RCC/On the go... to San Francisco

On the go... to San Francisco

by Paul Landsberg

Recently my job imposed a great deal more travel on me than I am used to but at times you can make this job work to your advantage. For example, last August I had to head out for a 3 day visit to California to attend a technical conference. The smiling gods of fortune dealt me a perfect hand whereby the conference ended the day before a major ancient and foreign was to take place. So as should be obvious to anyone reading this newsletter, I just positively, absolutely, no doubt about it, had to stay the extra day for the show.

Saturday found me up quite early, heading north up the notorious 101 toward San Francisco. My start was somewhat inauspicious as traffic dropped to a dead halt. HUH? During weekdays this is par for the course but at 9am on Saturday. I feared that the gods of fortune had just sucker punched me. Nay, nay, it merely turned out to be some over exuberant driver had overturned his Toyota on the highway. I suspect a dedicated Roman coin collector had just received a gold aureus in change at the local 7-11 (grin) and had just let the moment run away……oh, by the way, nobody was injured as there were no ambulances on the scene.

Finally I clear the pack of rubberneckers who have nothing better to do and begin clear sailing to a room packed with ancient and foreign coins. Or at least I though so until I made a wrong turn and found myself in Oakland. AAARRGGHH! I solved this rather quickly but then found myself wandering the streets of SF in a rental car not able to locate the right street. Grrrrrrr….a driver who found my wandering obvious steered me in the right direction.

At the show: I made it! Later than I expected but I am here. To my dismay the show is not as crowded with dealers as I expect but upon talking to some of the dealers, Hurricane Fran wreaked havoc on travel from the East Coast and so some dealers were unable to make it. 'course I found a silver lining since that meant that some East Coast collectors were also not able to attend!!

I did stop to talk with David Vagi, author of a new two volume series on Roman coins to find out how the publication was coming. (book released in December) David tends to deal in very attractive and pricey coins and I came close to buying an absolutely stunning dupondius of Livia (wife of Tiberius) but resisted temptation.

I hooked up with Kirk Davis, a dealer I've known for 10 years and we chatted while I perused his wares. Methinks he softened me up with chit-chat and I ended up purchasing two coins of Julius Caesar from him, one of them being a Julius Caesar portrait denarius!!

Browsing the other tables was like sending a 6 year old into a candy store. So much to like, so little of it good for your health (I will leave spousal retribution for excessive coin purchases as a topic for a future article). Much to my surprise, in talking with a long-time dealer in foreign coins, he mentioned that he had some porcelain notgeld. I had only asked about the references but I slyly said, "sure I am interested, show me what you have." Bad move!! SCHLACK, SCHLACK, SCHLACK, he smacks three full single row 2x2 cardboard boxes down that are just packed with porcelain notgeld. Apparently a dealer who was going to purchase this did not make it to the show so if I wanted the pieces, I could get them at wholesale (and I mean WHOLESALE) prices.

At this point I'm starting to sweat. Yes there is some duplication, but at the same time, there are over dozens of pieces in the boxes that I have not seen in 15 years of collecting porcelain notgeld coins/medals. I also sense that I'd better come up with a damn good explanation as to why my family was in NC in front of a hurricane (earlier that week) and I'm coming home with a ton of porcelain coins. Throwing caution to the wind I ask "how much for the lot" and figure I've got about 8 hours of travel time to reach maximum creativity in explaining this purchase. Unfortunately (or fortunately) he didn't know the lot price and required an hour or two to total it up. By now I needed sustenance and found a great Japanese restaurant that served up sushi and hand rolls while I pondered my luck.

You pretty much can guess how this story ends!! I came back from San Francisco with a ton of porcelain notgeld coins, two Julius Caesar pieces, and a couple Roman Republic pieces. Now who says business travel can't be fun!!

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