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by Paul Landsberg, 11 Apr 1995
This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the coin show at the Westchester County Center. With my ever present short-term memory failure, only the late night call of a coin collecting friend reminded me. Whew.
We visited the show at noon on Saturday. Saturday was a gloomy day so we thought we might see a few more people. I'm sure the dealers were gratified to see it very crowded. From what I heard, Friday was even worse and some described it as a zoo. I'm glad to see that collectors still exist in NY (although you couldn't prove it through the number of coin shops).
The WESPNEX is a combined coin and stamp show so there are no lack of dealers. However, being a local show, the number of dealers with ancient coins is limited. However, fear not, there are always one or two oases of ancient coins. Specifically, after finding some room at the table of Donald Zauche (two guys practically set up tents at his table) I did find a Roman coin that caught my eye. Unfortunately my identification skills may not be up to the task. I'll venture that this is a Roman Imperial coin of Egypt, it is bronze, the size of a quarter with mild green patination. The obverse bust closely resembles Herennius Etruscus with a portrait of a young man. The top of the hair has slight curls (?waves?). Although I see a relatively close match to Herrennius, something tells me it resembles portraits I have of Elagabulus. On the obverse there is the lettering (Greek here so . . .) MAVPAAEZ (and more letters fade). Using the book that I purchased at the show (Handbook of Ancient Greek and Roman Coins, $10), I do not find a town for those letters. What is irksome is that these letters are relatively clear!! Side note about the book. For those of you who are experienced collectors, the book is probably redundant. However, for $10 you can have something to carry around and not worry about abuse.
The reverse has the letters O(Delta)HCC EIT(Omega)N and the figure on the reverse holds a cornucopia on the right and what I believe is patera over and altar (I believe with a tiny figure on top). Not having full access to my library I'm not able to precisely identify the figure. Hmmmmm . . . just now I see . . . from this book (mentioned above), the represenation is masculine and could be "Bonus Eventus" (???? I've never seen this before. ????)
Anyway, a nice show with a book and a coin acquisition.
Paul Landsberg
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