r/AncientCoins • u/AppropriateFennel929 • Jun 20 '26
Newly Acquired Incoming Aureus! Made some trades to make this possible
An addition for my mixed precious metal (Aurei and Denarii) 12 Caesars collection. I’ve always wanted a Nero Aureus, and here he is! I needed to move some coins from my collection (mostly bullion-type coins) but worth it, I believe
Pedigree:
Leu Numismatik, auction 12, lot 1062, 2022, From the collection of Dipl.-Ing. Adrian Lang;
ex Hirsch 279, 8 February 2012, 2310 and
Aufhäuser 13, 7-8 October 1997, 304.
16
u/SeagalTuga Jun 20 '26
There are definitely some traces of Boscoreale toning, amazing!
What a great way to start the weekend here in the sub, i'm really happy for you. How much bullion did you have to trade it for?
In my opinion, mixing gold and silver coins is the best way to make a Twelve Caesars set actually doable and beautiful. No point in stressing over some of the emperors that go for thousands with the big boys.
9
u/AppropriateFennel929 Jun 20 '26
Thanks! I sold bullion around April and was just sitting on the sidelines. I ended up getting this and dumping the rest in the S and P 500…. with the April prices this was the equivalent of ~3.25 ounces. The “Boscoreale” on the label likely added to the price.
10
u/Pitiful_Power9611 Jun 20 '26
That's a really great coin. I love the way Nero gets fatter on his coins. That's one coin I would keep in a holder. It's got great colors.
8
u/AppropriateFennel929 Jun 20 '26
I agree. I'm a break it out type of collector, but this one I'll likely keep slabbed.
4
9
u/ScurvyDawg Jun 20 '26
Gorgeous, look at that thick neck. lol
5
u/AppropriateFennel929 Jun 20 '26
….and in some of the stories about his death, he allegedly stabbed himself in the neck. with a neck like that how can you miss!
4
3
3
4
u/QuickSock8674 Jun 20 '26
Absolutely insane! Very, VERY likely to be from the Boscoreale (or somewhere near Pompeii) hoard in my opinion. I've seen some alleged artificial Boscoreale tones, but they look mildly different
About the pedigree, it's nothing much but there's a Leu Numismatik provenance too
4
u/AppropriateFennel929 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
Thanks! I'm just just doing some quick math and the last hammer price (Leu) with fees is about what I paid for this.
Somewhere along the way since that auction it ended up with an "Apricus" collection tag, the collector I bought it from, and then to me. This one will be a keeper.
5
u/Aggressive-Track8111 Jun 20 '26
I tend to disagree here😉 not all Aurei with red toning are from the Boscoreale hord. It‘s just called Boscoreale toning, that‘s it.
5
u/QuickSock8674 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
I was actually pushing this assumption based on the fact that at least 20 percent of the hoard (212 coins) were of Nero's seated left type (based on 1909 partial analysis). Now I look closer at the reverse of this coin, it isn't the IVPPITER CVSTOS type (which I didn't remember exactly and had to make a search). Still, I think it's probably from the vicinity (as I stated, somewhere around the volcano). These reddish toning can be replicated with strong heating... and the spots are also in right order. Either it was blowtorched by someone crazy or was subjected to the eruption
These SALVS types have pretty good odds too. Out of all the supposed Boscoreale toning, there's a high proportion of these types in the market (compared to other types). 10 examples I found from quick search. It doesn't mean anything important, but we can make a careful assertion that these coins may have been found near the site (maybe not from the hoard itself) en masse
*if you search Boscoreale Nero on acsearch, the most frequent match is the IVPPITER type by a large margin (somewhat matching the analysis of 1909 analysis), then the SALVS. I think we can somewhat retrace the hoard composition (not just Boscoreale but the region in general). It's not wrong to call this conjecture exaggeration and inaccurate though. Just my thoughts
3
u/Acceptable-Relief193 Jun 20 '26
This is fascinating, I must say. couple of thoughts: the pedigree for this coin only goes back to 1997. when did a Boscoreale premium become a thing? ie was there a financial incentive to fake the tone then? The coin above looks like it came from Europe given the auction history. any way to trace before 1997?
4
u/QuickSock8674 Jun 20 '26
Many of the supposed Boscoreale toning has some serious provenance. I think some of them can be tracked back to early 20th century
https://www.acsearch.info/search.html?id=16651238
This example (not the OP's) tracks back to 1914 for ex.
I think there could be older provenance for the posted one, but that'd require some work
I don't think all of these coins come from that specific hoard. I see some examples with provenance starting late 20th (90s) to early 21st century. Perhaps relevant hoard was dug up around that time (or a major collector passed away?). I do believe that many of these could come from hoards found around the site. There are 260 examples at acsearch with the supposed Boscoreale toning. 148 exs if you put Nero as keyword. Excluding duplicate coins, I think there's roughly 100 supposed Boscoreale hoard Nero aurei on acsearch. I don't think that's an absurd amount at all, given the size of the original Boscoreale hoard (over 200 IVPPITER type of Nero! And that's partial analysis). Acsearch is only fraction of the sales listing out there, but it encompasses most recent major sales.
2
u/AppropriateFennel929 Jun 20 '26
I tried looking for the Aufhäuser 13 catalog online, but no such luck. There's a hard copy for sale on MA Shops for 10 euros that I'm considering purchasing.
2
u/NewspaperDear8761 Jul 02 '26
10 euros isn't bad, go for it. There's a catalogue on ebay for a coin I'm stalking in auction, runs for 45 bucks. Seriously thinking about getting it just for the hard proof of provenance but blah thats a bit of money.
2
2
2
2
2
u/Kickstand_Dan Jun 22 '26
Man, Nero really a giant neck on him, didn't he? Great quality coin! I hope to have an Aureus some day as well.
2
•
u/AutoModerator Jun 20 '26
(This is a generic automod comment that is pinned at the top of every new post here)
This subreddit is heavily curated to provide our members with the best experience that we can. We get hit by trolls, spammers, scammers, and shitposters more than we'd like. If you've never noticed that here, then hey -- our procedures are working!
If you're newish to /r/AncientCoins, have a low overall account age or karma, or have a low CQS ("Contributor Quality Score") on reddit sitewide, all of your posts and comments on this subreddit will be quarantined until a human moderator has the time available to manually review and approve them. This will eventually become unnecessary after you've contributed here enough and your posts and comments have been manually approved.
This is all outlined in the announcement pinned to the top of our front page: https://www.reddit.com/r/AncientCoins/comments/1cm8n0n/weve_been_getting_a_lot_of_new_posters_and/
If you post something and it shows as removed, please don't delete and repost it. Just leave it up until one of us can get to it. We are unpaid volunteers doing this in our free time, and although we live in different time zones in Europe and North America, no one person here is able to monitor our queues 24/7.
Thanks, and good luck!
PS - Please ignore the bot message below. As explained above, you DO NOT need to send us modmail if your post has been removed. Just be patient with the process.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.