Yet Another Forum Game - Numismatic Go Fish!

Ok here is my vision for this next edition of "Numismatic Go Fish".

Here is a Denier from the German Archbishopric of Cologne that dates to between 1175 and 1181 AD. The attribution is Haeve. 541. The provenance is that I bought it from a Triskeles auction but it was in Benjamin R. Bell's collection prior to this. As I mentioned last night, the concept of provenance has become more important to me as I have matured as a collector. When you have 500 or 1000 year old coins, the couple decades that they are in your hands seem trifiling. What better way to educate the future owners of your coins than by making it clear(er) to them through whose hands these discs of metal passed?

For scoring, you will receive two points for every link in a continuous chain of ownership before you (including family members) and one point per decade (starting with 1 point from this decade of 2010 to 2019) for how far back you can go (I expect this to be the age of death of the earliest person in the chain for coins from private collection and the documented date of purchase for auctions and pick-ups from an LCS. In the case of this coin below, I would get four points for knowing the two previous owners. Mr. Bell died in 2017, so that gets me one additional point (five points total for the coin).

I'll look this weekend to see what I can find for my highest point total. Feel free to post multiple coins, especially if you have interesting or meaningful provenance to share, but only your first posted coin will count for the leader board.

This is one for me to sit back and observe.

All good questions. I picked points by the decade so that we could deal with a certain amount of fuzziness in the dating of coins from prior generations. If you know where he bought it, but can't nail down when your granpappy bought a particular coin to the nearest decade, then you probably shouldn't count it for this game.

Also, I guess that I'd rather not include provenance for coins that have been owned by the same person multiple times. Otherwise, reductio ad absurdum, we could be dealing with someone giving and then taking back their coin to the same persontime after time: "Here, take my quarter. Now give it back. No you take it. But its mine. I don't want it. Actually, I do." etc.

Interesting idea!

Do tokens count?

Sure, @spruett why not?





That must be the new math--remember that only your first coin is counted. From what I can tell, @crazyb0, you have a first coin with documentation of two previous owners that was last held by the earliest owner in the 1960s. Your score should be 4 + 6 = 10 points, right?






Well, @MC, you definitely have provenance for your coin going back to Warren Esty, which is awesome. However, I'm not sure that you have enough details set in stone to have surety further back. I'm thinking that you have 2 + 1 = 3 points at least until you can definitely nail down that dude from Missoula.

I was waiting for someone else to post to make sure I understand the rules. Lol. Here is what I have.



A coin from a bracelet my grandma's father gave her in 1936. He acquired it when he fought (apparently briefly) in the Spanish Civil War. I don't know the exact date it passed to me, but it would have been sometime in early part of the decade 2000-2009 after I started collecting coins and before I graduated from high school (and stopped collecting).




Here is the entire bracelet. I believe this gets 11 or 13 points depending on how you consider ownership of something acquired with the intention of giving it as a gift. Nine decades and one or two previous owners.

Edited to add: I have another coin worth 9 points that I'll try to post later if I get a chance to take a pic with the original flip with the LCS's name and logo. It could also be 11 points if I was able to pin down its exact purchase date to the late 70's. Unfortunately, my grandma was unable to recall this information.

Of course--let's see what you've got!





Well, clear as mud anyway. Sorry (to everyone) that I wasn't clear enough with my explanation. Probably getting more sleep would be a good start.

I think that everyone understands the points for each person or organization in the chain that owned the coin. For the date, my intention was for you to use the last date that the earliest person owned it--in other words, the oldest date for which you have provenance. Hopefully that is clearer. If I have a chance, I'll try to post a couple more examples...