Gorny & Mosch auctions 159-162

Gorny & Mosch auctions 159-162 are online. 2500+ lots of ancients. Also Medieval, modern and Russion coins. Auctions to take place the second week of October.

fine art insect casings

(This is also unrelated to ancient coins. I thought pictures were worth sharing anyway.)

French artist Hubert Duprat has tricked an insect called the caddis fly into assembling something very much like jewelry. Photos can be seen in an article on Duprat in Cabinet magazine.

The artist puts the insects in aquariums containing gold and jewels instead of the usual nesting materials.

United States v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster

(this has nothing to do with ancient coins)

A link on reddit.com lead me to Henry Mark Holzer's essay “How Americans Lost Their Right To Own Gold And Became Criminals in the Process”. It briefly describes court cases establishing FDR's seizure of gold.

I mention this because I really liked the case name United States v. One Solid Gold Object in Form of a Rooster. 208 F. Supp. 99 (D. Nev. 1962). Holzer describes the rooster as a “206 troy ounce, eighteen karat gold rooster—the symbol of a Nevada casino's 'Golden Rooster Room'”. That name really tickled me... US versus a gold rooster. A gold rooster!

Fall catalogs starting to appear

Paul-Francis Jacquier's 2007 list is up. 700+ coins, 300+ books. There is a lot of good stuff here. Jacquier's site isn't part of sixbid.com, so it is easy to miss. I would not be aware of him at all if I hadn't spotted one of his numismatic literature catalogs on a table at the NY International several years ago.

The Auktionen Meister & Sonntag catalog, auction 5, is up on Sixbid.com. September 19-20th. Ancient coins, also 100+ lots of literature.