More on COINS

I've been thinking more about the EU's COINS project to find stolen coins (which I previously discussed.) I think it has a chance of success and will strongly incent collectors to keep better records.

There aren't a lot of details on the COINS site so I imagined myself as the EU's experts implementing a theft-detector. There are two key computer image algorithms that can be used. The first is an algorithm to tell if two images depict the same coin (or two mated cast fakes). This is a hard problem because of lighting and angle variations. Yet computers can look at things we would never look at, though, like tiny variations in edge geometry and centering. I predict a good chance of success for the Technische Universität Wein group designing this algorithm or algorithms.

The second key algorithm is one to attribute a coin to a mint. This is much harder than the previous problem. I can think of three approaches that seem feasible (which I won't give today). One approach requires significant expert human time to train the algorithm. Numismatists used to be expensive, but now that Mumbai University in India is offering a 1-year Masters Degree in Numismatics for the equivalent of US$71 it shouldn't be hard to find experts.

Even without the second algorithm the COINS project could have a big effect. The second algorithm, which might have been applied to tell if a coin is from Iraq or Cyprus, is probably not needed in practice.

Imagine a COINS server spidering all commercial numismatic web sites to create a coins in commerce image database. The spider would save every image of every coin forever and associate it with the seller's ID. For some sites, like eBay, the buyer's ID could also be recorded.

When a coin is stolen police would upload pictures of the stolen coins into a registry (similar to VCoins' Stolen Coin Registry.) The duplication checking algorithm would run all stolen coins against all previous and future images in the commerce database. Running against older sales helps with cases like the Veliko Tarnovo museum heist, where it is alleged the stolen coins were sold on eBay before the theft was detected.

If the algorithm is fast it could be used by customs agents during routine checks. Agents would just wave a camera over a traveller's coin trays and if a match is detected it would beep. In this variation it's important that false positives be kept very low! ... but it is OK if not every match is caught.

Computers never sleep and might find stolen coins years or decades after humans have forgotten the theft. There are also old, unsolved thefts to find. I suspect collectors will start to only buy from sites and auction houses certified as “pre-spidered for buyer protection by the COINS system” — or from very trusted offline dealers. Even when buying person-to-person, many collectors will check against the COINS web site as part of due-diligence to ensure their new acquisition won't land their heirs in hot water.

It should also be possible for forgery fighters such as the ISBCC to load their database of fakes and casts instead of a database of stolen images upon their own servers with the open-source COINS software. The algorithm would then detect fakes and could alert authorities if the fakes aren't being sold with the word 'replica' in the online description. Forgery fighters could charge for the service of guaranteeing an online sale didn't match a known fake.

At first I thought a simple matching algorithm wouldn't help much against looting. I suspect was wrong... Currently when looting is reported the antiquities police send guards to the site. Guards are expensive, can be bribed, and sometimes fall asleep. A new approach is to deal with looters by taking a handful of mid-grade coins, entering them into the database as stolen, and leaving them at ancient sites! It's a lot cheaper to put $500 worth of coins on a site than guard it. No looter will be able to resist the salted coins, which will soon appear online or at a customs check point, be flagged by the comparison algorithm, triggering traditional police work to trace back to the looters.

The COINS Project

The COINS Project is named for it's purpose: “Combat On-line Illegal Numismatic Sales”. It's funded by the European Commission. The General Presentation says that the project is getting €820,000 of funding (equivelent to US$1,277,000) to create a data model, open source software, thesaurus for numismatics, digital reference collections, and web tools to trace stolen coins and apply the 1970 UNESCO convention and 1993 UNIDROIT convention. A lot of the research is being done by the Pattern Recognition and Image Processing Group at Technische Universität Wein.

As I mentioned before when discussing the previous work of the researchers although they plan to use the software mostly to aid police in fighting coin smuggling the tools will be very useful to collectors and researchers. It's wonderful they are making the software open source.

The group is hosting a Coin Recognition Workshop in Vienna on August 27th. I can't make it but if any of my readers go I'd love to hear of the details.

I missed a story by Martin Kugler on the project in Die Press. If any readers can understand it I'd appreciate a summary.

Phaistos Disc

PhDiva reports on Jerome M. Eisenberg's condemnation of the Phaistos Disc today.

Most interesting is this reference: “nine of the 32 of Eisenberg’s devised ‘Stylistic Criteria in Ancient Art Forgery’ apply to the work of this forger (Minerva, May/June 1992, pp., 10-15; originally presented as a paper at the 1970 annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America”. I wasn't aware of the article; I wonder if it is applicable to detecting forgeries of coins.

PhDiva is also linking to the actual reports on Iraq looting and reporting that Egypt is rewarding some antiquities finders.

On the expenses of photographing a coin

I recently suggested that boxes of junk coins could be photographed at close to zero cost but it might average an hour to enter a coin into a database. Nathan T. Elkins replied

... it is time consuming and expensive to photograph finds and, from my own experience, I can say it is often easier to identify and enter a coin in a database than to properly photograph it. These online databases simply do not have the funding to hire someone to enter the photographs into a database.

How much does it cost to photograph a coin and how can this be reduced?

The ANS charges twenty bucks per coin (both sides). They have a highly skilled staff photographer, Alan Roche, who has a degree in photography and is capable of producing beautiful pictures suitable for glossy annual reports sent to donors.

I'm not talking about those kind of photographs.

To document the basement boxes the biggest expense may not be the camera operator but security. The ANS learned this when Sheldon (the large cent expert and psychologist) demonstrated his deep understanding of kleptomania doing swicheroo thefts from the ANS's trays. I photographed a few coins at the ANS last year and they watched me like a hawk!

I'd like to propose the use of glove boxes to deal with the security issue. Trusted guards can place coins in the glove box and untrusted photographers can manipulate them with very low risk.

We can further reduce the cost by eliminating the camera operator. If we don't worry about orientation or correct lighting coins can be dumped into a hopper and photographed as they ride a conveyer belt. This may seem dumb, but we don't need correct orientation to document a coin for theft, or later restoration, or automatic computer classification. It may even be possible for computers to make very good guesses and orient the images later. Lighting is important, but if we can reduce the cost of taking a single coin image to near-zero then lighting angles can be handled by taking six pictures, using six different light sources, also for near-zero cost.

(Taking multiple pictures of coins under good lighting is a good idea anyway. When buying a coin in person most collectors tilt the coin -- the motion changing the lighting and revealing details. If I buy clothing online most catalogs let me rotate the garment but coin dealer sites don't....)

Perhaps in the future computers will be able to take better pictures of ancient coins than the best human experts? Far-fetched, but this is already the case for ancient cuneiform tablets! Check out the pictures in this paper by Sean Eron Anderson and Marc Levoy.

iArtifact / GoogleArtifact

I applaud Saving Antiquities for Everyone's mission although I disapprove of their strategy and tactics.

Can antiquities really belong to everyone?

Imagine a future in which I own the ancient coins I have today and all of the antiquities that SAFE has saved on my behalf. I'd certainly want pictures of my antiquities for my records. Both the ones in coin folder in my bookcase and the ones SAFE is storing for me in the museums of the world.

I was trying to discuss this with Paul Barford but followup comments were somehow lost.

I don't just want pictures of the ancient coins that some professional has decided are interesting. I want to decide for myself which coins to look at. I literally want every box of coins scanned and put online with a Creative Commons license allowing me to use the image for any purpose. Perhaps some images could be tagged with metadata such as NUDS but it's expensive to gather and maintain that information. Images, which are the most important documentation, can be obtained for nearly free by dropping coins into a hopper for digital scanning. That techology is nearly free. Volunteers placing coins on a flatbed scanner is free. Graduate students might be available to do it cheaply. Internet storage from archive.org is free.

Identifying and documenting coins takes time. In the preface to H. C. Lindgren's third volume (Lindgren III (1993)) he estimates 2000 hours for 1500 coins. It will take a long time to document the world's ancient coins at that rate and be very expensive. Perhaps in some places grants could be found for experts but not everywhere, not this century.

Perhaps there is a way to generate metadata for antiquities that doesn't cost any money? I've mentioned automatic classification of ancient coins from scans. Another idea is to use Google Image Labeler-type technology. Imagine a game whose goal is to find all the coins of a particular emperor from a particular dig in a museum's online photo archives. Players create detailed coin records without knowing it as a side effect of competition. Professionals may not understand but some of us enjoy finding and identifying coins. There is even a popular FORVM board where collectors identify each-other's coins. I'm proposing a new hobbies involving images of coins similar to how 'photo safaris' replaced big game hunting during the 20th century as it became expensive to get permits.

People are already doing 'armchair archaeology' using Google Earth [story by Brian Handwerk for National Geographic News]

I am sometimes told there isn't enough money to scan every box of potshards. Surely it's cheaper to only scan the good stuff than to scan everything? Consider Google Books. The amazing thing about Google Books is that while others were starting pilot programs paying experts to debate which books deserved scanning Google decided to scan everything and let people decide on their own what to read. It turned out to be cheaper to pay folks to turn pages near a digital camera than for experts to argue literary merits!

How much would it costs to put the world's basement antiquities online? The German's are scanning and collating 600 million scraps of shredded secret police documents and estimate the cost will be $30 million.

Even if no one turns out to be interested in the boxes the photos may provide a valuable record when the contents someday are restored. They provide a safeguard against theft. Remember when 11,000 ancient coins were stolen from Veliko Tarnovo museum? A list of the stolen items was promised to be made available by February 6, 2006 but it still hasn't been posted! I know people who would have loved to have spotted a stolen Veliko Tarnovo coin in a glossy auction catalog.

I don't take it seriously when SAFE promises to save antiquities for me because I don't believe they will let me see the antiquities they save.

Remember the Lydian treasure? The New York Metropolitan Museum bought it and had to give it back to Turkey. Much ink was spilled when New Yorkers had to pack it up and send it to a tiny regional museum in Turkey where less than 800 people saw it in five years. It made international headlines when it was stolen from the little museum. No one even noticed that a billion Internet users don't have high-resolution pictures of it.

Kimberley Process Certification Scheme

Is it possible to prevent the looting of ancient sites for coins, and support antiquities as private property, and have ethical open trade in unprovenanced coins without a registry? It works today for diamonds.

The Economic Paradoxes of Contemporary Art

For everyone complaining about the high prices of ancient coins, or the $25 plus 10% fees on the new VAuctions.com, Felix Salmon has posted a review of Don Thompson's new book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art. (via Marginal Revolution)

Israel's antiquities registry

A citation by Nathan T. Elkin lead me to "From the Ground to the Buyer: A Market Analysis of the Trade in Illegal Antiquities" by Morag M. Kersel (in Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, and the Antiquities Trade (2006)).

My main interest in the paper is how dealers avoid registries. I've been trying to design a registry and need to understand common attacks.

Background: Israeli antiquities dealers are allowed to buy and sell antiquities registered before 1978. Antiquities not in the registry are the property of the state of Israel.

Kersel claims that dealers re-use the same registration for similar antiquities, using the example of a Herodian oil lamp, 'registry #147'. When the lamp is sold the buyer receives a certificate of authenticity (CoA) from the dealer and perhaps an export license 'issued by the [Israel Antiquities Authority]'. A description and registry number appear on the export license. Kersel claims that if the buyer doesn't ask for the license the dealer can continue using the registry number without fear of detection.

A request to my readers. If any of you have bought a coin in Israel and obtained either the certificate of authenticity or the export license I'd like a scan (and English translation). If any of you have bought a coin by mail from Israel I'd be curious to know if the export license arrived with the coin and if you had to ask for it.

Kersel doesn't say if the CoA includes or excludes the registry number. It must not because if it did a police detective could easily buy similar items from the same shop a month apart and receive proof of the scam. Yet I would think a knowledgeable Israeli collector would insist on receiving the registry number for coins he planned on keeping in Israel, if only to be assured of the legal status and to have the possibility of one day selling or donating to a foreign museum.

The attack Kersel documents makes use of the non-specificity of the registry descriptions. A registry including photographs would be much harder to scam, or one recording weights down to the tenth of a gram (noting that items do gain and lose a bit of weight due to moisture or poorly calibrated scales.)

Kersel includes a colorful story of a shoeshine who moonlights as an illicit antiquities dealer. Kersel claims that Palestinian female herb growers in Hebron find coins while gardening and sell them to the shoeshine for less than 2% of retail. The shoeshine sells them to dealers for 20% of retail.

It should be easy to detect this! A detective could photograph a legally excavated coin and drop it in a Hebron herb garden. If it was a scarce coin it would soon appear in the trays of the dealers who patronize the shoeshine. The detective could then buy it with the bogus registration number.

I don't know how many antiquities, specifically ancient coins, appear in the pre-1978 registry. I'd be very curious to know! Ten-thousand? A million? Detecting suspicious activity on large and small registries have different problems.

It would also be interesting to know if the export license database is kept digitally. If so, it should be easy to check for re-use of numbers. This wouldn't detect clever dealers but should foil the clumsy or inattentive.

The scam Kersel documents, though somewhat clever, seems easy to unmask. Perhaps Israel's police detectives lack the time or the will. Kersel admits the Antiquities Authority is understaffed and illegal antiquities are a low priority. That's valid. However, Kersel quotes O'Keefe (Trade in Antiquities (1997)) saying that the effectiveness of licensing dealers and having registries is questionable. I think that's unfair. When the pro-collecting community suggests licensing and registries for countries with looting problems we mean ones with enforcement — a least spot checking. We don't mean the paperwork itself solves the problem!

Kolbe auction 106 catalog up

Kolbe's auction 106 catalog is up as a PDF file. 597 lots. Closes September 18th.

Treasure-Trove, its Ancient and Modern Laws

I hope my series on law and ethics isn't boring everyone. (If it is, please suggest topics you'd like me to cover in the future.)

It isn't just coin dealers and the ACCG that think lack of property rights causes looting. a letter from the Numismatic Society to the Lords Commissioners from 1871 makes the same point.

An article by M. Adrien Blanchet, translated into English by Herbert Grueber, “Treasure-Trove, its Ancient and Modern Laws” (Numismatic Chronicle, 1902, p. 148) provides many alternatives to the current scheme:

The old Roman right leaves us to understand that a citizens who unearthed a treasure, even on ground which belonged to him, should hand it over to the fiscus. [2] ....

Nerva, with his accustomed liberal spirit, surrendered his rights to a treasure found by Atticus, the father of the Sophist Herod, on his own lands. [4]

Under Constantine the Great, the public treasury insisted on its rights; and a law of A.D. 315 granted to the finder one-half of the treasure, when duly announced to the fiscus. The same text provides that no enquiry shall follow, if such declaration be made in proper form. [8]

In a mandate of Philip IV, dated 27th August, 1306, it is ordered that treasures without any distinction found on lands or in dwellings belonging to Jews shall be surrendered to the King. [18]

Without going into detail, we may mention that in Denmark, according to the law of Valdemar I, [29] it is enacted that if anyone should find gold or silver in a field or on a hill or under his plough, it belongs to the King; and if he denies that he has found it, let him defend himself on oath before his kinsmen.

In Italy the State possesses also the right of pre-emption, the application of which has greatly fostered the concealment of treasure-trove, as the proprietors are ware of the small indemnity offered by the State. In mediaeval times the law appears to have been different, at least at Padua; for in 1274 we learn "that a treasure of pure gold of supposed value of more than 30,000 livres was found in the garden of the Hospice of the Domus Dei at Padua, which was unfairly divided byeween the finders, the Bishop, and the State and its officials; a fourth part being, however, reserved for the Hospital, but subject to the conditions that it should be devoted towards its repair."

In discussing the question of the origin of the English Common Law of Treasure-Trove, Professor E. C. Clark [34] is of opinion that there is little or no direct trace of a Roman original. The claim for the Crown would seem rather to be derived from some such feudal doctrine as that of ultimate ownership of land being vested in the Lord Paramount. Such a docutrine is not of Italian growth, but much more Teutonic in character. In Anglo-Saxon times the right of the Crown or Lord Paramount appears never to have been questioned ....

In 1886 the discovery of a hoard of gold coins of Henry VI-VIII at Park Street, St. Albans, was the means of bringing about a futher improvement in the conditions of recompense to finders of treasure-trove, and in this improvement was mainly due to the strenuous efforts made by our President, Sir John Evans. On that occasion our President pointed out to the Treasury that the system ... of giving the finders merely the intrinsic value of coins retained, whilst the Treasury received from the Trustees of the British Musuem and other public institutions the archaeological or numismatic value of the coins, was a very unjurious and unfare one....

Already in the country districts the cultivator of the soil is inclined to resent the interference of the State with his personal affairs; and I do not fear contradiction when I state that numerous finds of coins, jewellery, or other small objects of antiquity have been dispersed and even melted down before being studied, and that because the finder imagines that the State has an absolute right over all finds. This feeling is probably the result of the influence of the various customs ... which have been enumerated above.

For numismatics in particular it is of the highest importance that the treasures should be preserved in the entirety and also that their provenance should be known.

Encouraging better documentation by rewarding it

In a previous comment, Paul Barford suggests that collectors should refuse to touch coins with no documented history as a way to fight looting.

Rather than signalling preferences for documentation perhaps collectors could explicitly pay dealers for details leading back to the source? If a few collectors stop bidding on undocumented coins and start bidding higher on well-documented ones many dealers wouldn't even notice. If I actually offer $10 or 1% on top of of the purchase price for provenance information they might pay more attention.

I'd pay a lot to know where the dealer got many of my coins from, but I'm mostly interested in the coins of uncertain mints. For common coins I'm less curious but I might still pay a little.

In some cases the provenance info might be a photocopy of a Harlan J Berk ticket from the 1980s. Maybe I pay just to learn that the coin came in a zip-lock bag from a gentleman with a Lebanese accent at a recent coin show.

It isn't clear what the social norms on tracing coins back should be. I purchased two coins that were published in SNG Levante from CNG. One had a further history published in Levante's SNG but the more interesting one did not. Mr. Levante is still alive. Would it be appropriate to write to him and ask him if he recalls where he bought a coin in the 1980s? Although you would not know it from my posts here I'm a bit shy about this sort of thing.

Collectors are at the end of a long chain from the soil. It's hard to signal ethical values up the chain with price signals.

I have also heard that I should reward dealers who participate in online forums or write books by steering them business but I'd rather just pay for the books. There is no way to pay for discussion group participation so I share my knowledge in return. When I want a coin it's rare not something that every dealer has a couple of anyway. Expressing moral values though shopping doesn't seem able to provide incentives to change much.

Kolbe auction 106

The catalog isn't up yet, but CoinLink is carrying a press release for Kolbe sale 106, to be held September 18th. The release also promises a Kolbe auction in New York on January 10th 2009.

How I think fresh coins enter the market illegally

I've never found an ancient coin but my understanding is that they are found in three ways:

• On the ground, after plowing, floods, and mudslides
  
• Metal-detectorists find buried hoards far from anything else ancient
  
• By tomb raiders digging every mound looking for vases and jewelry
  

I'm happy that new coins enter the market from the first two sources and irritated about the third. However, many experts are irritated about all three sources and perhaps they are right. More on morality in a future post.

Illegally-exported coins leave their source country without a permit. Often smugglers have the help of a corrupt petty official such as a customs agent. Gangs may receive tacit permission to smuggle in exchange for their patronage of a politician or police officer. There are also independent smugglers. It isn't clear if coins are mostly smuggled by coin specialists or if they piggyback on bigger loads of contraband such as handguns and knockoff handbags.

The fresh coins are cleaned. I have heard they are usually cleaned in Western Europe and not in their source countries. I suspect the cleaners don't take ownership of the coins but clean for smugglers.

Next "runners" for the smugglers sell the coins to small dealers in coin shops but mostly at shows because many of these dealers are too small to have their own shops. Then dealers sell the coins to each other and to larger dealers for a while. Each dealer taking ownership puts the new coins in new holders with his own tag identifying the coin and puts the holders in boxes with his existing inventory. Some dealers may keep the previous dealer's tags but most do not. Some dealers put a 'code' on their tag which indicates how much they purchased the coin for and perhaps from whom and when. (It's possible that giving both fresh finds and coins from old collections similar tags gives the next dealer a feeling that all the coins have the same old good title.) This blending process hides freshly smuggled coins very well in collections of ordinary ancient coins.

Eventually the coins reach a collector. Some collectors hold on to their coins for only a few years. Others sell them or donate them when their eyesight fails.

Efforts to reduce collector demand through essays against looting are likely to fail because collectors are too far from the source. They are removed from crime by too many layers to be able to tell the difference between fresh finds and old collections. Collectors also want, very badly, for their coins to be from the safe old collections.

In the future I'll speculate on incentives earlier in the chain that might reduce looting, get archeologists to sites where hoards are found before the ground is further disturbed, but still allow a flourishing coin market. I am neither a dealer nor an economist so my thoughts are likely to be dubious science fiction — but I hope they will be entertraining.

(If anyone closer to the matter wishes to correct my guesses above anonymously send me an email and I'll post those comments without your name.)

Microsoft Photosynth

Here is something unrelated to coins that I think is extremely cool: Microsoft Photosynth. It's not something you can buy today, but a demo from Microsoft's labs. Check out the videos!

Currently it takes Photosynth days to create a 3D model from photographs. The author's hope is to make it fast enough that a user can search for pictures of a location, feed the results into the Photosynth software, and quickly get a 3D model of the location in the photographs.

It's very impressive.

There is a paper explaining how it works here.

The first step, detailed in section 4.1 of the paper, is finding feature points in the images and matching them. The authors (Noah Snavely, Steven M. Seitz, and Richard Szeliski) use the SIFT algorithm citing D. Lowe, “Distinctive image features from scale-invariant keypoints” Int. J. of Computer Vision 60, 2, 91-110. I'd like to point out this is the same algorithm, Scale-invariant feature transform, the Image Based Recognition of Ancient Coins proposed.

That paper reported little luck identifying the kind of ancient coin in the photo, but perhaps the technique could be used to find different pictures of the same coin, in the same way the Photo Tourism paper finds different pictures of the same buildings?

If we could match a photo against a database of hundreds of thousands of coins and it was able to identify either exact matches or other coins from the same die it would be of great help to catalogers.

There are a number of interesting ways to use computer coin matching software. One way is to have a database containing scans of every coin auction catalog, 1870-1970, and match coins against it for exact matches. A success rate of even 25% would help find many coins that had lost their pre-1970 provenance. Obviously it's expensive to scan every catalog, but perhaps the ANS could persuade Google to do it for free to their library...

A second way to use computer matching is to do die-studies, finding coins in existing catalogs that share the same dies, or better yet just obverse or reverse dies.

A third way to use computer matching is to find forgeries. Coins would be checked against a database of fake coins. Getting the human out of the loop would save a lot of time for authenticators, museum professionals, and dealers. This is very important! Just recently it was discovered that a metal detectorist at a competition in England 'found' a modern Bulgarian aureus forgery (here and here).

Image Based Recognition of Ancient Coins

Image Based Recognition of Ancient Coins is the title of a 2007 paper by Maia Zaharieva, Martin Kampel, and Sebastian Zambanini printed in Lecture Notes in Computer Science: Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns. Eight pages. The paper may be downloaded for $25 from SpringerLink.

The authors attempted to use computer programs to recognize Roman Imperial coin images. A database of 3000 Roman Imperial coin images was used (from the International Numismatic Commission; I don't think the database is online).

The authors attempt to use the techniques to automatically recognize modern coins (country of issue, denomination) from computer images that performed well at the “MUSCLE CIS Coin Competition 2006” (ERCIM News reports on that competition here).

The coin image database was manually divided into 106 'classes'. The authors don't say what a 'class' is; I'm guessing the class was the name of the emperor or empress. Classification software quality is usually measured by first setting it up using training database with information (the 'class', such as emperor name) to teach the system what to look for. Then a second test database of similar images is then fed into the software which must guess the 'class'. The guesses are checked against the classification done by a human expert. (The authors don't come out and say that is what they tried to do for ancient coins but I assume it was. That's how the MUSCLE competition was done.)

The paper's Abstract makes it sound like the authors hope to use computer analysis of coin images to fight commerce in the illegal antiquities market. They don't mention that automatic classification (to emperor, reverse type, etc) would be useful for numismatists in general!

The paper presents details on the mathematical techniques they tried.

The author's conclusion is negative: “features that achieve good classification ratio with modern coins easily fail with the classification of ancient coins.” (In other words, their software couldn't figure out which emperor was on their test database, if my reading of the paper is correct.) They were getting 4% success rates. Since they had about 100 classes chance would be about 1% so perhaps they were 4x better than chance.

The authors claim preliminary tests using a computer vision technique, Scale-invariant feature transform [wikipedia], shows promising results for medieval coins and they intend to attempt it against the medieval collection of the Fitzwilliam.

The authors have a follow-up paper, From Manual to Automated Optical Recognition of Ancient Coins, which is another $25. I haven't read it; if anyone buys it a summary would be very much appreciated!

Lake Books sale #94

Lake Books sale #94 is up. 383 lots, mostly modern, but a few rare items like Foy-Vaillant's Achaemenidarum Imperium sive Regum Ponti, Bosphori, et Bithyniae Historia from 1723.

Speculation on why few collectors insist on proof of pre-1970 commercial history

I was born in 1967 and don't remember the 1970 debates about the UNESCO antiquities convention. Presumably in 1970 it seemed like a good idea that any antiquities not 'known' before 1970 were fresh finds. Everyone agreed not to buy them, and it was assumed that since everyone would keep their word the tomb robbers, unable to find customers, would take up new professions.

In 1972, Thomas Hoving (director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) sold a marvelous collection of ancient coins with 19th century provenances to buy a very nice Greek vase called The Euphronios Krater.

Hoving was in control of a gigantic collection of antiquities in 1972 when 99% of known antiquities probably had pre-1970 'provenances'. He wasn't able to resist buying the Krater even though he suspected it looted. He spent $1,000,00 for the dubious Krater, which had been looted, and 36 years later the museum had to give it to the government of Italy.

• The fact that he already had a huge collection of antiquities did not stop him from acquiring new ones.
  
• His high moral fiber did not stop him from acquiring.
  
• The many pre-1970 antiquities available in 1972 did not distract him from his collecting fever.

It's now 2008. No one knows the percentage of ancient coins in collections are pre-1970. Perhaps 25%, perhaps 75%. Only a tiny fraction (Nathan Elkins says 1.15%) of coins for sale claim to be old enough for museums to acquire them—many more are but no one thought to track cheap coins four decades ago.

Hoving couldn't resist when 99% of antiquities were at two years old. It is hard for me to resist when only 1% are declared such. This doesn't make me a bad person, just typical.

I bought five coins this year. Perhaps they were all found pre-1970 but I can't prove it. I see a coin, it's already out of the ground. If I don't buy it the dealer will keep reducing the price until someone buys it.

Even if a coin seems to have a provenance should I trust it? One coin in my collection has as it's provenance “Acquired from C. Holm in December 1974, as a duplicate from the Copenhagen cabinet.”. How am I going to check that? If I cannot easily verify claimed provenance it is difficult to treat claims as being necessities for acquisitions.

More on photo-notarizing antiquities to prove ownership

Peter Tompa and Nathan T. Elkins have both weighed in on my suggestion to use timestamp notary services to register coins cheaply (here and here)

Mr. Elkins likes the idea so much he thinks that there should be a deadline for entering coins into the registery and after that 'regulations' against selling coins without provenance. (I disagree—not everyone who has an ancient coin has a computer!)

Peter Tompa thinks the idea needs goverment blessing. Although I'd like to see a centralized searchable archive for research purposes, perhaps supported by National Endowment for the Humanities grants, but I think the strength of the idea is that no govermental blessing or registry is needed! These certificates prove something in a court of law without needing an organization to administer anything.

The ability to create proveably old photo-receipts is a boon because some folks fake proveances. The ability to do it without a central registry means that folks who are hiding their collection from their ex-wife's divorce lawyer have no excuse not to certify their photo-receipts.

There are technical flaws with the idea. It certifies a digital file, not the coin. One attack against it is create a cast fake, legally export the fake from country X as a replica, create a video of yourself holding the fake up in Time Square and timestamp notarize the video. Then go back to country X and take the original out. If anyone questions you at the border, the video seems to imply the the genuine coin wasn't being illegally exported...

I think extremely hi-resolution pictures protected against this attack, but I just wanted to point out timestamp notarization of physical objects is not 100% unbreakable.

Rather than regulations making it illegal to have unregistered antiquities I want to create an incentives to track provenances. If there are incentives more and more coins will carry histories, and the ones without will start to seem dubious.

Very Low Cost Antiquities Registries

Peter Tompa asked me about my ideas for using a non-governmental nearly free web site to register ancient coins.

Collectors sometimes need to prove they owned a coin before a certain date. For example, before a law was passed requiring special paperwork for acquisitions, or before a similar coin was was stolen.

There are several traditional ways to prove ownership by a certain date. One way to prove you had a coin (or picture of a coin) at a certain date is to print a picture of it in a book or catalog and get a lot of copies of the book into libraries around the world. This is very expensive!

Another way is to take a picture of the coin and have a Notary Public notarize it. I have known some dubious Notaries and I'm not sure this is a good idea.

Another way to prove a coin existed is to submit it for slabbing to NGC or ICG. The slabbing authority puts the coin in a uniquely numbered holder. The slabbing authority keeps a picture of the coin, knows when they took the picture, and it's probably considered a trusted third party by the US court system. This costs about $20. Whether $20 is cheap or not depends on the coin. There is a lot of human labor involved in sending the coin in and getting it back.

How can we reduce the time and expense of registering coins to nearly instant and nearly free?

I propose creating proof (of access to) a coin using software like that from e-TimeStamp. The idea is that the owner takes a digital picture of the coin and uses the site to 'time stamp' the image file. This costs 40 cents (and there are volume discounts).

According the the companies web site the IETF standard for time stamps and the DigiStamp process do comply with the Uniform Rules of Evidence Code. In the United States, the general admissibility of electronic records is well established, provided authenticity can be proven. There is a lot of legal and technical information on the site.

Forty cents per image might be high to certify one side of a coin but remember that you can stitch together thousands of coin images into a single large image and stamp it all at once so the price is essentially free in quantity.

It should be possible for a collectors organization to link the e-TimeStamp software to a web site allowing online submissions of photos to certify. e-TimeStamp also sells a machine for $30,000. Perhaps such a machine could be combined with a camera and some trustworthy guards that would certify that the coins were physically present near the machine and not pictures of coins still in other countries.

I have no business relationship with e-TimeStamp — I've never even used their service. I just think it is a neat idea and may solve complaints that registries of ancient coins must be expensive to operate and must involve governmental bodies.

There is no need to depend on a single company such as e-TimeStamp. The technology is based on public key cryptography. There are various proposals (like RFC 3029) for letting anyone do such things, and there are US patents on public-key date/time notary software systems that explain how to do it.

For safety reasons collectors' organizations should work with a company that has been around for years and claims (as e-TimeStamp does) that they are unable to fake their own certificates even for a million dollars rather than attempting to recreate a system whose legal authority rests on being flawless!

Pacific island nation finds minting coins too difficult, returns to dolphin-tooth standard

I don't know how I missed this important story.

A story by Richard Giedroyc in World Coin News reveals that the Solomon Islands [wikipedia] is informally returning to the practice of using dolphin teeth for spare change (as previously reported by a story by Yaroslav Trofimov in the Wall Street Journal.)

The reason? “The Central Bank of Solomon Islands has called on citizens of the island nation to cash in their coins.... Part of the problem, according to the [Australian Broadcasting Corporation], is that 'The low value of coins in Solomon Islands' currency has led many there to either hoard them, or to give them as gifts to children.' [Radio New Zealand] added, 'However, the number of people doing this is starting to affect businesses.'”

List of Subject Headings for Specialized Collections in Numismatics

A recent e-Sylum summarizes Rick Witschonke's “Frank Campbell: An Appreciation of Five Decades of Service”. The summary mentions Frank Cambell's Subject Heading List; the full article says the List “ultimately contained nearly 20,000 items.”

I've never seen the List. The ANS card catalog entry reveals it was seven pages long and published in the 11th International Congress of Numismatics.

Perhaps I'm missing something. How can 20,000 items be printed on seven pages? Do 20,000 “items” correspond to 20,000 headings? The Library of Congress sells a five volume set of all their headings in every subject — there are 280,000 in total, for all knowledge in the world. So 20,000 seems high for Numismatics. I'm merely guessing though. I'm not even quite sure what a subject heading is, although this Wikipedia page tries to explain it.

The Library of Congress also has a classification system. Coins are in CJ.

1-4625 Coins

153 Finds of coins
161 Symbols, devices, etc.
201-1397 Ancient
1509-4625 Medieval and modern

To get more information about this range one apparently has to subscribe to Classification Web for $325.

Not all books on coins are in CJ. The Library's Numismatics and Philately page points out, for example, that a book listing all coins and banknotes of a country will be found under HG.

Google Book Search Targeting More Books for Public Domain?

Information Today article by Barbara Quint on US copyright renewal, 1923-1963, and Google's new free 390MB database of copyright renewals.

Spink on YouTube

English coin auctioneers Spink are uploading numismatic auction promotional videos to YouTube.



Unlike a lot of YouTube coin videos, the coins are well-photographed and scroll in interesting ways. YouTube's compression is still irritating, but at least these coins aren't blurry saturated blobs.

The video is narrated by Richard Bishop and William MacKay.

Abbreviations of book and journal titles

I often have difficulty upon encountering the abbreviated titles of obscure numismatic sources. Google Book Search doesn't know the 'obvious' abbreviations.

Yesterday I spent time looking up “Lenormant, Rois Grecs”, a citation in a book by Imhoof-Blumer. Eventually I realized the title refers to a volume, Numismatique complète des Rois Grecs (1849), in the 13-volume work Trésor de numismatique et de glyptique ou Recueil général de médailles, monnaies pierres gravées, bas-reliefs, etc. (1834-).

Using Google Book Search, Google, and the ANS library catalog in different windows helps.

For modern journal titles, the Harry Bass foundation has a list of the full titles of 930 numismatic journals and the abbreviations used by the Numismatic Literature journal.

Elsen list 245 up

Jean Elsen's list 245 is up, with 250 ancient coins. 50 lots of numismatic literature are promised to be added to the list by July 8th.

The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum

In San Jose there is an “Egyptian” museum run by the Rosicrucian Order, a fraternal organization.

I visited five years ago. The museum is full of replicas.

The museum's faq assures the visitor that “there are less than 20 [replicas] in a display of over 3,000 authentic artifacts“. It seemed like there were a lot more. The museum's biggest display is a gigantic replica tomb. It's cool. I would have loved it when I was 10. Because it's a replica it's easier to touch than the real tombs in New York's Metropolitan Museum.

The building itself is in a faux Egyptian style (picture here) surrounded by cement bulls and hippos and replica Roman statues. The museum seemed very proud of its replicas, boasting of one bust that it was one of only three copies of the original in Berlin!

(The coin display is not good. I recall only two coins plus a glass weight described as a coin.)

I often think about the Rosecrucian Egyptian Museum when I read that countries want their better antiquities back.

The Rosecrucian Museum is perhaps educational for children and the general public. There is nothing wrong with having a museum with small genuine antiquities and large replicas. Egyptian-revival sculture gardens are cool. It's possible to have museums without many antiquities.

Something puzzles me about the Cultural Property rights debate. US and European museum collections are heavy in antiquities from other places. Why don't Cairo, Athens and Rome have museum wings full of American Indian arrowheads, Shaker furniture, and classic Detroit automobiles? If such museums opened up there would they be visited?

Why I'm not posting much lately

My daughter was born last weekend. I am a new father! It is taking a lot of time to take care of my wife and daughter.

Why you should throw books out

Economist Tyler Cowen explains why throwing out books is good for society.

425 plastic packing crates filled with treasures

Glenn Collins reports for The New York Times on the ANS's move.

“... one of the great hoards of coins and currency on the planet, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was utterly unalarmed as it was bumped through potholes, squeezed by double-parked cars and slowed by tunnel-bound traffic during the trip to its fortresslike new vault...”

“... New York police detective, Gregory Welch, of Emergency Service Unit Truck One... shadowed the move with hidden heavy weapons 'just in case,' along with patrol cars...”

“... For long stretches, the only sounds were the popping of tape and bubble wrap, the squawk of trays sliding into cabinets and the very occasional ring of a coin bouncing on the concrete floor ...”

On Rarity

June's The Celator includes an interesting article “Defining Rarity” by Arthur Houghton and David Hendin.

The authors propose five levels of rarity: Common, Scarce, Rare, Very Rare, and Extremely Rare.

The authors attempt to map each level onto it's frequency of appearance on the market. Unfortunately, their frequencies are similar but not identical for different series! Thus a Scarce Seleucid coin appears on the market ‘once every few months’ but a Scarce Ancient Jewish coin appears ‘on a fairly regular basis’. A Rare Seleucid coin appears ‘several times a year’, but a Rare Jewish coin ‘once or twice a year’.

If Houghton and Hendin could agree on the frequencies implied by their terms their scale would be much improved.

The authors give rough estimates for the number of examples for each sub-field, in both precious metals and bronze. For example a ‘rare’ Seleucid bronze should have 10-30 known specimens, while a rare Jewish silver coin has 25-75 examples. There is no contradiction here. A rarity scale useful for collectors should rank based on market appearances rather than surviving specimens.

Also missing in the article is an acknowledgment of overlap or fuzziness in the categories. A Very Rare type might appear three times in the same year because of a statistical fluke, and a merely Rare coin might not show up for five years.

Market availability has a lot to do with dealer optimism. Some scarce types appear common because a few dealers have G or VG condition specimens on their web sites at 5x market value.

Valuable coins also appear more common than they really are. Hendin acknowledges this in his frequency for Scarce, but market price seems to be an additional factor. A $15,000 coin with 10 known specimens seems to appear on the market more often than a $150 coin with 10 known specimens.

Because of such factors I'd prefer to see overlap in the estimates of known examples. For example, instead of Hendin's Extremely Rare=1-3 examples, Very Rare=4-25, and Rare=25-75 I'd like to see Extremely Rare=1-10 examples, Very Rare=5-50, and Rare=25-100.

Houghton and Hendin don't define the term 'market'. I tend to think of the term 'market' to mean the coins I see, online at VCoins/MA-Shops/SixBid/eBay, in glossy catalogs and walking the floor at NYINC. I don't know what fraction of the coin market I'm not seeing. I'm not seeing the uncleaneds, coins in shops, or in European coin shows. Because Houghton is known as the top Seleucid guy it's likely he gets offers of a lot of rare coins the rest of us don't see. His table suggests that “one or more“ examples appear on the market, over a few years, for types of Seleucid bronze with 2-10 extant specimens. Maybe that is what top collectors and dealers see. I'd expect a type with 2-10 specimens to appear in the markets I see less than once a decade.

Revue numismatique online (1958-2003)

Lee Toone reports that the 1958-2003 volumes of Revue Numismatique are online at http://www.persee.fr/.

The site is searchable by article title, and Moneta has direct links to all of the volumes. Individual articles can be read online or downloaded.

There seems to be some problem with the plates. The titles of the plates are available, but where the coins should be is a tiny picture of a lock. The PDF downloads for the plates claim to be large (40+ MB) but upon downloading are small (3 MB) and contain the same glyph of a lock where the coins should be.

Bulletin de correspondance hellénique is also available from Persee.

For older volumes, Google Books has three 19th century volumes.

I don't know much about Persee. It claims to be in beta. It has an icon for English-language access. It seems to be from the Ministry of State for Higher Education and Research.

Replica half shekels from Charles Larson

Charles Larson wrote Numismatic Forgery (Zyrus Press, 2004), a very detailed book on techniques of making fake dies and using them to make coins.

This book is so good that the ANA used the manuscript in their forgery class, then pulled the book from usage after realizing how technical it is. Imagine traveling all the way to Colorado for a counterfeit detection class whose teachers didn't think you needed to see the most explicit books! I don't know how much these classes cost but the ANA is offering one in November at the Illinois coin show and tuitition is $445.

Larson's book is easily found everywhere now for $15-20.

I was wondering what Larson was up to. His web site is down, but the Internet Archive keeps part of an older version. I found that he's teamed up with Temple Mount Center in Jerusalem and is striking shekels and half shekels in silver and gold. The catalog of shekel replicas is online.

I still meet people who haven't read Numismatic Forgery. Here is what I wrote in 2004:

Covers: Alteration (tooling, adding mint marks); Casting (centrifugal); False Dies (engraving tools, from electroplates, from casts, explosive impact); Collars; Planchets; Striking (hammering jigs and the 'gravity hammer'); and Wear/Patina.

Although written in the style of a "how-to" manual for replica and clandestine workshops, the book's target audience is collectors and authenticators. To employ Mr. Larson's techniques for crime you'd need to know the basics of precious metal casting, tool and die machining, gunsmithing, and numismatics. For readers without a metal lathe but with a serious interest in authentication and forgery-fighting, the book will provide an understanding of the covert minting process.

I was most impressed by Larson's treatment of the manufacture of steel dies through explosive impact copying. His procedure involves modifying shotguns to drive cast hubs into annealed dies. Larson's diagrams are explicit enough to convince the numismatist that explosive copying is practical. Details only of use to criminals, such as the type and quantity of gunpowder to use, are deliberately withheld from the reader.

Larson quotes an anonymous authenticator who examined 114 1916-S quarter eagles during the 1980s. 56% of them turned out to be fake! Hi-volume forgers in the Middle East and the Orient already know many of Larson's techniques. Numismatic Forgery may provide a few useful tips to jewelers and machinists independently turning to crime, but the primary value of the book is to educate collectors in the characteristics of the illicit workshop.

Microsoft winding down book search

A Microsoft blog announces their digitization efforts are winding down.

If you haven't visited Microsoft's book search site, there were a number of downloadable numismatic books not on Google. They also provided a good searchable interface for the books at the Internet Archive.

(via TeleRead).

ANA magazine online

The Numismatist is going online. For several years selected articles have appeared online in PDF format. Now entire issues are available. The first two issues are available to all, but in the future they will restrict access to members-only.

May 2008
June 2008

Access is through a creepy "drag to turn the page" metaphor.

I don't like the format. It's Shockwave Flash. Visually it's amazing. As a researcher, I'd like the ability to copy paragraphs and paste them into an email or article. I'd like the ability to link directly to an article instead of the whole issue.

Quinquies

We've previously dicussed the symbol Eckhel used meaning the 'reverse' of a coin. I've found a new candidate for it in Joannes Dominicus Coletius' Notae et siglae quae in nummis et lapididus apud Romanos obtinebant explicatae [= Mark and sigils upon money and stone according to Roman explanation] (1785).

Coletius' list, which spans pages 421-445, includes symbols like the Roman Denarius Sign and Roman Sestertius Sign, recently added to Unicode in the Ancient Symbols page at code points 10196 and 10198 along with bizarre symbols I've never encountered.

The first symbol on the top of page 439 looks a great deal like the version Eckhel's printer used. Coletius explains it as 'Quinquies'. This word is aparently the 'numerical adverb' for the number 5 ('quinque'). Oddly, although Google believes there are 423,000 web pages with 'quinquies' but it is missing on most online dictionaries of Latin.

If this is the symbol, it remains unexplained why the symbol for '5' would be a good choice for the reverse of a coin, or where the practice of using it started.

Ancient Coin Collectors Guild receives documents on coin imports

You may remember that the Ancient Coin Collectors Guild is suing the US Government for information on how regulations for importing coins into the US are created.

The Guild has received 34 documents from the US state department and an initial summary has been posted.

(via Peter Tompa's blog Cultural Property Observer)

American Journal of Numismatics

Google is starting to make available copies the American Journal of Numismatics (first series). The originals are coming from Harvard's collection.

July 1870-July 1871 vol. V
July 1872 vol. VII
July 1874-July 1875 vol IX
July 1876-July 1877 vol XI
July 1882-July 1883 vol. XVII
July 1886-July 1887 vol XXI
July 1888, vol XXIII
July 1890-July 1891 vol. XXV
July 1894-July 1895 vol XXIX
July 1896-July(April?) 1897 vol XXXI
July 1902-April 1903 vol XXXVII
July 1906-April 1907 vol XLI
1917 vol LI

NBS, NL

The May 4th issue of the e-Sylum mentions my blog entry on the Wikipedia numismatics portal.

I started cleaning up a few Wikipedia entries but I don't want to get involved in a new project. I did notice that Exonumia, Notaphily, and Scripophily get Wikipedia articles as subfields. Numismatic Books are not even mentioned. Anyone arriving from the e-Sylum who wants to get started might consider creating the article on coin books.

An NBS questionaire arrived in the mail this week asking me to rank, from 1..100, the greatest works on American Numismatics, from a list of many pages. I lack the expertise to fill it out but it's an interesting idea.

One work on the list which I do greatly admire is the American Numismatic Society's Numismatic Literature. I'd give it #1. They have been publishing it since 1947. Some back issues can be searched online using http://64.81.216.220/cgi-bin/nlsearch.

I have multiple copies from the '70s and '80s because I bought a huge dealer lot at a CNG auction. (Email me if you want an issue or partial series for free.) (I thought I was getting a good deal from CNG at $1/copy, but then at the ANS book sale copies were being offered for free and not being taken.)

How do folks compare a 100+ issue ongoing series with a single auction catalog or short book?

Civil War cannonball kills Virginia relic collector

Civil War cannonball kills Virginia relic collector by Steve Szkotak (AP).

People, be careful out there!

Online index to the Prokopov forgery series

Ilya Prokopov has a series of books on modern forgeries of ancient coins. He puts out a new book every year with the new fakes he finds.

SP-P Publishing House has created an index of the books. It is available online on the front page. The index is provided as Microsoft Excel in addition to PDF. The Excel version lets you do spreadsheet things like sort by column.

Readers not familiar with Prokopov's work can see a sample from his forthcoming book New Fake Coin Hoards on NumisWiki. These fakes are interesting because the surfaces simulate intergranular corrosion. Until recently no one knew how to fake such surfaces.

Lake Books sale 93

The upcoming Lake Books sale #93 includes a decent library of standard references on Greek and Roman coins. Consignment E has 128 lots on ancients, including Hardbound Lindgren I, The Asyut Hoard estimated at $35, SNG Levante, SNG Copenhagen, and a Rosen Collection estimated at $35. Consignment L is a complete set of the Forni reprint of BMC Greek (29 volumes as one lot).

Closes May 29, 2008.

Wikipedia

In July 2007 The Celator banned references to Wikipedia in articles. The magazine printed several letters to the editor commending him for the ban. I disagreed but did not write a letter.

Wikipedia is still free to discuss The Celator and now does thanks to an article I just created.

The Celator banned Wikipedia references because of errors in historical content. I've found Wikipedia to be a good start at information that I later check elsewhere. Rather than discussing Wikipedia's historical coverage I'd like to point out its numismatic coverage.

Wikipedia has always had articles on numismatic topics. It now has a Numismatics WikiProject and a Numismatics Portal. The portal is a 'face' that presents Wikipedia content organized for numismatic purposes. The project is an effort to coordinate folks improving numismatic articles and the portal. The 'current collaboration' is to improve the Ancient Greek Coinage article.

Wikipedia has almost no coverage of numismatic literature. There is a Numismatics Journals category with just seven entries. A few books, like The Red Book have Wikipedia entries but there is no 'Numismatic Book' category to gather them together.

New Asylum

A new issue (vol. 26 #1) of The Asylum arrived this week. Cover story is “The Martin Luther Beistle Book on Half Dollars” by Bill Bugert. There is only one other article: “A Proposed Concise Library of Sales Needed for All United States Coins since 1793” by P. Scott Rubin. There are two book reviews, one for the novel The Coin Collectors and one for The Hibernia Coinage of William Wood (1722-1724).

It's a short issues. John W. Adams urges readers to submit more articles.

I've been thinking of writing an article on odd numismatic symbols and monograms based on blog entries here. I am trying to decide if I should write it now or wait until I have researched )( further. (Now that the ANS library is closed for the move it will be unlikely that I'll be able to research it soon.) Another possibility a completely different article related to digitization.

Bleg - printing PDFs

I wish to buy printed and bound copies of a few 18th century works available on Google books.

Google lets me download PDFs. I could take the downloaded PDFs to a copy place for printing and putting into a folder. I'd like something a little nicer than a binder. Are there any online services that allow me to upload a PDF and send me a book-sized object.

Perhaps I wouldn't even need to upload the PDF... I'd like a web form allowing me to submit the Google URL, book dimensions, and credit card number. The service would print and bind a hardcover and mail it to me.

[See wiktionary.org for the definition of bleg]

Sued for $10000 because of neutral eBay feedback on some Morgan dollars

King5.com story: “Get Jesse: Sued for 'OK' eBay feedback” by Jesse Jones.

...
Shellhorn bought some Morgan silver dollars from a man in North Carolina. The price was fair, but Shellhorn says the coins were packed poorly.

"The coins were hanging out of the envelope, loose, with no packing whatsoever around them," he said.

The seller wanted feedback. Shellhorn couldn't honestly say the deal was good or bad so he took the middle ground.

"This is neutral feedback, not even negative feedback, but neutral. He sued me for $10,000," he said.
...

Colosseum Coin Exchange auction #2

The catalog for Colosseum Coin Exchange auction #2 is up. 110 lots of ancient coins. 14 numismatic books and a few antiquities. Closes May 6th.

Rauch auction 82 this week

H. D. Rauch auction 82 happens this week. 723 lots of ancients.

There are also 46 lots of numismatic literature. It is easy to miss them in the online catalog, which puts them with the RÖMISCH DEUTSCHES REICH. I'm not bidding, but if I was, it would be for Barbar Penzei, Count Dessewffy's work on “barbaric” imitations of Greek coins.

I'd love to put a scan of the Barbar Penzei plates online, so if the winner is a reader of this blog....

The Rauch says there are 54 plates, as does Clain-Stefanelli and the ANS library catalog. The Malter library auction catalog says 32 plates. A copy at Douglas Saville Numismatic Books says 44 plates. (I only stumbled onto Saville's site searching for this book. I have not dealt with him.)

Although Rauch is starting Barbar Penzei at 100 euros the Malter estimate was $875 and it realized $700.

What interests me in the Count's book is that it features Celtic imitations of Greek types. I don't know of more recent books on that topic. If my readers know of any, please let me know in the comments section.

Book scanning and _Ten Thousand Cents_

Mark Tomasko writes, in the April 13 2008 e-Sylum, that he “hopes the '$150,000 digitizing machine' never shows up at the ANA library.” He feels that many institutions would destroy their originals if presented with a copy.

Mr. Tomasko is correct to feel that way. Every bibliophile who wants a good horror show should read Nicholson Baker's Double Fold. It turns out that for the past thirty years libraries have been microfilming and throwing away the originals. (Occasionaliy they sell them instead). The microfilms are often bad -- misaligned, underexposed, overexposed. They are black and white for color originals.

Digitizations such as Googles are a lot better in quality. The stuff you see on Google's web site is greatly reduced from the scans Google makes. (They are still filled with mis-scans, fold-out-plates that aren't folded out, etc.) Don't blame 'digitization' for something that has been going on for decades.

I really doubt the ANA would throw away originals after scanning. It's the public-funded, underfunded, public libraries that want to clear out space for the things they think today's taxpayers want.

Numismatics, especially ancient numismatics, whose key works are scarce or rare and out-of-print, has a problem unless the material becomes available. Works on ancient coins also tend to be in a foreign language.

Visit Google Book Search and look at a book. The public domain books now have a feature 'View Plain Text' that provides access to the OCRed text. Currently it isn't very good, but suppose it got better. It's very hand to copy text and paste it into Google Language Tools and translate it into any language.

It's kind of painful to do this. Currently the translations aren't very good. Google could easily make this much easier, by linking the two existing services together. They already do this for Google Talk chatting service.

What about quality? It's poor now, especially for numismatic texts. The reason it's poor is that Google uses a statistical translator algorithm trained from a small set of bilingual newspaper articles. It's going to get better. To understand how this works, check out an hour-long video presentation Theorizing from Data by Peter Norvig.

I predict that Google will develop software to let the public help with fixing OCR and translation glitches, if they haven't already. It's possible that folks will do this for free, but Norvig suggests they could be paid. There is already software that lets people, especially cheap offshore labor, work on large collaborative projects. This brings us to Ten Thousands Cents.

Ten Thousand Cents is a ‘conceptual art’ counterfeiting experiment. Artists Aaron Koblin and Takashi Kawashima used Amazon.com's “Mechanical Turk” web site to hire people to draw 10,000 pictures from what appeared to be abstract photographs.

The drawings, when assembled, reveal a US $100 bill. The artists are selling prints of the art piece for $100. The ‘prints’ are one-sided counterfeit hand-drawn $100 bills. The web site has more details and a two-minute video.

So imagine a future where teenagers and retirees are earning minimum wage helping Google's translation algorithms, where any book written before 1921 is available in any language. Imagine Google's high-resolution scanners getting to books before libraries de-accession the works anyway because a poor-quality microfilm that no human has ever looked at exists in a basement in Michigan.

Who wrote SNG Fitzwilliam?

(answer below... this isn't a real quiz)

I've been trying to write something about the gorgon/EEE fractions of Tegea. SNG Fitzwilliam, which I don't have, dates them to 370 - 300 BC. That date range is odd... it isn't the date range used by the Gardener (BMC), Head (Historia Numorum), Babelon (Traité), and nothing that I know of happened in Tegea in 370 BC.

I wanted to write “so-and-so assigns these to 370-300 BC” and cite SNG Fitzwilliam. I realized I didn't know who edited the six volumes (called parts) that make up SNG Fitzwilliam.

To get the author's name I went to the official SNG site, sylloge-nummorum-graecorum.org, which gave me the dates of publication but not the author.

I went to the American Numismatic Society library search, but couldn't find the entry! At all! I'm pretty sure I've read SNG Fitzwilliam at the library, but the online catalog is missing the entry or using an 'alternate spelling'.

Reid Goldsborough has a nice SNG page, but he doesn't list authors.

I am usually good with computers but this one stumped me! I switched to traditional sources, beginning with Clain-Stefanelli's massive 1848 page tome Numismatic Bibliography. Page 148 is devoted to British SNGs but authors are not listed for parts 1-5 of Fitzwilliam. (Authors are given for parts 6-8). No authors are they listed in Daehn Ancient Greek Numismatics: A Guide to Reading and Research. Kroh lists some SNG authors, but not for Fitzwilliam.

Back online, I checked some other large online catalogs (Harvard, NYU, NYPL) but couldn't even find entries for SNG Fitzwilliam. It isn't clear if these libraries lack it. It may merely be hard to find. The British Academy really threw a wrench at librarians by giving the whole series one title. The title includes the word 'Nummorum' which is often misspelled. The volumes have their own names (Fitzwilliam, British Museum, Lockett etc.) and each volume consists of multiple books which would be called volumes but are called 'parts'.

Eventually I thought of checking the numismatic library at the Fitzwilliam itself.

I found entries there for part 1 (or 1-5?), 6, 7, and 8. The author given for parts 1-5 is F. Heichelheim.

It's surprising that so many printed sources neglect to mention SNG author/editors. Is it part of the culture to pretend the volumes write themselves, or are done by loose supervision of anonymous graduate students? Even with the name Heichelheim I found little online.

(The ANS library catalog offered the article “Fritz Moritz Heichelheim and the Fitzwilliam Coin Cabinet” in Hekte volume 2 (1996). I'd never heard of Hekte. The title is hard to search for on Google because it is a common numismatic term (describing an electrum 1/6 stater). The Fitzwilliam library numismatic periodicals web page tells me it's a Canadian journal, and since they haven't received a copy in ten years it's probably defunct. Google Books says it was published by Aureus Investments Gallery. That name no longer appears in the Toronto phone book.)

Thoughts on digitization

This week's e-Sylum discusses digitization of numismatic literature. Wayne Homren asks if digitization will be a 'Godsend or Gomorrah'. Wayne is concerned that digitization may harm the value of private libraries. That's true if the perceived value of works is the value of the information contained within. Some coin collectors feel that way. (I feel that way.) Non-numismatic book collectors seem to feel otherwise. I see mad prices for first editions of Harry Potter ($10,000+!!!) and Hemingway even though modern editions have better type, better paper, etc.

I digitized Barclay Head's Historia Numorum. I suspect my action decreased the value of the reprints and increased the value of the best (1911) printing. That effect may be small. A bigger economic effect should be the result of the increased profile of the thousands of works cited therein. Historia Numorum often directs the reader to key papers in rare 19th century works. Those citations infect specialist collectors with a desire to read (and own) key works in their speciality.

If your collection is merely reprints of pre-1922 works I expect it's value to drop to $0.

Digitization may increase your enjoyment of the books you already own. I own a few rare 19th century editions of BMC Greek. When I open them, they make cracking sounds. Paper fragments fall off. I enjoy the fine plates, far superior to the reprint, but for reference I prefer to use Google Books to access them. Being able to 'Google' your own library is an underrated experience!

I was able to add a little value to Historia Numorum by adding hyperlinks. When Google gets more works scanned I will be able to hyperlink everything cited, in bulk. This will make the electronic version much more useful than the best paper edition. I have no idea if this will help or hurt the economic value of the first printing.

More important is the effects of digitization on the authoring of new works. Numismatics, especially ancient numismatics, is built upon the study of individual coins. The chronology comes from overstrikes and die links. To improve on the works of predecessors we must understand earlier works.

That isn't the case with, say, 'physics.' Physics is built up from a small number of key equations based on experiments that could be repeated today. Those experiments, along with the names of their discoverers, is all that is needed to write about physics. Coins are different. I can't just take a shovel and dig the restrikes and die links needed to rebuild the chronologies. It is considered bad form to propose new theories and new attributions for coins without reading earlier works. Easy digital access to the works that numismatics is built upon will allow more amateurs to theorize and write new works.

Coin photography under different lighting conditions

Voz has posted two denarius photos on ancients.info. The coins look like before-and-after-cleaning shots, but they are actually of the same coin, taken on the same day, under different lighting conditions.

ISEGRIM

I've written about ISEGRIM before. Now 'archivum' on FORVM has written Really Working with ISEGRIM. Worth reading!

Uncleaned coins, gold found

Derrick Fretwell has found two gold solidi of Carausius (286 AD). One is apparently unique.

ThisIsDerbyshire.co.uk has the details: “They are just the 24th and 25th gold coins from his reign that have ever been found, the last discovery being in 1975.”

Contextual Numismatics!

Wayne Sayles' recently blogged criticism of Nathan Elkins 2009 AIA panel on Contextual Numismatics in response to Elkin's call for papers on Contextual Numismatics.

Wayne has never heard of 'Contextual Numismatics', and neither has Google (regular or Book Search).

I also couldn't find anything on 'contextual numismatics' but given that this is an AIA conference I assume the phrase means applying the principals of contextual archaeology to numismatics. 'Contextual Archaeology' gets 2700 Google web hits and more importantly 306 hits on Google Book Search.

A History of Archaeological Thought by Bruce G. Trigger explains (p. 348) that Ian Hodder's contextual archaeology is a challenge to processual archaeology. “Basic to contextualism is Hodder's enthographically well-documented claim that material culture is not merely a reflection of ecological adaption or sociopolitical organization but also an active element in group relations that can be used to disguise as well as reflect social relations.”

Ian Hodder himself says (Reading the Past: Current Approaches to Interpretation in Archaeology, p. 156) “New developments in Marxist-influenced archaeology and social theory have lead to a more complete discussion of the role of agency in society, and a consideration of embodiment helps us understand how agents experience the world and hose they are formed as subjects in the world.”

As an outsider I can't make much of that!

Elkins seems to be bringing a message to archaeologists that coins should be studied as more than art objects or datable material objects. He wants to discuss what the ancients were consciously and unconsciously thinking about coins, using the genre techniques of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and maybe literary criticism.

Some numismatists study coins this way. For example, I've been thinking a lot lately about why many Greek cities used Medusa, a hideous monster, on their coinage. A search for 'propaganda' in the ANS library catalog gives 321 hits, mostly papers speculating on the meanings of images on ancient coinage. It is reasonable to want to gather cultural speculations on coins under an academic umbrella and encourage students to make it their field.

I think it would be great if anthropologists and psychologists started writing books on numismatic iconography (both ancient and modern.)

Elkin's use of the phrase 'critical study', and the highly academic vocabulary of the Call For Papers suggest he wants to encourage authors from the humanities. I wish Contextual Numismatics success as a sub-field but hope that its adherents encourage a style of writing accessible to numismatists and undergraduates. I find the language used by literary folks hard to understand. The stuff I read on Contextual Archaeology this morning called to mind a famous somewhat-satirical essay How to Deconstruct Almost Anything by Chip Morningstar. Morningstar makes the point that academics in the humanities write for each other, not for general audiences.

Recipe for convincing fake gold bars

Theo Gray tells PopSci.com How to make convincing fake-gold bars. He's never actually done it. He believes his recipe is more difficult to detect than the fake gold bars in Ethiopia's central bank.

(Anyone interested in gold bars should visit the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Reservations are required to be let into the gold vault. If you don't have reservations it's still worth a visit for the ANS coin exhibits. Visitors receive some odd numismatic-related publications, like these free comic books.)

Greatest comic book collection

(via boingboing)

Comic book dealer Chuck Rozanski has written a 17-part series on his 1977 purchase of the greatest collection of golden age comic books. He essentially rescued them from the collector's heirs who threw away some and would have thrown away the rest.

This tale has nothing to do with coins, computers, or numismatic literature. I am bringing it to your attention because it has a lot of insights about collecting, dealing collectables, and what your heirs are going to do to your collection. One amusing tidbit is that Mr. Rozanski was aparently the first person to realize that mint condition comic books from the 1930s, perhaps finest known example and unique in mint, were worth more than 2x the price well-used copy. He started charging 4x or 5x the price of a reading copy. Many collectors hated him for it and he lost friends over it.

New online article by Prokopov

Steel Matrixes from 'Demitrovgrad Studio' on FORVM Ancient Coins website.

Coin Forgeries and Replicas 2006 by Ilya Prokopov

Published in 2007, in Bulgaria, text in English. $20 + $8 shipping from SP-P Publishing House.

78 pages on good paper. The photographs are good quality and many are enlarged.

• 41 Greek coins (3 AE, 4 gold, the rest silver)
  +110 Histiaia tetrobols
  
• 1 Celtic imitation of Phillip II
  
• 2 Roman Republican (1 gold)
  
• 25 Roman coins (6 AE, 9 gold, 10 silver)
  
• 2 Byzantine coins
  
• 17 'Mandev studio' coins (8 Greek, 1 Bosporos kingdom, 7 Roman, 1 medieval)
  
• 6 antiquities

The six page Introduction mostly describes large pseudo-hoards of fake tetradrachms and Republican denarii arriving on the market. (These hoards aren't in this book.) There are three pages on the Mandev studio. The rest of the book is a catalog of fakes. Some of the fakes get a paragraph describing their manufacture or patina.

The coins are divided into three sections. The first section contains all coins except the Mandev and Histiaia fakes. The second section is the Mandev studio coins. The third is the tetrobols.

The Histiaia coins are all shown life size and with an accompanying enlargement. Only 18 non-Histiaia coins are enlarged. The enlargements are on three separate pages far from the life sized image the description. I would have preferred to see the enlargements next to the life size photo and description. The same glossy paper is used throughout so there is no benefit to forcing the reader to flip around for enlargements.

Putting the Mandev coins into their own section makes sense because seeing them together helps the expert develop an eye for the Mandev style. It also makes it harder to find particular coins. I would have preferred to see the Mandev coins mixed in with the other fakes AND shown together, as enlargements, in a separate Mendev section.

Recommended and a bargain at $28 postpaid.

Counterfeit Studios and Their Coins by Ilya Prokopov

Counterfeit Studios and Their Coins by Ilya Prokopov and Ruman Manov
Published in 2005, in Bulgaria, text in English. $20 + $8 shipping from the publisher SP-P. Some coin dealers stock it.

CS&TS is highly recommended.

The book is 88 pages long and covers:

55 Greek coins (2 electrum, 2 gold, 40 silver, 4 more 'low quality', 7 more suspect silver and a suspect fourree)
2 Roman Republican
44 Roman (6 gold, 8 AE, 9 silver, 12 more silver, 5 more AE, 2 more silver, a gold, and a billon copy of a gold, one more suspect)
3 Roman Provincial

Besides the catalog of fakes there is a good short introduction to types of counterfeits, seven pages on diagnostics, and seven pages on the technical characteristics of seven forgery 'studios' producing fakes.

The chapter on diagnostics is appreciated. Prokopov discusses what to look for when examining surfaces with the microscope or magnifier and a bit about learning to detect fakes by feeling them. He even discusses smell!

The diagnostics chapter is a good start but doesn't make the reader an expert. This kind of material can't be learned from books. For example, Prokopov suggests touching genuine coins and learning the 'very specific odour' they give off. It is probably good that he doesn't try to name or describe the odor! Wine experts try to describe the smell of fine wines and even though they've had centuries to develop specialized vocabulary their wine descriptions aren't helpful to beginners. Numismatists shouldn't imitiate wine writers or encourage readers to become overconfident.

The chapter on forgery studios discusses the striking technique and patinas of their fakes. Expect technical detail here as little is known (or can be revealed?) about the forgers themselves. The studios are merely identified by the name of their city or region.

The photographs are good, printed well on glossy paper, and there are blowups of some coins at the end.

What I found annoying about the book is the organization. The first section of coins discusses the good fakes. Next come the low-quality fakes from Ruman Manov's collection. The final section is suspected fakes.

Within each section the organization is good--Greek geographically then Roman chronologically. The problem is the three main categories. That ordering works well when reading. When using the book as a reference against specific fakes it is difficult to remember if a particular fake type was one of the low-quality fakes of Manov, or is only strongly suspected of being fake, or is in another similar volume by Prokopov! I crave an index to the series.

This book is a great bargain at $28 if it warns you away from a single fake. Highly recommended.

ANS booksale: journals

The ANS Duplicate Book Sale page now lists offered journals. There are only four titles, but long runs of them: Spink's Numismatic Circular, Seaby's Coin and Medal Bulletin, Coin Hoards, and Numismatist. The dates of the walk in sales, starting next Saturday, are also up.