirsch, where he was employed, in 1907. Most of collection was sold en bloc (don't recall to whom) before or shortly after his death, ultimately appearing in public auctions in Leu (1973) and Malloy (1980) sales. Save for those sold in the 1907 sale, I'd wager that most or all pieces were added after.

 

I knew about the subsequent sales, but just going by the CNG description. I dont have those sales catalogs. Here is the link to the CNG sale:

http://cngcoins.com/Coin.aspx?CoinID=89459

 

Galerius Caesar AE follis, Aquileia mint
ex John Quincy Adams collection as sold in 1971 lot 943 (part of)

When the Massachusetts Historical Society decided to cash in and sell the foreign coins collected by John Quincy Adams an auction was held by Stacks (for which I have the catalogs). The problem is that there is no real proof whether the coin was one owned by the President or added to the collection by his descendants before they donated the collection in the early 20th century. The coins sold were also diluted with a few coins obtained by the Society before and after the Adams group but there seems no way to separate these. We are led to believe that most of the coins date to the time of the President with little interest in them by others but there is no proof of anything. Worse, the catalog only illustrated the better coins (as was the common practice in coin sales of 1971) so lower end coins were just identified by text but not distinguishable from other coins of the same type. The sale included a wide range of coins including some real junkers. A small tag accompanies the coins from the sale and the lot number on my coin does match the catalog (that is good) but I believe these tags were given to buyers who filled them out on their own as they saw fit (that is not good). Many were probably trashed. I have seen tags of Republican coins where the space marked "Auction Lot #______" was filled in with the Sydenham number. That catalog was used for describing RR lots in the sale and was considered more important than the Adams provenance by the buyer who filled out those tickets. All these factors make JQA provenanced coins about as wobbly as you can get. On the other hand guys like me can hope our coins were once handled by the President. I bought mine from a man who bought many from a man who attended the sale and later broke down several of the group lots so I have some hope.

 

My oldest provenance is from June 15, 1954. Tag written with fountain pens (no signs of pressure writing which you would get with ball point pens, and notice the flexible nib used for the obverse of the tag, which you can tell by the widening of the letters in certain places, LOL.) Very old school.



On the day this coin went for auction on the 15th of June of 1954, the top headlines across the UK was the nationalization of the two biggest steel plants in the country, and this was the #1 song in the UK charts:



It truly was a different world, June 15, 1954. The western world actually had factories to nationalize, while today there's hardly any industry left, and you could actually slow dance to the top hit on the charts, and there was no reference to drugs, murder, sex, or crime in any of the lyrics. LOL

I bet you the people at the auction were wearing jackets and ties, had top hats, and were smoking piped tobacco in the auction room. The cloud of smoke must have been so tremendous in the auction hall that I bet you some people bid on coins they had been able to see due to the fog of smoke. Like I said, different times! If the auction had been held today they'd probably be wearing flip flops and a pair of shorts with holes in them.

 

My oldest provenanced coin has developed some beautiful toning over the years. I can only assume that it was stored in a tray setup while in Ridge's collection based on the differences between obverse and reverse toning.


Roman Republic AR quinarius(16.3 mm, 1.94 g, 11 h). Anonymous("H" series). ca. 211-210 B.C. Southeast Italian mint. Helmeted head of Roma right, V behind / ROMA, the Dioscuri riding right, each holds a spear; H below. Crawford 85/1a; Sydenham 174; RSC 33b.
Ex RBW Collection(Agora 42 lot 114), ex Malter XXX, lot 1473, 6/7/1985, $88 USD, ex Frederick Hastings Rindge collection, d. 1905

 

VESPASIAN
Æ Dupondius
OBVERSE: IMP CAES VESP AVG P M T P COS V CENS, radiate head left
REVERSE: FELICITAS PVBLICA S-C, Felicitas standing facing, head left, holding caduceus & cornucopiae
Struck at Rome, 74AD
10.2g, 28mm
RIC 716, (RIC [1962] 555), Cohen 152, BMC 698
Ex: J.Q. Adams

lot 785 of the John Quincy Adams sale (Stacks, 1971) purchased by Christian Blom. Chris sold it to Mendel Peterson of the Smithsonian Institution (it comes with his tag) who sold it to Gene Brandenberg, Trojan Antiques.

 

Bing,

I have owned that coin myself. I will have to research it though, it was listed in one of my paper catalogs likely from the 90's. Will take some time....

 

Arrrgh! Not the "P" word?!!! LOL! Actually, that's a great topic for discussion. Provenance is definitely on every ancient collector's mind these days. The proof of provenance issue has changed the way I purchase coins for my collection -- primarily Bible coins. I purchase all of my coins from licensed antiquities dealers in Israel and request signed and sealed Israel Antiquities Authority export documents. It can be a slow process but it sure helps me sleep better at night. Here's an image of my Herod the Great bronze from the Samarian mint.

 

In 1993, Numismatic Fine Arts auctioned a collection of 3500 coins divided into 352 lots. These lots, some individual coins and some large lots, realized between $39 and $800 so it is obvious that any rarities included were not popular or expensive. The lots were sold complete with the envelope and information tag of the collector who often included the envelope of the dealer from whom he had purchased the coin. The collection was formed in Germany between 1890 and 1930. In January, 1994, Victor Failmezger wrote an article on the collection for the Celator magazine (Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 14f). He noted that the collector had made many of his envelopes and tags from scrap paper and card stock. Victor even reconstructed a business card from twelve pieces that had been used on the back side for tags. The coin below is shown with an envelope fashioned from scrap paper still bearing part of a German postage stamp. The tag is from a scrap of green cardboard. Whoever the collector, he chose to spend his limited funds on coins rather than supplies.





Constantius II AE2 Centenionalis from the Bavarian Collection (#2799)
Siscia mint, 3rd officina, Cohen 142 (3 francs value)

It is interesting that the collector noted on his envelope the mintmark and field letter information. In fact, the contents of the collection suggested that he believed in collecting these issues by mintmark. Many of the coins from the Bavarian collection that I have seen were in better condition than this one. I believe the collector sought out the best specimen of each variety that he could find or afford but preferred to have an example that was less than perfect to having no coin at all.

The example above shows the coin was obtained on Feb 15, 1902, but I can't make out the name of the source. I just had a sinking feeling that I have been selling off some lesser late Roman coins (some through JA sales) but did not check to see that none were from the Bavarian coins I have. I have better coins of many of the same types but I still consider these special due to the love they were shown a century ago.

 

This is my oldest provenanced coin. It was a part of the Arthur Sackler collection, who died in 1987. It was acquired before 1978, and it was discovered in 1932 with other examples of this type.

 

ROME
PB Tessera (17mm, 2.84 g)
Amor standing left, holding an uncertain object
Wreath
Rostovtsev 2006.1, pl. VIII, 24 = Scholz 368 (this coin, illustrated)

Ex Trau Collection
​

Tesserae usually are not nice enough to sell in older auctions, much less illustrate. I was fortunate to acquire a few pieces from the scraps of the great Trau collection, the regular Roman coins of which were sold by Hess in 1935. The tesserae, however, were not included in that sale, and I have thusfar been unable to trace the path of their ownership. They were, at least, published by Scholz in 1893, with most of them listed as well in Rostowzew's 1903 sylloge. The coin above is illustrated in Rostowzew's plates.

 

This was one lot I really drooled over, but the weird software and tiny images made me not bid. I could afford it, but would have had to fly to Zurich to view them in person, which I had no time or inclination to do:

https://nomosag.com/default.aspx?pa...=5&id=1135&p=1&s=&ca=1025&co=0&re=0&ci=0&ru=0

 

Anyone with a coin from the Apostolo Zeno Collection is going to "win" this. That goes back to the 17th Century.

 

Wouldn't a Gonzaga countermark beat that, though?

 

You've seen my oldest UK provenance, and now this is my oldest US provenance coin, from January 23, 1975




And this is the #1 song in the US Charts for January 23, 1975:

 

You're right!

 

Back in the 80's I had an Aelius sestertius with one of those countermarks. Had no idea what it was at the time. I sold it to a major dealer for a few pennies what it turned out to be worth. All part of the learning process!