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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;dougsmit, post: 2519591, member: 19463&quot;][ATTACH=full]537023[/ATTACH] </p><p>Galerius Caesar AE follis, Aquileia mint</p><p>ex John Quincy Adams collection as sold in 1971 lot 943 (part of)</p><p><br /></p><p>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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; The sale included a wide range of coins including some real junkers.&nbsp;&nbsp; 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).&nbsp; Many were probably trashed.&nbsp; I have seen tags of Republican coins where the space marked &quot;Auction Lot #______&quot; was filled in with the Sydenham number.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; All these factors make JQA provenanced coins about as wobbly as you can get.&nbsp; On the other hand guys like me can hope our coins were once handled by the President.&nbsp; 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.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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