Not Always the Charm

As I write, I'm waiting for a coin in the mail.  I've been waiting for a couple of weeks, and looked in my mailbox only yesterday.  The coin wasn't there.  Trivial as it sounds, there's a bit of a funny story behind this.

I've been serious about collecting ancient coins since some time in the 1980s, when I bought my first Roman piece.  It wasn't much – an irregular disk about the size of a dime, heavily patinated with brown that was almost black.  I could barely make out some of the letters, which seemed to spell "Claudius."  Claudius!  I thought it was the famous first-century Emperor Claudius from Robert Graves' books.

Actually, it was Claudius II,  also named Gothicus.  He lived over 200 years later, and today I would have known instantly that the design was not first-century.

Having paid off my last purchase a little while ago, I was in the mood to go "shopping" again.  
As usual, I went to an on-line place that I regularly go to when I feel "the jingles."  The owner of Calgary Coin is Robert Kokotailo, a fount of knowledge who shares it freely.  When I attend the Toronto coin show I always stop in at his table and buy even more.  Among other things, he has some of the best prices, and invariably rounds the sum down for me by a significant percentage.  Even so, I usually have to restrict myself to the affordable.  Examining Robert's table evokes a Pavlovian response, I'm afraid.  Gold aurii by Tiberius, silver cistophorii by Hardrian, argentii by Diocletian, silver tetradrachms with the Athenian owl… all at prices I can't even dream of paying.  Robert lets me drool on the glass, and even sometimes handle the merchandise…  

So, I always start with Calgary Coin when I go shopping on-line.   Not having much to spend lately, I was looking for something under fifty bucks, preferably under forty.  That isn't much, so I knew my options would be limited from the start.  After some searching, the best deal I was able to find was a more-than-usually-worn silver denarius of the Emperor Trajan.  It isn't something utterly unlike anything I already had, but there are hundreds of variations of Imperial coins.  They have different reverse figures, different inscriptions and different titles for the emperor.   Having one denarius by a particular Emperor is not the same as having all denarii by that emperor.  I wrote to Robert about buying it, and put the matter out of my mind.

A few days later, I realized I hadn't heard back from him.  This was unusual.  I normally get a response the next day.  But sometimes Robert is busy and I don't hear from him for several days.  I sent a reminder and got a reply the next day.

Robert said that he was embarrassed, but he couldn't find the coin – he must have already sold it and not marked it on the on-line page.  

There wasn't anything to do but go "shopping" again.  This time I turned up a Celtic coin, minted in Britain around the time of the revolt of Bodicea and the Icenii.  These debased silver coins are very crude affairs with low silver content, and usually quite weathered.  For what it was, this one was in fairly nice shape, and the price was only around $40.  I was surprised that it wasn't twice that.  I wrote to Robert and said I wanted it.

A couple of days later, Robert e-mailed back to me.   Surprisingly, he said he couldn't find the coin...  It too, must have been sold.

By now, I was frustrated when I went "shopping" for a third time.  I had to search parts of Robert's page that I usually gloss over, but found a silver drachma minted by a Greek generalisimo named Menander, who turned Hindu and made himself king of Bactria around 200 BC.  Not my usual area of interest, but still technically part of the Graeco-Roman world.  It was priced under $50 and was the last, best bargain I was likely to find.  I wrote to Robert with my request.

By now it would be surprising if you didn't know in advance what Robert wrote back to me.

Third time was not the charm.  He had already sold the drachma and not recorded it.  In fact, he remembered selling a lot of cheap silver to another dealer at a recent coin show in Montreal, and he must have forgotten to make a note of it – it was unlikely he would forget to record a large number of separate sales.

Not being an altogether slow learner, I added a second choice to my third attempt to buy a coin.  There were some crude bronzes from Elam, a kingdom mentioned in the Old Testament as being enemies of the Israelites, I think, and therefore (by definition) a wicked people.  The coin wasn't that old, mind you.  It was struck in the 2nd. century AD.  By that time, Elam was a satrapy of the Parthian empire and only semi-independent.  When the Parthians were overwhelmed by the Sassanids in the early-third century, the Elamyad kingdom vanished forever.  The bronze was a pretty ugly coin, though.  It had probably never looked good, not even fresh from the mint.  But it was, by this time, the last thing in $35 to $50 range that was of any interest whatsoever to me.

It was as well I mentioned it to Robert, because Robert was pretty embarrassed that I had tried to buy coins from him three times, and each time he had disappointed me.  So he offered to send me the bronze Elymaid coin for free.

That's the coin I'm waiting for.  It wasn't in my mailbox yesterday, but there was a delivery notice.  I get these whenever there's something that doesn't fit in my box and the mailman is too lazy or in too much of a hurry to go up to my apartment and knock.  So, tomorrow I have to go up the block to the post office to see what it is.  Coins from Robert arrive in ordinary envelopes, so it can't be that...  Can it?   Maybe the coin is a lot bigger than I thought it was.  Roman Aes Rude are bronze coins about the size and weight of a regulation hockey puck.

I guess there's nothing to do but go to the post office for a look.

Drat.  It was a lousy book.