Diocletian VICTORIAE SARMATICAE campgate from Nicomedia

[Victor]

Not bronze, but it’s still a neat campgate. It celebrates a victory against the Sarmatians, who would not be DEVICTA until Constantine handled it. The turrets have eagles on them.

What I thought was interesting was that this coin ended up on eBay and the route it took. The first auction listing I found for it was 2012 from Lanz where it was unsold with an 800 EUR estimate. The next auction was Gitbud & Naumann in 2013 where it sold for $710. The last auction was Gadoury in 2015 where it sold for $753. On eBay, in 2020, it only sold for $376.55…how the mighty have fallen!


Diocletian
A.D. 295
AR Argenteus
19mm   3.3g
DIOCLETIANVS AVG; laureate head right.
VICTORIAE SARMATICAE; four turreted camp-gate, open, with doors thrown back; each turret surmounted by facing eagle.
In ex. SMNΓ
RIC VI Nicomedia 22a

[tjaart]

Nice coin! I did not even see that one on ebay.

[Heliodromus]

Nice catch!

It goes in other direction too ... saw a "LON" nummus sell end of last year on eBay for $250 then few months later same coin sells at UK auction house "from the collection of a gentleman" for $1500 !

[Victor]

I plan on keeping this one for a while, but maybe when my coins are eventually sold, this one will also be described as "from the collection of a gentleman" 

it's a shame what the seller did to this coin, but I will be cracking it open as soon as I get it.

[Victor]

I was playing around with acsearch's image search service and used my photo of the coin and it actually returned the three auction results that I posted about above. If you are someone that likes to research past auctions for provenance, it may be worth a shot. I think it costs about a dollar each search. Interestingly, the last two matches were not very strong, due to differences in the pictures.

[tjaart]

I am glad to see that acsearch's image search works. I tried it for my only Aes grave as I lack any provenance whatsoever but unfortunately nothing popped up for me. These days for more expensive items I tend to ask and look for some provenance but it seems most major auction houses either refuse to give it or ignore any ideas around potentially providing it.

[Victor]

Sometimes auction houses don't give provenance because they don't want customers knowing where they get their coins and sometimes it is because consignors don't want the info out.